Gothic 3 Troubleshooting

Most of the following issues have been addressed with simple workarounds to accommodate the rather failing nation of personal computer on which Gothic 3 has been installed. The game had serious technical issues at the time. On occasion, not even high-end computers are up to the task of handling it correctly. Thus you must modify the G3.ini file which can be found in the default Gothic 2 installation path, in the INI folder. Simply edit the file with any text editor (Notepad for instance), save and then start the game. Note that most of these settings will get your game playable, to the cost of lowering some of its graphical qualities. It won't look bad, but be sure to change them the way they're better suited for your viewing pleasure.


Sound issues

Should your avatar experience muteness and most of the sounds are missing, be sure to switch the sound options to stereo playback.


Entry point not found

"Entry point not found" is an error which may be found on Windows 2000 systems. The only way to get Gothic 3 working is to install the latest display driver, Windows 200- Service Pack 4 and all the subsequent updates.


Post patch game troubles

In some cases, the patch did more harm than good. Supposedly it fixed the memory leak presented below, yet some users still have the issue. After patch installation should some quest items be missing, you must uninstall the game. The reinstall, start a new game and save. Install the patch, load the saved game and everything should be in place.


More virtual RAM

The goal is to create more virtual RAM by increasing the page file system, so click on Open your Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory. Since Windows XP has trouble managing more than 4 GB RAM, be it real or virtual, change and increase it by the difference between your RAM size and 4 GB. From now on, every time Gothic 3 leaks memory needing more and more, it will use the hard drive for swap, thus the speed is determined by the hard drive. For 1 GB RAM, you need 3 GB of virtual memory so click "Custom Size" and put 3072 in the initial size and the max size boxes. Remember to click Set and restart the computer. You will see a decrease in lag, less broken landscape, no "out of memory" dialogue boxes, no stack dumps or crashing to desktop. Should it have 4 GB of RAM or more, remove the page file altogether since it will speed the computer by a certain amount. In addition, should the game crash, restart the computer before playing again. This effectively clears any data in your RAM so you can start again clear and effective. You can also use the lowering cache method:
Cache.SizeImage=128000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=57000000
Cache.SizeMesh=18000000
Cache.SizeSound=21000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=16000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=30000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=10000000


Red surfaces and red objects

If textures are displayed in simple red, this means Gothic 3 can't correctly identify the Material/Shader for your Hardware. It's probably a driver error so make sure you've got the latest. But just in case it's not, change the following variables to Cache.SizeMaterial=1000000 and Shader.EnableErrorMaterial=false. If you get lots of crashes or freezes, change EnableErrorMaterial back to true. Otherwise, the game will keep on trying to compile the broken Shader file.


Performance tweaks

In the driver settings, AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering should be either switched off or Application Controlled. Be sure to download and install the latest display driver. Deactivate the Depth of Field-Feature in the options menu when using a Shader 2.0-card, since it will make your game unplayable otherwise, unless it crashes it altogether.

For less stuttering, find "Cache.SizeImage=128000000" and double this value to 256000000. It seems to make the game lag less when loading new zones.

To increase grass draw distance find "VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=3500.0" and raise this value to 6500.0. It will effectively double the distance grass is rendered at. You can further increase the viewing distance or lower it to improve performance. Also, increase NPC and creature draw distance by finding "Entity.ROI=4000.0" and drop this value to 2000.0 to lower the distance NPCs and creatures are rendered.

Increase item and object draw distance on high details
- ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0. 008
- ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=30 0.0
- ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=300.0
Change values to 0.016, 600.0 and 5000.0 respectively.

In order to move the blur effect further away, find "Render.DOFStart=1000.0" and raise the first value to 4000.0, then find "Render.DOFEnd=8000.0" and raise the second value to 12000.0. The opposite works for better performance.

Increase the distance the ground textures switch from high to low resolution:
- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=10000.0
- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Medium=8000.0
- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Low=6000.0
Raise values to 12000.0, 10000.0 and 8000.0 accordingly. These can be further increased, just make sure that the difference between the three is the same (2000.0 in this case) or you may experience graphical glitches. A rather comprehensive encyclopedia of tweak files for various settings, according to your own computer rig, can be found on the official forums. This seems to work for a good deal of players, yet remember that forum user power is never unfailable.