darkmod 2.0 heavy performance hit in training

[Fizanko]

Hello,

 

new player to darkmod (not new to the Thief serie) , after getting the torrent finished i decided to give a try, loaded the training mission to test how it would be.

 

After a longer loading time than i expected, i was having lots of fun noticing the gameplay being very close to my beloved Thief 2 in the stealth rooms , i decided then to get to the melee/archer rooms.

In the archer room i had some noticable fps drop, i don't know if it's normal though (never played doom3 so i have no idea how the engine is), while i didn't noticed such thing during the stealth fun i just had.

 

Then i moved to the melee room and ouch, when i am in this situation , viewing the melee "arena" this way :

 

the framerate is incredibly low despite there's not much i see there, while when i enter in the arena to fight, the game is back at being playable, once out of the arena, same thing if i look the room as in the screenshot, it's worrying me as it's only a training mission and supposedly smaller than a big one.

 

I read the faq and applied the settings suggested when they weren't already there, and even went as far as disabling the bump map (r_skipbump set to 1) , giving the game a nice Thief 2 - like look (no bump maps in those oldies) that i actually liked, improving a bit the framerate in the archer room.

 

But still the melee room has that horribly slow framerate when you see the arena.

 

At that point i don't know anymore if it's something wrong in the mission itself, if it's a setting that i should turn off and have no idea about (despite i turned off a lot more than suggested), or if it's simply the doom engine that does not play well with my system in specific conditions encountered in that melee room point of view.

Any idea ?

Edited October 9, 2013 by Fizanko

[Springheel]

What are your system specs?

[Fizanko]

I'm on window XP SP3 and the card is a G41 (use OpenGL 2.1)

The performance problem is only noticable in the archer range (and not noticable anymore if i lower the visuals through editing the Darkmod.cfg ) and in the melee room, from the point of view of the screenshot i posted (in which no amount of Darkmod.cfg editing seem to have any effect)

 

All the other parts of the training mission does not give me any problem (even before lowering some settings)

Edited October 9, 2013 by Fizanko

[Woulby]

Tested -, my FPS drop from 60 to 20 - door intrance of melee training,, looking at the arena.

Not a problem for me anyway..

[Springheel]

That's a little odd, since there's nothing especially complex about that room compared to all the other areas.

[Fizanko]

I notice there are several AI in that room, sitting on the chairs of both the surrounding of the arena and on what is apparently an upper floor (but for those additional ones you can only seen them once you're inside the arena)

 

It's very odd to see such a big impact on the framerate as from that point of view there's no complex object of shading anywhere there, unlike in some other zones of the training mission in which i have observed no real problem.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Fizanko

[Serpentine]

One of the big weaknesses in the engine at the moment, is that all of the animation transforms are done on the CPU, while newer approaches offload this to the GPU. There is soooome code floating around that we could look at, could also profile it a bit more mmm. But yeah, likely your CPU is taking a hit there.

[AluminumHaste]

I'm on window XP SP3 and the card is a G41 (use OpenGL 2.1)

The performance problem is only noticable in the archer range (and not noticable anymore if i lower the visuals through editing the Darkmod.cfg ) and in the melee room, from the point of view of the screenshot i posted (in which no amount of Darkmod.cfg editing seem to have any effect)

 

All the other parts of the training mission does not give me any problem (even before lowering some settings)

 

Intel G41 Express?

Yeah, that's not going to cut it I don't think. How does Doom 3 run for you?

[Fizanko]

Possible, i don't have Doom3 , so i guess i'll see better once i get into the other mission.

But so far everywhere else in the training mission have been very playable without slowdown (even the archer range once i tweaked the darkmod.cfg), it's only this specific location that have this odd problem (probably related to what Serpentine mention as there's several AI in a rather small area and all of them are animated, not static).

[Fizanko]

Played a few minutes of Saint Lucia and wow, that's impressive how smooth the framerate is there, the scenes seems visually much more busy in models than the training mission.

Making it even more puzzling of why the problem in that small melee room (and probably hinting more and more at the multiple AI animation trashing the CPU)

[Bikerdude]

The Intel G41 is considered a very low end part, I made sure the training mission kept as much as possible to draw call count of 1500 as per the D3 spec.But on that gfx card I'm afraid your going to get fps drop. And im guessing if your on XpSp3 your running a low end cpu, multiple Ai in a scene will hammer that as-well.

 

With respect, its possible D3 wouldn't run that well on your setup and we have said that TDM has higher min hardware requirements than D3.

[Fizanko]

Well, i just completed Saint Lucia and have not observed a single performance problem in the whole mission.

 

So i really doubt on that part the card could be the culprit or the TDM wouldn't run that well overall, not just in the area i posted about in the screenshot

Especially considering how relatively small that melee arena room in the training mission can be. It's probably more linked to what Serpentine mentionned.

 

Though why is the performance in the melee arena back to very playable when you're inside the arena ? all the AI are still there and on top of this, you get to fight up to 3 AI without performance dropping

Edited October 10, 2013 by Fizanko

[SeriousToni]

One of the big weaknesses in the engine at the moment, is that all of the animation transforms are done on the CPU, while ...

 

That may sound a but rude, but in my eyes one of the big weaknesses in the engine at the moment is, that it is forced to run on peoples computers that were produced 20 years ago.

 

One doesn't need a high end pc for a big amount of cash, but imho there's enough hard- and software (yes xp is old too) available for low prices on the market to play an enhanced "thief game" with enhanced graphics.

[zergrush]

That may sound a but rude, but in my eyes one of the big weaknesses in the engine at the moment is, that it is forced to run on peoples computers that were produced 20 years ago.

 

One doesn't need a high end pc for a big amount of cash, but imho there's enough hard- and software (yes xp is old too) available for low prices on the market to play an enhanced "thief game" with enhanced graphics.

