All experienced gamers know that problems with the game can appear due to the lack of necessary files. Although Steam itself takes care of the availability of the necessary files on the computer, it will not be superfluous to independently (manually) check the presence and version of the necessary software.
As usual, the first thing we do is check our hardware against the published minimum system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 7/8/8.1;
CPU: quad-core AMD 2.5 GHz | Quad-core Intel 2.0 GHz;
RAM: 4GB;
Video card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB | Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB;
DirectX: 10;
Free hard disk space: 26 GB.
Drivers
Check driver versions for Nvidia cards:
AMD Radeon owners also check the drivers:
If you are using APU graphics (or have doubts about this), then use the AMD driver auto-detection program.
In addition to the drivers, make sure the software is up to date:
And auxiliary dynamic libraries:
Note: Problems with the game can occur due to a low-quality build of Windows, which contains many unnecessary, conflicting tweaks. To avoid problems, you should install a clean distribution from Microsoft.
With standard manipulations finished, now we turn to specific problems.
Permanent departures
If newer versions of drivers for video cards do not solve the problem, then try turning off Origin in the game. To turn it off, go to the Origin library, select Dragon Age, right-click on the item, select "Game Properties" from the context menu and check the "Turn off Origin in the game" box.
Dragon Age crashes when playing co-op
Check if the antivirus or firewall is blocking the Internet connection and in general, whether the Internet is available now.
Slow loading in the game
During the game, you must close all extraneous applications that consume a lot of resources, and you can also disable the cloud storage function in the game. To disable it, you need to go to the settings in the Origin client, go to the "General" tab, and in the "Cloud storage" category, uncheck the "Enable cloud storage in all supported games" item.
Low FPS / brakes
The most effective option is to experiment with the game's graphical settings and install the latest drivers. If this does not help, then it remains to wait for official patches.
Error messages on dual-core processors
If you pay attention to the minimum system requirements, it becomes clear that the game requires quad-core processors. Unfortunately, there is only one solution to this problem - an upgrade of hardware.
Origin game won't download
Reinstall or simply restart Origin. Check if a VPN is currently in use.
Doesn't start
If the game is launched on a laptop, then check in the Nvidia / CatalystControlCenter panel whether the game is running from a discrete card, if not, then fix it.
Unable to connect to Dragon Age servers
Most likely the servers are simply overloaded. Be patient and try again later.
Low FPS in cut scenes
A feeling of slowdown can occur for those who are already accustomed to playing at 60 frames per second. The cut scenes themselves are recorded at 30 frames per second. To reduce the unpleasant effect, turn on vertical sync.
To unlock the frame rate, in the Origin client, in the properties of Dragon Age in the command line parameters, specify the command: -GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+
Freeze during the opening cutscene
Appears after the frame rate is unlocked. Roll back the action by deleting "-GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+" and restart the game.
License error
In the Origin library, right-click on the game and select "Troubleshoot game". If this does not help, you will have to completely reinstall the game.
Glitches with animation
Often arise from minimizing Dragon Age to fix the situation, just restart the game. If it doesn't help, run it in windowed mode.
Freeze when using Stormcaller
The bug will be fixed with the first patch. You just need to wait and not use this skill.
Gamepad refuses to work
Update the controller drivers and reconnect it.
How to get rid of shiny hair
In the graphics settings, set the Mesh parameter to "high" or "ultra".
Confusion with the main character's gender
As with other bugs, just waiting for the patch.
Gave equipment of the wrong class
If you receive equipment that does not match the class, try starting the game again.
As usual, we share our problems in the comments and thoughts on their solution.
Good day to all. I wanted to share with those who do not know about this, both with gamers and just with any PC users in fact.Not so long ago, but he himself began to face the problem of machine performance. In fact, there are any programs, but games! As you all perfectly understand, Games are a completely different matter. I specifically (at the computer) have a rather weak video card, the processor in two cores at 3 GHz is quite pulling, albeit of the last generation, it’s just like a Pentium D. But something I got carried away, sorry miles.
There is such a company IObit that releases quite excellent, not only in my opinion programs, which is perhaps the most attractive, often free.
They have an excellent Advanced SystemCare program (it’s easy to find at the company’s link), it’s practically free, that is, in order to have the full version, recommendations pop up from time to time, they say, get the PRO version and you will become bigger, and you will become better, but this is not necessary. The free one works great.
