When I play the game without it, its perfectly fine. Anyone have any idea why this might be? I like the idea of playing with steam overlay, and my friend does not happen to have the same problem, so I'm just wondering why it does this.
Might depend on your video card and if it supports opengl. Mind you opengl support is experimental so your milage may vary. I recommend using "ShiftWindow" which allows you to run windowed games in apparently fullscreen mode. This mostly eliminates the need of the Steam overlay.
I can use Steam overlay normally just fine. Is it just opengl, and does steam overlay normally use it anyway?
The devs have said that the normal way the Steam overlay works is not compatible with the 'ancient' 2d technologies they use in the game. Most likely the -opengl flag forces the 2d engine to render in opengl which allows the overlay to work. How 'well' it works will highly depend on how well opengl extensions are supported by your vid card. My recommendation for "ShiftWindow" is a way to get around the speed issues with the current opengl implementation, but still have a 'windowed' ability. Hopefully the opengl stuff will get better over time, but this program is a good compromise if the current opengl flag is causing major speed issues.
well I sure hope this wont add another requirement to play the game.. if they cant use the normal format for overlay, it may need to be left the way it is, in that regard.
My video card happens to be Geforce FX 5200, and I have the most up to date driver on their website for it.
I have not tried -opengl or -directx modes, however i can tell you that the FX5200 is a VERY old and slow videocard which is nearly incapable of 3d rendering by todays standards. I would guess that enabling opengl or directx modes is forcing the game into a 3d environment, and with a underpowered graphics card, you would experience significantly more stuttering and frameloss. Make sure AA and AF are disabled too, just incase.
