Disappointingly slow!

Dragonlady · Post by **Dragonlady** » March 17th, 2008, 2:01 pm

BasiliskWrangler wrote:
Thoht wrote:'d like to mention that I bought my MacBook Pro in August 2007, it's not even six months old yet. If I turn off 32-bit colour and disable high detail graphics (resulting in a 640x480 or something viewport...) the FPS goes up a bit, but in that state I can't see a thing at nighttime, and it looks, well, awful...
Thoht- it sounds like you may have some other issue there. It should run perfectly fine on your system. We've run it on a 3-year old iMac at full speed.

Some people may confuse "walking speed" with "game speed". Open your Options dialog and check the performance rating. That number you see is the time (in milliseconds) needed to draw the previous frame. It should be below 10 for best performance. Once that gets around 16-17, the game is running slower than the 60-frames-per-second that we intended and will really appear sluggish.

Humm, I think I agree. I have an old G4 and the game in towns and lighted dungeons is slow walking but the rest of it seems fast enough, even loading, saving etc. I also have a PowerBook laptop and the game is fast in everything..at least to my ageing eyes.

But then, I am not computer wise even though I have been using one or another kinds for years. Shrug.

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 17th, 2008, 5:39 pm

BasiliskWrangler wrote:
Thoht wrote:'d like to mention that I bought my MacBook Pro in August 2007, it's not even six months old yet. If I turn off 32-bit colour and disable high detail graphics (resulting in a 640x480 or something viewport...) the FPS goes up a bit, but in that state I can't see a thing at nighttime, and it looks, well, awful...
Thoht- it sounds like you may have some other issue there. It should run perfectly fine on your system. We've run it on a 3-year old iMac at full speed.

Some people may confuse "walking speed" with "game speed". Open your Options dialog and check the performance rating. That number you see is the time (in milliseconds) needed to draw the previous frame. It should be below 10 for best performance. Once that gets around 16-17, the game is running slower than the 60-frames-per-second that we intended and will really appear sluggish.

I can tell from the difference being outdoors and being in the first dungeon northwest of the inn in the town ruins. Below 10? I turn everything to the lowest available settings, and it might just occassionally display 20!

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » March 17th, 2008, 6:01 pm

Thoht: Can you post your system specs? Is your OS up to date? Are you running something intensive in the background?

My MacBook Pro is 1.5 years old and it runs in the 1-2 performance range- yours should be very similar.

Krafen · Post by **Krafen** » March 17th, 2008, 6:26 pm

Not sure if this information is useful, but I also have a MacBook Pro that I purchased in August 2007. It is 2.4 GHz with 2 GB. With all graphic settings on maximum, I get a performance of 11. I have never noticed any slowdown.

My guess would be that either your RAM is busy doing something else or your laptop is overheating.

I often run other programs in the background without a problem, but if you haven't already, I'd suggest trying shutting down everything else before running Eschalon. On a related note, how much free hard drive space do you have? You might be running into virtual memory problems if it is tight.

I haven't run into heat problems with mine, but as I understand it, MacBooks will automatically scale down their graphic card use if they start to overheat.

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 17th, 2008, 6:30 pm

OS X 10.4.11

MacBook Pro
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Geforce 8600M GT

I shut down everything I could that was running in the background. No success.

Time for Apple's Hardware Test I suppose... "I have a bad feeling about this..."

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 17th, 2008, 7:19 pm

Nothing. No errors found.

I've ran the cron scripts, rebooted, cleaned out logs, rebooted, cleaned out cache, rebooted, even cleaned out browser history. I disconnected the Wacom, the external screen, the USB keyboard, the Logitech mouse, heck, even the ethernet cable - nothing. Ran the system monitor app to check what processes were up and running, shut down every single one that wasn't vital to the system.

No matter if I run the game in full screen or windowed mode, the only things that helps is if I turn graphic details to low and 16-bit colour depth. It'll get me down to 15ish at best in the first dungeon. On the other end, in what would be normal settings for my machine, I land at 25-30. Trivia: enabling the tactical grid atop of that gives me a rating of no less than 44.

What the eff? :/

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 17th, 2008, 7:53 pm

Krafen wrote:Not sure if this information is useful, but I also have a MacBook Pro that I purchased in August 2007. It is 2.4 GHz with 2 GB. With all graphic settings on maximum, I get a performance of 11. I have never noticed any slowdown.

My guess would be that either your RAM is busy doing something else or your laptop is overheating.

I often run other programs in the background without a problem, but if you haven't already, I'd suggest trying shutting down everything else before running Eschalon. On a related note, how much free hard drive space do you have? You might be running into virtual memory problems if it is tight.

I haven't run into heat problems with mine, but as I understand it, MacBooks will automatically scale down their graphic card use if they start to overheat.

Got about 60% free HD space. iStat shows that neither of the fans are doing more than 2000 RPM, temperatures are as follows (with the game running):

Code: Select all

CPU A: 58-63Â°
GPU Diode: 65-68Â°
GPU Heatsink: 58-61Â°
Heatsink A: 58-61Â°
Heatsink B: 48Â°
Memory Control...: 50Â°
Airport Card: 41Â°
HD: 39Â°

Memory (approx.):

Code: Select all

Wired: 156 MB
Active: 114 MB
Inactive: 520 MB
Free: 1.22 GB

The system monitor app displays the following:

Quick translation...