What she can do: Almost complete computer care in terms of. Cleaning the registry, deleting unnecessary files (without glitches and you can always look at what it offers to delete) finding and fixing vulnerabilities, defragmentation (you can download an add-on (free as well) like the Defragmenter. Full defragmentation, unlike the system one, takes me 15 minutes (300 disc)
Further, after its installation, a number of functions appear, for example, in the context menu, when you hover the "rodent" (mouse) on the hard disk (s) in the submenu, you can select analysis, optimization, disk cleanup, check
It also appears (in my opinion immediately in the start menu at the top) Uninstaller. That is, what you decide to remove from the machine, it will remove the system better, with a deep search for "traces" in the registry, "shards" of games, keys, and so on. It is called deep scan, after defragmentation.
This is what I would recommend to everyone, now let's move on to the most "delicious" Firstly, the program itself has a "turbo acceleration" function (speeding up the system by disabling unnecessary functions, such as (exaggerating) local network support, support for multiple monitors, multiple printers (this function can be turned off at any time (turbo boost))
Now the most "delicious" program has a free add-on, which also weighs in fact kilobytes. It's called Game Booster.
When you start any game, you can run this application, it will analyze in seconds and enable system acceleration directly for the game, turning off what simply does not make sense at the time of the game, thereby speeding up everything else.
Here, in general, if very briefly and you can say "in a nutshell" that's all. Although I forgot many useful functions and remember already along the way, I won’t add it, it’s not so important.
Hello everyone, kiss, Mishka
In everyday work, I like to use the browser as a player, snapping it to the left side of the screen, and leaving space on the right side of the VS Code, since new versions of Windows perfectly manage window snapping. Unfortunately, even the screen space of a 27-inch monitor is catastrophically small for all "wishlists", so I want to buy a second monitor more and more.
My main browser is Vivaldi and it's good for everything, except that it uses absolutely disgusting, thick scrollbars straight from the past by default. The screen is already small, and then there are scrollbars 15 pixels thick. Fortunately, fixing this problem is easy and you don't even have to resort to the Google Chrome extension store.
You can install modern scrollbars directly from the browser by enabling a special flag in the experimental settings.
To do this, enter in the search bar vivaldi://flags and find through the search "Overlay Scrollbars". After that, we transfer it to the Enabled state. After restarting the browser, you will see a really modern scrollbar that only appears when using scrolling and is hidden the rest of the time.
And I also want to recommend a little-known extension for Chrome browsers from Google itself, which allows you to unpin videos from YouTube and watch it even on the desktop like in a miniplayer or as it happens in MacOS with video.
P.S.: Unfortunately, the developers of Chromium in new versions of the browser for some unknown reason removed the inclusion of these scrollbars from the flags, so the good old extensions for Chrome can save the situation, but they do not work in all places.
June 24, 2019
In my personal life, I suddenly had a sufficient amount of free time and, observing the extremely sad state of industry in the Russian Federation, I decided to fulfill my old dream - to master web developer profession in order to be able to work in the future freelance. Having closely come into contact with the topic of web development, I realized that there simply would not be, and the Internet over these ten years (it was then that I was fully trying to self-teach design and layout of sites) has come an incredible way.
Millennials have come up with new trendy names for web developers: front-end and back-end. The front-ender typesets the site from a layout drawn by a professional designer, adds various simple javascript scripts (so you need to know how to program), and possibly screwing the layout into the CMS. The backender is responsible for the site engine and working with databases, and he also turns up his nose and considers himself a real programmer, and not like these "form slaps". If 5 years ago it was possible to learn how to type in HTML5 and learn CSS in order to be proudly called a layout designer, now these are basic skills that cannot be found in any web studio, because very few people need layout by itself. The stack of technologies necessary for modern website development has grown incredibly and the layout designer is now a bit of a programmer, and the programmer, if necessary, can make layout from the layout and make the interface himself. But in our time it was possible to "cut" the site and make it up on tables ...
Here is a short extract knowledge and tips that I learned in a month of hard home study:
- now the most popular code editor that covers 90% of the tasks of all front-end developers. atom not popular due to its buggy and slowness, on Sublime Text only old web developers who just got used to this "notepad" over the years of use are sitting.
- Without the hated Adobe Photoshop, when working with layouts, nowhere. This is the de facto industry standard. Yes, there are some very cool alternatives like paid online services like Avocode, Zeppelin or Figma, but they are more focused on rapid development of mobile interfaces and not on website layouts. And although they declare support psd, with more or less complex layouts there will definitely be problems. Not to mention that they misread text layer options and don't show/disable superimposed effects. The guys who created Sketch for Mac OS blew a huge market by not wanting to port their product to the web or to Windows. Where can I get photoshop? Unfortunately, Adobe's pricing policy leaves few options for newbies like me. Although for students they give discounts and long trial periods.
