game unplayable. stuck at "0%: Isle of Storms: Building Map..."

First, sry for posting here.
I wanted to post in release feedback but the forums wouldn't allow me to.

So, the game looks awesome, so I wanted to free trial it before buying.
But after choosing a char name&gender and clicking next I'm simply stuck at the map loading screen.

0%: Isle of Storms: Building Map...

This can go on for 30 mins, with the music playing on, and the process not freezing up in anyway.
I end up killing the process to stop the music haha.

I tried (without any change):
- deleting and creating a new char
- restarting the computer
- restarting the client
- turning off antivirus (bitdefender)
- changing graphic settings between fast, simple, good and restarting

specs:
Macbook pro 15" retina mid 2014
mac os Sierra 10.12.6
dedicated Nvidia Geforce 750M 2048mb
16gb ram, 2.5 ghz i7, ssd
trying to launch using the shroud of the avatar launcher (so not steam).

Let me know if and how i can provide any more debugging info.

 

Check for updates on your graphics card. That was what fixed the issue for many people with nvidia cards.

 

To be quite honest, the graphics card may not be strong enough to play this game. I had a similiar problem and had to upgrade the graphics considerably in order to play.

 

I'm not too familiar with Mac but here are the specs needed:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19#faq_031

 

If you are on Steam verify local files.

 

@samz
You need to do the following to get the game to work on your MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014):

• Change the in-game resolution to 1280 x 800
  
• Change the Quality Level to 'Fastest'
• Change 'Shadow Distance' to None
  
• Change 'Reflections Quality' to Low
• Untick all the following options: 'Use Antialiasing', 'Use Camera Effects', 'Use Camera Bloom', 'Depth of Field', 'Volumetric Lighting', 'Cull Interior Decorations', 'Aggressive Decoration Loading', 'Cloth Simulation'

 

@Andartianna :
I tried using older and newer nvidia drivers, d/l directly from nvidia site, made no difference.

@Vladamir Begemot :
I'm not running the game from steam.
I actually wanted to try steam out but can't start it. steam complains that my file system is "case sensitive".
I googled for this and apparently steam on mac doesnt support this kind of FS, craaazy! (case sensitive is default for win and linux based fs)
for the heck of it, i deleted the game and any cache related to it i found on disk. then started launcher again and d/l everything from scratch, still doesnt work.

@ the rest of the comments:
I tried everything related to quality of graphics (what you suggested and more).
Doesn't matter what the min specs say, the game should probably start and then if the graphic card is not up to it gimme crappy fps.
at the moment game doesnt even start, just gets stuck at "0%: Isle of Storms: Building Map..." forever, without the game process actually freezing (music continues to play).

 

hello i play presently with a nvidia ge force gtx 660 and only 6go ram and i am ok oh yes i need a upgrade but i can play

 

Sorry to hear all that. If it still doesn't work by Thursday, there is another giant update coming then so maybe it will suddenly work?

Of course it's better if it works before then.

 

@samz - I noticed this related thread getting to a resolution, with a similar video card.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...vates-any-special-effect.130339/#post-1069402

 

He's running Mac, so Windows 10 isn't at fault this time.

You can format HFS+ volumes to be case sensitive, but a lot of things don't like it. It's generally a really bad idea to do this on your boot drive because of that. Apparently the only way to change it back is to reformat the volume, which means you would have to re-install your OS. If you absolutely need it for something (like the Linux kernel source), you should do that on a partition or external volume.

You might be able to use a Time Machine backup to go back to case-insensitive.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2624756

In 10.11 and higher, there is a graphics system called "Metal" which should improve performance. As I understand it, it's sort of Apple's equivalent to DirectX. So 10.12 is a good thing. I think Metal is being used by default now if present.

Apple has been pretty bad about supporting decent GPUs, and this game really hits your GPU hard. At least you have one with a discrete GPU. It would be a good idea to use minimum settings until you know what you can do. Also try to run it at a lower resolution than Retina. The game is much more demanding at higher resolutions.

I have a Late-2011 17" and quite some time ago I had the game running in a window along with a twitch stream. (twitch is no lightweight either) With an 85W power supply, in about 3 hours, suddenly the fan wasn't as loud. It turned out it was using so much power that it had drained the battery while plugged in! So be sure to watch the power usage on a laptop.

I gave in and have a couple of Windows 7 PCs just to play games, plus a Windows 7 laptop with a GPU that barely runs it, but enough to do simple stuff.

While this game can run on OS X, the problem is Apple's obsession with "thin uber alles" has them putting in mediocre GPUs or using integrated graphics, at least unless you want a large screen with a computer glued to it.

 

update: game runs on similar laptop

I just tried running the game on my work laptop which is quite similiar to my private/home one.
I only installed the launcher, got the patch, lowered graphics settings to simple and resumed my char.
the game ran! map loading didn't get stuck.

my work laptop is:
a macbook pro 15" retina mid 2015
running 10.12.6 (sierra, like my home laptop)
same processing power and memory as my home laptop
but only intel iris pro graphics

one difference i did find, is that the ssd here at work is not formatted as case-sensitive.
so @Elwyn i think i migth try to reformat.
I have time-machine backups already so hopefully restoring to a non case-sensitive disk will be easy.

I know what you mean about apple and decent gpus. its quite annoying.
With high sierra 10.13.x they finally introduced external gpu support, this might become mainstream in the near future (and hopefully more budget friendly).
I'll probably break sometime soon and get a windows pc

 

Yes, apparently restoring to a case-insensitive disk is the hard thing, because TM won't format the new volume with the proper option.

I think it was long overdue. Meanwhile, they managed to break the drivers for that USB-based GPU system that was used by a lot of dock modules, but I also heard that their protocol was nightmare-ception levels of screwy.

The best thing about it will be that your external GPU would have its own power supply.

 

I have a 2017 iMac with a Radeon 580 in it (it's not an RX580 but similar I guess) and the game plays acceptably.

That's the only reason I was able to play SoTA properly. Pretty sure the 8GB of memory on it helps.

The truth is that the way the consumer graphics card industry works is that there is one good card in each generation, usually the GTX or top card, and that's the card you want for gaming, all the other lower derivatives of it, like what Macs used in everything up until this mac, essentially, are hobbled versions that are really not good enough for gaming today unless you only play non-demanding or older games.

Plus SoTA isnt' efficient either.

I didn't have any of the filesystem trouble you had. It's worth noting that APFS is used if you have an SSD and high sierra, not HFS+ which is only used on Fusion drives.