What are some ways to make this game less laggy on my laptop?

[Some Dude]

I have a pretty low end laptop. I mostly play old games from the 90's and early 2000's on it, but when I found out about Halo Custom Edition and played it I was hooked. Then when I finished the Halo 1 campaign I decided to install Halo 2. But it was super laggy when I got into the game, and I think I already have a few ideas of why it could be getting a lot of lag.

1. It could be the visual effects, my pc can't handle too much bloom. So maybe I need to find something that can get rid of fancy visual effects.
2. It could be the models, they have so much detail in them that it makes the game slow. Perhaps I could get something which replaces the models to slightly downgraded ones.
or
3. My pc just hates me and I should just stick to the old stuff until I can get a better computer.

I'm out of ideas, I've already tried going to the in-game settings but it' mostly about the screen resolution, or being in fullscreen or in windowed mode, though I'm unsure if their is more options. All I could find in the video settings were those things.

 

[SR388]

sorry I can't help but I suffer from these problems to lol, I feel for you dude

 

[Some Dude]

Sorry if it takes forever for me to reply back, school and stuff like that. But yeah, right now I'm having a sibling (with a very good dell desktop computer that he uses for gaming) get Halo 2 on their computer just to see if it's laggy because of visual effects, or if it's just because the game is pretty old (I don't think it'll be because it's old though since most of the games I got on my computer range from new-ish but not really, old, and super ancient times).

 

[SR388]

Lol I have a Dell laptop too, you got discord dude?

 

[Some Dude]

It's my sibling that has a full on dell desktop computer, not a laptop. What I got is a small hp laptop (it's blue and covered in Vangoa stickers, even though I don't listen to Vangoa music at all).
I hardly use discord due to slow internet, the only time I go to use it (and this is still ounce in a great while) is when I'm looking at modding communities for Quake and Half-Life.
If you're that interested I could give you the link to my channel, but I'm not sure if promoting YouTube channels is allowed at these forums or not.

 

[Some Dude]

Not to sound rude or anything like that, but I'd like to get back to the topic so I (with the help of the community of course) can fix this thing so I could enjoy that nostalgic Halo 2 goodness.

 

[Himanshu01]

1.What resolution you are playing?
2.Level of Detail and other settings

There isnt much of fancy stuffs in the game
As you have mentioned your computer is old.Try these settings

A.
Right Click on your Halo 2 shotcut, go to properties and Click on the option: "Run in 640×480" (i dont remember exact)

B.
You can try going to Cartographer Settings(Home)->Other Settings->Static LOD
And choose a lower option.(By default its L6)

 

[Some Dude]

Thanks Himanshu01, your comment has been the most helpful, I switched it to L1 and it's as smooth as I can get it, so now it's playable!!! I did try the "Run in 640×480" thing you suggested, but it decided to crash on me. Right now I'm typing this with my screen stuck in 640x480 lol (no worries all I got to do is restart my laptop and it's fixed). And btw, I didn't say my computer is old, I just said that the games I play on it is old. The laptop on the other hand is about 3-5 years old in my possession. So it's not like it's old as the apple 2, just old enough to have a few problems.

 

[Cassettes]

This game was made in what 04? How old is your laptop that its lagging