- The Internet we now have is very vector and hypertext, so the vector graphics format SVG used everywhere. It's good practice to have an open vector graphics editor in conjunction with Photoshop, Inkscape, to open and edit such files. Well, or draw a couple of arrows, if nothing beautiful is alien to you.
- Professional training in online courses is quite expensive: from 12,000 - 20,000 rubles and more, I generally keep quiet about the advanced level of knowledge (for which companies usually pay, and not the programmer himself). You can say that I will download any lectures on torrents (and this is true, they are there), any books and I will study myself. In courses, you pay not for the lectures themselves (instead of them you can read a bunch of articles on the topic for free), but for the work of mentors with you, for working on mistakes and assessing your real knowledge. I do not urge anyone to run and enroll in any courses, but by studying on your own, you will not gain some knowledge. Not to mention the possibility of unknowingly gaining "incorrect knowledge and training in bad practices."
- The human brain is able to adequately perceive new information for no more than 4 hours, then a sharp drop in efficiency begins.
- Without practices your knowledge is worth nothing. 80% of your training should be practice, and 20% theory and lectures. This is the most valuable thing in online courses that you can’t download on torrents: there you will be kicked in every possible way, given and checked homework, indicated where to improve your knowledge.
- Be prepared for the fact that website development technologies change every 2 years: old browsers die off, new frameworks and layout methods appear. Be ready to learn new things. Oh, but I really remember those times when the pages were made up with tables and just switched to "divas". And now people who make up only "divas" will look askance - now flexboxes are in vogue.
- There are many free psd templates on the Internet that you can download, make up and make a portfolio of them. And of course, Chrome DevTools (which opens with F12) and a similar developer tool in Firefox are cool things: constantly look at the code of sites that interest you in order to understand how this or that thing is done, or where the layout designers screwed up (childish mistakes are often found).
Beginner Developer Page - It is extremely difficult for a beginner to find a job on freelance exchanges. As I already said, they rarely order layout, and if they do, then these simple orders are intercepted by craftsmen, who naturally will do it very quickly and efficiently. There are exchanges for perfect beginners like Work Zilla, but if you read the reviews, there will be a lot of negative ones. In addition, this exchange takes 15% from the completed order, imposes a limit on the withdrawal of money and requires a subscription payment every month. It also resets your rating over time. In general, there you will literally work for food for inadequate customers who want a full-fledged website for 1000 rubles. Used to be foreign Upwork, but it is now paid, and even there you can’t get through because of the Indians.
- I learned cool concepts: semantic layout, adaptive layout, flexbox, grids, pixel perfect, cross-browser compatibility. Without real knowledge of these things, they will not even talk to you like a layout designer.
- You will be surprised, but Internet Explorer is not dead yet. The 11th version of this "wonderful" browser, which the creators of Microsoft themselves buried, is still alive and is included in the concept called "cross-browser compatibility" (and sometimes it is required to ensure that the layout and site work in Chinese mobile browsers and Opera Mini, where it does not work half of modern web technologies). And IE 11 will definitely break your layout, because it is different from Chromium and Gecko (Firefox) browsers.
Once you start typing, you will soon want to install a second monitor. It's a work necessity - Soft Skills work as before (since Neanderthals). Namely: the ability to communicate with the customer, advertise yourself, look for customers where your many competitors do not think of - all this will help you find a job and receive a stable income. Well, or it will help to ask for money for food near the church with the help of "selling texts" on a cardboard (sad joke).
- All relevant and high-quality information on HTML and CSS technologies is only in English, so basic English is a must (to be honest, I have not yet met a developer who would not understand English from the word at all - some use online dictionaries at the learning stage, professionals teaching with tutors). This information is often (badly) translated and posted on the Medium blogging platform, and then all sorts of youtubers are stolen, which I don’t recommend watching (there are not very many good front-end bloggers among Russian-speaking bloggers). Oh yes, never watch Gosha Dudar's videos - this is such Timur Sidelnikov from the world of programming. Freelancers are very fond of running YouTube channels, as it is a great advertisement for their skills, but whether they teach the right things ... is a big question. For many things that they easily show in their videos, team leads in web studios will scold you.
- In the provinces, there is very little work for web developers and the niche is occupied by long-running web studios of various calibers (I saw a studio of one person and three people who can pull the design on Wordpress and work with jQuery as much as possible).
- By the way, if you learn how to "pull design" on Wordpress, ModX, Joomla and other popular CMS, you may not die of hunger, because the demand for such work is very high. The share of sites on Wordpress in the world is constantly falling, but they are still about 40%.
