Does Adobe Reader effect gameplay?

[Gilberticus 374]

I know it sounds strange, but there's a reason why I'm posting it here. When I first bought Sacred 2, it ran smoothly, even with the graphics settings jacked all the way up. But during the last week, I've run into problems with the game freezing that I've never had before. After about 20 minutes, my game would freeze if I looked at the map. Even if I avoided looking at the map, the game would freeze on the exit screen. Tonight, a message about updating my adobe popped up. I've ignored it for atleast 3 months, having no clue what adobe was. But now that I've updated, my Sacred runs like a cat with its tail on fire. Sheer coincidence, or does Adobe somehow effect gameplay?

[claudius 104]

Interesting.. I have no idea, but it would be good to know.

[wolfie2kX 528]

In theory... No, it shouldn't unless you've got a PDF open. Then it would likely consume some system resources that the game would otherwise want to use.

 

Adobe Flash, OTOH, could have an effect but you were asking about Reader...

 

That said, all Adobe products have a utility that runs on boot - the thing that checked for and let you know there was an update available. As such, THAT could be running in the background and mucking about with something although I haven't noted any such issues previously with this sort of thing. Of course, when I get a notification, I usually try to deal with it right then and there.

[masteff 64]

Actually, in the back of my mind, the map graphics are based on an adobe product. Not so much reader but one of the others, but it probably has some dlls in common. You could probably look thru the files for map related ones and possibly figure it out from the file extensions (I've long since uninstalled Sacred 2 or I'd look tonight).

 

I remember in the Sacred 2 beta that I installed a software developer kit to be able to view the base files, in part so we could figure how we could export the map for the wiki. I know that it uses 2 base maps (one in grey tones and one in color) (and those have layers because of the underground levels) to show where you've explored and then it has a file of icons and images that it overlays on the map to show special features (towns, quest monsters, etc). I remember figuring that out because of a couple map bugs I reported, such as the town where you get the music concert quest being off by a fraction so the roads didn't line up.

 

And as wolfie notes, it might have been locking up a dll or something while trying to run an update check.

Edited June 4, 2013 by masteff