TrÃ¥dar = Threads
Portar = Ports
Processortid = Processortime
Omgivningsbyten = Enviromental... changes?
Fel = Errors
SidinlÃ¤sningar = Page-reads...?
Mach-meddelanden in/ut = Mach messages in/out
Mach/Unix-systemanrop = Mach/Unix system calls

Verklig minnesstorlek = Real memory size
Virtuell = Virtual
Delad = Shared
Privat = Private

Anything in specific you don't understand, ask away. It's pretty much a straightforward language, and not too different from English when it comes to computer talk.

Did a sample analysis too if you're interested, trying to find a way to upload it. The pastebins doesn't seem to like it - takes forever to upload.

That was all I could come to think of...

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » March 18th, 2008, 4:44 pm

I don't see anything odd there, Thoht. Your computer should run the game just fine.

How do other games run? Specifically, try this demo: http://www.runesofavalon.com/

It is made using the same development language that Eschalon uses.

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 18th, 2008, 5:27 pm

I downloaded and tried that demo, runs flawlessly as far as I can see... I've mostly been playing Battle for Wesnoth, Penguins Arena, Nexuiz, Warcraft III together with The Frozen Throne and never really experienced any trouble in any of these games.

I don't understand what could possibly have gone wrong here? I ran the system updater, everything's green.

What do I do? How come it works for Krafen but not for me? Any logs I could send you? Can I run some analysis application from inside OS X to test the graphic card/driver/OpenGL support?

Is the demo up to date by the way?

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 18th, 2008, 5:55 pm

Krafen wrote:Not sure if this information is useful, but I also have a MacBook Pro that I purchased in August 2007. It is 2.4 GHz with 2 GB. With all graphic settings on maximum, I get a performance of 11. I have never noticed any slowdown.

Are you using Tiger or Leopard? Which version? Worth a shot, no idea if there could be issues regarding that matter.

Krafen · Post by **Krafen** » March 18th, 2008, 7:56 pm

Thoht wrote:
Krafen wrote:Not sure if this information is useful, but I also have a MacBook Pro that I purchased in August 2007. It is 2.4 GHz with 2 GB. With all graphic settings on maximum, I get a performance of 11. I have never noticed any slowdown.
Are you using Tiger or Leopard? Which version? Worth a shot, no idea if there could be issues regarding that matter.

I am using 10.4.11

Sorry, I should have mentioned that initially.

Thoht · Post by **Thoht** » March 18th, 2008, 8:14 pm

Krafen wrote:I am using 10.4.11

Same as me then, how very peculiar. :S

I just reinstalled Warcraft III with the Frozen Throne moments ago and applied the latest patch, it runs at 60ish FPS with the default settings except for that I changed the resolution to 1680x1050 because of my external 22" LCD. It's the most "demanding" game I've got. Hm.

elstyr · Post by **elstyr** » March 31st, 2008, 8:07 pm

FYI: I'm playing 'Book I' on a MacBook 2GHz, 2GB RAM, 10.5.2, OGL fullscreen. I've experienced two significant slowdowns yet, both in the "Central Tangletree Forest". One at the upper right area of the map (if you go straight westwards from the West Grimmhold teleporter) and the other one in the lower left area of the same map (the bow through the wood). I assume these slowdowns happen because of the load of tree-sprites around there, because I get no slowdowns anywhere else in Book I (walking in all cities I've visited yet was always smooth, also in all other forests/dungeons). The slowdown is reproducible - even if I walk through the whole map again and again, it slows down at these two areas, so it seems not to be related to data reload(?).

Cheers,
Elstyr

Dafu · Post by **Dafu** » April 17th, 2008, 10:24 am

I tried out the demo on a MacMini G4 1.2ghz. It ran very smoothly, until I got to the first (populated) town. The performance dropped quite a bit at that point.

the game is running slower than the 60-frames-per-second that we intended and will really appear sluggish.

I find this note interesting. Does this mean that your animation speed is tied directly to frame rate, rather than time? If the game is running at 30 fps the animation should still appear very smooth, almost as smooth as at 60.

Overall I must say this is an excellent game. I am an indie game developer as well, and I can really appreciate the amount of work and polish that went into this game. Outstanding.

I also applaud your use of BlitzMax. While it appears to have some performance issues I think you made the right choice picking a high level development platform. To an indie developer finishing a game, and polishing it is an extremely difficult task, that is made much more difficult if the game is coded from ground up with a custom engine.

You've done a fantastic job, congratulations.

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » April 17th, 2008, 5:42 pm

Thanks Dafu. We have Book II running on our in-house 1.2ghz MacMini G4 and even though it is at 1024x768, I see noticeable an improvement in frame rate over its predecessor. It's also using a lot less RAM.

Yes, BlitzMax is a really great development package.