Agatha Christie The ABC Murders

Hi Guys

I have started to re-play this on my lap top,(windows 10, up to date Intel HD Graphics card, Intel Pentium CPU N3540 2.1ghz) my problem is the mouse control is juddering all over the place, this did not happen on my normal computer, anyone got a solution to solving this, many thanks in advance

Cheers
SAFC

You have a really low end CPU with an integrated video card. The system spec requirements say the game needs a processor running at 2.2 GHz and yours only runs at 2.1 GHz. It also says you can use an integrated video chip as long as it meets the pixel and vertex shader requirements. I assume you have a minimum of 2 MB of RAM? Does the game have any options to turn down video options?

AMD/Intel dual-core processor running at 2.2 GHz.
RAM: 2048 MB.
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10.
VIDEO CARD: ATI/NVIDIA dedicated/integrated or mobile graphic card,...
PIXEL SHADER: 4.0.
VERTEX SHADER: 4.0.

Hi Draclvr

I am not fully up to speed with the techie side of computers, I know that I have 8Gb of memory,but as for the rest of it I am in the dark, as for the game options they are very limited, to sub titles on or off, and 2 options on screen display size

cheers
SAFC

Unless Jenny has some other suggestions, I'm thinking your processor and video chip aren't up to the task for this game.

Also, is there an option to turn on/off a custom cursor? I find that turning that off sometimes helps with a sluggish/jittery mouse.

Oh, good suggestion, Marian.

Hi all

There are very limited options for this game, it’s either use the mouse or control pad, it’s looking very likely as you have said Draclvr my laptop is not up to playing the game

Looks like trying another older games I have

Many thanks
SAFC

Hi safc,

I found this tip for people having problems with the ABC mouse control, maybe you could give it a try:

DISABLE MOUSE ACCELERATION
Try disabling the Enhance pointer precision option. To do this, please follow these steps:
Windows 10:
Press WinKey+R, and in the Run window type:
control
After that press Ok, and navigate to Mouse -> Pointer Options, then make sure that Enhance pointer precision is unchecked, and click OK

Also: If the above tip did not work: In the game itself in the Options menu click on the Video tab and select Quality = Low and see if that works.

good luck

One other possible solution if tips 1 and 2 do not work: Right Click on your ABC Game Icon and choose "Troubleshoot Compatibility", sometimes Microsoft is pretty good at helping the game to work, it is worth a try.

Hi Starcon

Many thanks I will give them a try

Cheers
SAFC

Great tips, Starcom! safc, let us know if they work for this game.

Hi all

Nice one Starcom, option 2, adjusting video to low works great

Many thanks to all

Cheers
SAFC

Aha! So there WERE options in the game to lower video! Excellent, I had a feel that would work if the option was there.

Hi safc, very happy to see you can now play the game, Now to go and get those "Grey Cells working"

Glad it's working for you now, safc.

Thanks for your help, Starcom!

Your welcome Marian, I know all the Moderators in this forum work so hard to help us, to keep us up to date and so on, so it feels good to be able to help whenever I can, it does not happen very often because the Mods. here are on the ball and quick to respond...
So again, thanks to all the Mods. and all other members who help out.
Stay safe everyone. And an advanced Happy Mothers Day to all.

I came to this thread to see if anyone else had my issue with the game - hope its OK to post here rather than starting a new thread...

I bought the game on Steam, downloaded and installed on my iMac mini. The game played perfectly for 3 days and I got to 81%. Today the game crashed every time I try to launch it and I get an error report.

Steam help is not helpful 😢

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, LaurenJodi! That's exactly what we prefer you do as it keeps all the questions about a game all in one place.

What exactly does the error report say?

Thanks Draclvr!
Here is what I get - much of it is far beyond me:)

Translated Report (Full Report Below)
-------------------------------------

Process: The ABC Murders [6435]
Path: /Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Steam/*/The ABC Murders.app/Contents/MacOS/The ABC Murders
Identifier: unity.Microids.The ABC Murders
Version: Unity Player version 5.1.2p1 (5.1.2p1)
Code Type: X86-64 (Translated)
Parent Process: steam_osx [6352]
Responsible: steam_osx [6352]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2022-09-28 11:46:12.9095 +0300
OS Version: macOS 12.6 (21G115)
Report Version: 12
Anonymous UUID: B65A875A-612D-4662-F3EE-AFD206832D70

Sleep/Wake UUID: AE37D574-0F1C-4982-AB16-FB95A03D937B

Time Awake Since Boot: 81000 seconds
Time Since Wake: 812 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 0 MainThrd Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000304dcca80
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000304dcca80
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 11 Segmentation fault: 11
Terminating Process: exc handler [6435]

VM Region Info: 0x304dcca80 is in 0x3015c9000-0x304dcd000; bytes after start: 58735232 bytes before end: 1407
REGION TYPE START - END [ VSIZE] PRT/MAX SHRMOD REGION DETAIL
unused shlib __TEXT 201657000-201695000 [ 248K] r--/rwx SM=COW ... this process
GAP OF 0xfff34000 BYTES
---> Stack Guard 3015c9000-304dcd000 [ 56.0M] ---/rwx SM=NUL
Stack 304dcd000-3055c9000 [ 8176K] rw-/rwx SM=PRV

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

Wow, that is some error message! The "business" part of the message is this part... It really doesn't say much to me either.


When you say Steam is not helpful, do you mean you have submitted a ticket and they haven't responded? They sometimes take several days to respond.

You can always do the tried and true method of uninstalling and reinstalling the game. You will probably lose all your progress.

Thanks Draclvr

I did try uninstalling and reinstalling and got the same crash and error report.

When I contacted Steam, I received a message that "Unfortunately, Steam Support cannot provide the best assistance with games made by other companies." I guess it is a third party game so they can't help.

That would seem to apply to an awful lot of games they are selling - in fact, almost all of them. That is a really lousy answer as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe writing to the developer and sending them your error message would provide something useful.

I'm going to say that answer is disappointing, but I really mean something much stronger. Perhaps Marian's "lousy" says it best. I found a couple of discussions at Steam about the game crashing, but no answers from anyone on how to resolve it. GOG does seen to provide support if you bought it there - they ask you to submit a crash report. Too bad you got it from Steam.

I just couldn't find anything out there to help you. Sorry!

Thanks Marian and Draclvr. I really appreciate your efforts.

I am also disappointed in Steam's response and it has made me not want to purchase another game from them.

I will try contacting the developer as you suggest, Marian.

Good luck with contacting the developer. I of course do not know how responsive they will be, but here's hoping that they will discuss it with you. You won't know unless you try.

I would have to say this response from Steam would steer me to GOG for all future purchases of older games. I get as many games from them as possible.

Me too!

I "steered" myself away from Steam completely many years ago for very similar reasons and have never regretted it

I still buy from Steam as they have the best catalogue of games. But GOG is my main go-to.

OK, so no reply from the developer yet.
Ironically, the game started up this morning with no problem. Let's see how far I get this time 🤷‍♀️

I think I will be steering clear of Steam too. Not at all impressed with them.

Well, that's strange! Let's hope the game plays with no issues!