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Join Date 05/2006
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Question: Performance Optmization?

March 31, 2012 6:38:25 AM from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Hi again. This is a question for the devs.

I noticed the game's slow performance isn't limited to my computers (desktop & laptop), but also to many other testers. It would seem that the framerate drops significantly when large numbers of units are present on screen, which is understandable, however...

I've also noticed the GPU usage for the game when under stress (many armies and towns), doesn't move beyond 40% (On an ATI 5830).

(System specs: 3.0ghz Phenom IIX4, 6GB DDR2 Ram, ATI HD 5830)

I've noticed similar problems on Skyrim and Saints Rows the Third, when the games try to render graphics on the CPU, and more specifically, on only 2 cores.

 

Question is, are you guys planning to optimize the game engine later on prior to release, or is this the best or close to the best we are going to get out of it?

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joasoze
Join Date 02/2006
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Reply #1 March 31, 2012 7:34:59 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

I have pretty good performance on my Asus G73JW (its a laptop from 2010 with Win 7 64 bit). Dont notice any difference with more or less units on screen. Late game the end turn will take a little longer (a few seconds, not more).

You can be certain that they are optimizing performance along the way. Frogboy has said so many times. His multithreading AI is one of the things that helps a lot.

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Reply #2 March 31, 2012 10:29:19 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting joasoze,
reply 1
I have pretty good performance on my Asus G73JW (its a laptop from 2010 with Win 7 64 bit). Dont notice any difference with more or less units on screen. Late game the end turn will take a little longer (a few seconds, not more).

You can be certain that they are optimizing performance along the way. Frogboy has said so many times. His multithreading AI is one of the things that helps a lot.

 

And why wouldn't you be,with a core i7 and all.

I don't have such a luxury, and i'm sure neither do most customers.

 

AI multithreading certainly helps with turn times, but I'm more discussing frame rates, which is the rendering department, and is imo, requires more pre-planning than AI (harder to modify the engine than the AI scripts.

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seanw3
Join Date 12/2007
+141
Reply #3 March 31, 2012 3:12:01 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Generally Stardock Games are constantly being optimized through the development process and after release. It will get better and it will get worse. I find that there is nothing wrong with it in vanilla for me. But with 9 units per creature army, things get get choppy on turn 1.

 

I do this:

Play on lowest feasible resolution. (Just set it on your desktop and the game will use that res.)

Disable Outlines.

Disable Effects. (Currently bugged, they can really crash a game.)

Disable Antialiasing.

 

There might be a few other things to disable, but those are the major ones I can remember. Effects and screen resolution seem to have the biggest effect on my performance.

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Reply #4 March 31, 2012 10:41:01 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting seanw3,
reply 3
Generally Stardock Games are constantly being optimized through the development process and after release. It will get better and it will get worse. I find that there is nothing wrong with it in vanilla for me. But with 9 units per creature army, things get get choppy on turn 1.

 

I do this:

Play on lowest feasible resolution. (Just set it on your desktop and the game will use that res.)

Disable Outlines.

Disable Effects. (Currently bugged, they can really crash a game.)

Disable Antialiasing.

 

There might be a few other things to disable, but those are the major ones I can remember. Effects and screen resolution seem to have the biggest effect on my performance.

 

Isn't the fact that you need to do this for a smooth gameplay reasonable cause for further optimization? Especially when the video card is barely taxed, therefore plenty of room for improvement.

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seanw3
Join Date 12/2007
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Reply #5 March 31, 2012 10:54:09 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Right, but they are a small dev team. I would expect to see very small optimizing for the next 6 months. So, go ahead and test on max settings. But tone it down to minimum levels when you want to have fun and play the game.

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Reply #6 April 1, 2012 5:08:57 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting seanw3,
reply 5
Right, but they are a small dev team. I would expect to see very small optimizing for the next 6 months. So, go ahead and test on max settings. But tone it down to minimum levels when you want to have fun and play the game.

 

If this is so...

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StevenAus22
Join Date 06/2010
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Reply #7 April 1, 2012 6:19:40 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Some settings are on max in the beta.  For the full release there will be more options for lower systems based on what Frogboy has said.

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