 

No offense, but I feel this mentality is just wrong. Regardless of what you may think, not everyone can afford an up-to-date machine, no matter how cheap they may be nowadays. When it comes to freeware and FLOSS games, I believe the lower the specs to run it, the better. If it's a free game, it should be available to the greatest amount of people possible, and a lot of that involves being able to run in low-end machines.

 

With that said, I also used to get horrible framerates on my old machine in this particular bit of the training mission. I just never complained because I'm aware the engine still needs some serious upgrades in order to properly support multithreading and such.

 

 

Well, i just completed Saint Lucia and have not observed a single performance problem in the whole mission.

 

So i really doubt on that part the card could be the culprit or the TDM wouldn't run that well overall, not just in the area i posted about in the screenshot

Especially considering how relatively small that melee arena room in the training mission can be. It's probably more linked to what Serpentine mentionned.

 

Though why is the performance in the melee arena back to very playable when you're inside the arena ? all the AI are still there and on top of this, you get to fight up to 3 AI without performance dropping

 

Usually this has a lot to do with the way the maps are built. For instance, Bikerdude has made some huge maps with incredible performance (St. Alban's Cathedral comes to mind). St Lucia is also another example of well-optimized mapping. Don't expect all fan-missions to follow this premise, though.

Edited October 10, 2013 by zergrush

[SeriousToni]

I didn't say up-to-date machine - look at the hardware prices of the last year, they throw the stuff out everytime a new generation comes out. Maybe one can afford even a second-hand computer.

I mean, look at how old the doom engine is and still there a players who can't run the game properly because their computers are even older, what the..?

[New Horizon]

No offense, but I feel this mentality is just wrong. Regardless of what you may think, not everyone can afford an up-to-date machine, no matter how cheap they may be nowadays. When it comes to freeware and FLOSS games, I believe the lower the specs to run it, the better. If it's a free game, it should be available to the greatest amount of people possible, and a lot of that involves being able to run in low-end machines.

 

I know I certainly can't afford anything for the foreseable future. After food, housing and other normal expenses come out at the end of a two week pay period, I'm left with 10 dollars...and I have to put that away for a rainy day. YUp, things are tight right now. Don't like it, but the folks I was doing graphic design for the last 8 years started acting strange a year and a half ago. They got their heads so wrapped up in being 'business people' that they started treating me like nothing more than a tool to make money. Then they hired someone else and gave all the work to them. Easy come, easy go...but it sure hurts the wallet.

[zergrush]

I didn't say up-to-date machine - look at the hardware prices of the last year, they throw the stuff out everytime a new generation comes out. Maybe one can afford even a second-hand computer.

I mean, look at how old the doom engine is and still there a players who can't run the game properly because their computers are even older, what the..?

 

Hardware prices don't exactly correspond to full availability in all countries, especially if you go 3rd world. Other times there's shipping costs to match poor availability, which greatly raises the prices. Then there's public institutions like schools youth centers, etc, whose computers are replaced in a 15 year basis (my uni's computers are still single core machines running winxp, for instance). Finally there are also several reasons to make the engine as light as possible such as portability, improved mod support and, of course, the possibility of having people making larger and larger maps.

[Bikerdude]

Especially considering how relatively small that melee arena room in the training mission can be. It's probably more linked to what Serpentine mentionned.

Possible, i don't have Doom3 , so i guess i'll see better once i get into the other mission.

You havent listed your full system specs, driver version or screen resolution.

 

Also after a quick look online the Intel G41 (X4500) is the same speed as an old Radeon 9800pro. I'm surprised TDM is running on that card at all, back in the day the 9800 was only just capable of running vanilla D3 @1280*1024 @30fps. Is this PC your playing a Laptop or a desktop..?

 

Also it looks like Intel are upto thier old tricks in of offloading GPU processing to the CPU and if its doing the same thing in TDM then your in-game experience will suffer.

[HMart]

Sorry but that card is garbage (any intel card is garbage imo ) so don't expect miracles, id tech 4 engine (the doom 3 engine) is a full dynamic shadows and light engine so it will push your GPU to the limit, and from the pic you showed i think i see 6 or more dynamic lights visible at the same time (not good imo) and that will certainly cause major problems on a old (and bad) card like that one. Be prepared like others said to missions that are not well optimized, others that are, but not to run well on very slow GPU's, and some will be so well optimized that if you disable some of the extra effects they will run well, this is because the missions are made by different people with different skill levels and knowledge about the engine.

 

But you should really think about upgrading your machine you will thank us later i'm sure.

[Springheel]

The good news is you could enjoy st. Lucia, which means any small to medium mission should be playable.

[Fizanko]

Yes, i had a lot of fun with Saint Lucia, even playfully picked on the hammerites by throwing them items and have some laugh watching them run everywhere looking for me while hiding around, it really captured very well my beloved Thief 2 gameplay (out of the lockpicking of course), it's a very playable mission with solid framerate even on the "unworthy" system some guys tell me i have on this thread, but yeah budget and choices related are a pain but as long as things run good enough it's good enough for me considering my priorities in life.

 

Even the whole training map has been enjoyable with all the tricks you can get from it (i just regret there are patrols only in the shadow and stealth rooms), and as said it's really only the location and angle of view shown that the screenshot that get a serious framerate hit, all the other parts of the maps were really good.

 

Anyways, great job on this game ! It even managed to distract me from playing fan missions on Thief 2

Edited October 10, 2013 by Fizanko

[SeriousToni]

it really captured very well my beloved Thief 2 gameplay (out of the lockpicking of course)

 

You can change the lockpicking behaviour in the settings menu. There's also a variant which picks automaticly like in Thief.