- The vast majority of web developers (as well as users) are sitting on Windows and do not have cool 4K monitors, so Retina and layout for Safari are hardly needed exotics. But the share of users who access the site from mobile devices can be more than 60%, so your site must work correctly and look good on smartphones and tablets.
- Time! Some believe that layout can be thoroughly studied in 2 months and even before six months spent on learning the basics of javascript, automation tools and a popular framework. In any case, it is crazy to think that now you will quickly learn and go to earn money with your knowledge. The amount of material for obtaining the status of "junior web developer" - 2000 hours of lectures and practice.
- Professional programmers love mechanical keyboards, but how loud they are at night (I have cherry mx black)! Take the keyboard cherry mx red to be a little quieter. I don’t know how much you can trust all the top keyboards on the Internet, but most often the Cooler Master Storm QuickFire Rapid is recommended as the first mechanical keyboard. True, this is not a very cool brand among keyboards and the lack of a numeric keypad is annoying (and front-end developers need to enter numbers often), but this is a rather old keyboard model and can be found in Russia at a price 4500 rubles. However, for 5000 rubles you can already pick up a normal keyboard on your favorite switches.
The front-end path is very difficult and thorny, knowledge becomes outdated and needs to be updated almost every year (with the release of a new version of the framework used). But personally, I like this occupation and it would be cool if the knowledge I received was also paid for, allowing me to change my current profession to a new one. The road will be mastered by the walking one.
June 10, 2019
A lot of good games were announced at the ongoing E3 exhibition, but the announcement caught my attention Microsoft Flight Simulator. The dead king of civil aviation flight sims is back to kick X plane And Prepar3D. I would very much like to see a triumphant return and there are hopes for this, even after the disastrous Microsoft Flight
, which was a beautiful, but completely useless game for fans of simulators. It's scary to imagine, but a full-fledged licensed simulation part of the series (MS FS X - "ten") was released in 2006 - about 13 years ago.
There are no details about the game, but the trailer shows that this is the coolest graphics engine that provides an incredible degree of detail in the simulation of the game world. However, I suspect that, by tradition, most of the world will be flat and procedurally generated, and the United States will have beautifully detailed airports and cities. I really hope that Microsoft understands that without a community of modders, their game has no future, and they open up an API for creating missions, maps and aircraft. Many people now have a business built on this and a well-developed airport scenario or an aircraft for the previous version of the simulator can cost under $100 and they are willingly bought. If Microsoft wants to make money on this, well, organize the sale of add-ons for the game through your store, take a percentage. It will be better than releasing a "dead" game in which nothing can be changed and selling users endless paid DLCs (the way of some railway simulators).
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| Screenshot from version 10 with mods |
The simulator will be released in 2020.
June 9, 2019
With the release of the penultimate update of Windows 10 and Nvidia drivers, I suffered a disgusting iron problem that is simply impossible to catch and fix - the monitor briefly turned off for 2-3 seconds when working from the displayport cable. As I later became convinced, the problem was not so much in the crooked Windows drivers from the "hot-loved" Nvidia, but the iron problem of the 2014 video card itself, the Chinese cable from Aliespress and the modern monitor from Dell for 35,000 rubles (which is pretty insulting).
Starting to google the problem, I realized that there are thousands of such sufferers all over the Internet (google for "nvidia displayport blackscreen problem")! On the Nvidia and Dell forums, people are trying to solve the problem with various shamanistic actions from reinstalling Windows, editing the registry, to disassembling the computer and replacing the power supply. I even updated the bios of my video card to the standard one, having found a bios file for the GPU in the bins of the Internet, which has not been on the manufacturer's website for a long time (maybe he is embarrassed by his products?). The problem goes away for a day or two, and then the screen starts to insidiously turn off again while playing games or when using the Chrome browser like mine. Working, constantly waiting for the monitor to turn off, is extremely uncomfortable psychologically (personally, I involuntarily swear and my eyes start to twitch).
I tried almost everything suggested on the Internet: I plugged the cable into another slot - it helps for a while, but the problem came back again and again! In addition, going into the BIOS and seeing how the screen twitches and turns off, I realized that this the problem is exclusively with the video card and the Chinese displayport cable and not the operating system. Thus, for myself, I radically solved this very unpleasant problem with turning off the monitor - ditched the displayport cable and connected a Dell monitor with 2K resolution via HDMI. Yes, the hdmi cable is also 100% Chinese and was bought for 400 rubles at the nearest store (when the displayport cable cost me more), but at least it is simpler and works without failures. I'm not a professional designer who needs a cable that supports specific color spaces, and I'm not a gamer with a 4K 144Hz monitor, but a regular computer user who needs the monitor not to suddenly turn off! And if you still need a displayport cable, then you should probably take care of buying a special expensive vesa-certified cable, but I'm afraid it won't cost 600 rubles.
So far I don’t know for sure who is to blame for the current problem: the manufacturer of the video card, the unknown manufacturer of the displayport cable (in his defense I’ll say that he worked perfectly for six months without any complaints) or me when I cleaned the computer from dust and accidentally touched something. Or maybe no one is particularly to blame, because in 2014 Nvidia supported displayport versions 1.3 and 1.4 for its video cards, without having an officially adopted specification and ended up doing it a little wrong, and when cables and monitors appeared in 2018, which require dp cables of new versions (monitors of high resolution and refresh rates of the screen), they began to rule this by flashing.
Nvidia even released a special utility that tries to patch the BIOS of video cards with this problem. But again, I don’t understand why the problem did not manifest itself in any way before, but has manifested itself recently?
Remembering all the jambs and troubles that video cards brought me Nvidia(three of them just burned out, the last two gave out a blue screen of death in games, scammers with 4 GB of memory, which are actually only 3.5), I'm thinking about switching to the camp AMD. Yes, the video cards of the "red" ones do not always shine with performance, game developers rarely optimize their games for them, some of the cards are pretty hot, but absolutely all the AMD cards I bought from me are still alive and working perfectly.
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| Xiaomi Mi Band 3 |
There are a lot of videos on YouTube comparing the Honor Band 4 and Mi Band 3, but most reviewers come to the conclusion that the Honor Band 4 is naturally better. In the pros of the Xiaomi fitness bracelet, only the price: you can take it for 1800 rubles with delivery from China. I took Honor Band 4 for 2200 rubles from a store that has a warehouse in Russia, so it was delivered to me in just a week by courier. Do not try to take Honor Band 4 from the official Russian store Huawei: they are completely insolent and tear up 4,500 rubles for this popular device. I think that 1000-2000 rubles is the amount that you can pay for a fitness bracelet and this will not hit your wallet too hard.
Made Huawei Honor Band 4 perfectly, there are no complaints about the assembly. I decided to play it safe and stuck a film on the protective glass, which was sent by the Chinese seller in the kit (two small strips cost me an additional 100 rubles to the final price). With the inclusion and updating of the device, I figured it out immediately and without any instructions. This is not so difficult if the device has only one button (and a touch screen, of course). For pairing, I used a proprietary application Huawei Health, which detected the bracelet using the included bluetooth and offered to update it, after which it uploaded a new firmware for 20 minutes (it was extremely necessary to do this, because the bracelet worked so-so on the old firmware). During the connection process, the application honestly admitted that it would send data to the PRC servers.
The bracelet is controlled by scrolling through the screens and pressing the screen. To stop or interrupt the workout, you need to press the menu button on the bracelet for 3 seconds. The bracelet can constantly measure the pulse, as well as monitor sleep, but I personally feel uncomfortable sleeping with it, and there are people who do not take it off around the clock and even in the shower, since it is waterproof. Another problem with a bracelet (and a watch, for a person who stopped wearing them) is that you constantly, out of habit, hit all sorts of things with it, doors, tables, and so on.
Naturally, the bracelet is perfectly friendly with your phone and it can send you notifications (rather strong vibration), SMS, messages from programs like Twitter, weather, and so on. In addition, you have the ability to enable unlocking the phone with a bracelet when they are nearby, and the bracelet has the "Where is my phone?" function, after which the phone starts yelling in English in a female voice "I'm here!". Another cool feature is switching music tracks on your phone by turning your wrist with a bracelet. The bracelet itself does not have the ability to track GPS coordinates (this requires devices such as Huawei Band 3 Pro, which are more expensive - prices start at 2800 rubles), but if you run with your phone, the Health app can link your coordinates to the map and save tracks. Personally, I wouldn’t run around with my phone, but for cyclists and tourists, that’s it.
Both Huawei and Xiaomi have lightweight budget versions of their fitness bracelets that you should not take. At a price they are cheaper by 1000 rubles, but unable to measure heart rate. Honor has a version of Honor Band 4 Running Edition, which can only count steps. For me personally (an overweight person), a constant measurement of the pulse is important. And for ordinary runners during training, it is important not to keep the heart rate high in order to avoid muscle pain.
Thus, the prices for fitness bracelets have now fallen to an acceptable psychological level. I hope this purchase motivates someone for daily sports.
