Performance

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:16 pm

what I have to do to increase FPS? I`ve got allways about 2 FPS, no matter what I do in config file

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:49 pm

Remove anti-alias and caching I think, make sure you are't running anything else intensive in the background, and remove steplighting i think

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:02 pm

I think that the "make sure you aren't running anything else intensive in the background" is the key here!

I tested V0.35 on a 400 MHz machine and even with anti-aliasing turned on it still ran at about 30-fps. To get 2-fps there must be something else happening on your machine - I'd recommend that you have a look at Windows Task Manager and see what processes are taking up the CPU time...

BTW, turning caching off will slow it down not speed it up!

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:13 pm

*oops* so it will
It's anti-aliasing without cachingthat was bad...or somehting...

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:20 pm

when i set lo res NO, there appears nice wall decoration glitches on the walls. When iut`s set to YES, it`s ok (there are minimal micro-glitches)
I turned off all (winamps etc) and there`s still 6-7 fps

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:25 pm

what i`ve got:
SCREEN_MODE 640x480x24
SCREENSHOTS NORMAL
FULLSCREEN NO
CACHE YES
ANTI_ALIAS NO
LOW_RESOLUTION YES
TRANSPARENCY NO
STEPLIGHTING NO
SLOW_WAKING NO
FIREBALL_LIGHT YES
FLIGHT_ARC YES
SCALE_PORTRAITS YES
POINTER AMIGA
BOOTTEXT YES
FRAMERATE YES

6-7 fps. The game sometimes turns off !!!

Post by **PaulH** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:25 pm

Not good Adamo. I am managing 60fps at 1024x768, even with AOL running!

Post by **linflas** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:28 pm

@adamo : LOW RESOLUTION = NO , SCALE PORTRAITS = NO, should be a way to gain some fps, these are additional features.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:33 pm

step lighting = yes might buy you some frames since you aren't pdrawing a transparancy over the top, right?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:32 pm

With caching turned on, there should be no noticable difference in performance between anti-aliasing / low resolution / lighting / portraits or any other parameter.

What the caching does, is draw the scaled image once and then store it in memory for future use (i.e. there will be a single slow frame when it draws the item for the first time, and then all subsequent ones are fast). Obviously, this uses lots of memory though!

I still think that fidling with the RTC parameters is a red herring. There's something more fundemental going on in the background (which is nothing to do with RTC). Can you let us know:

- What CPU your box has
- When running RTC in a window (FULLSCREEN NO), what does the Windows Task Manager (on the "process" tab) say is the percentage CPU is being used by "RTC.exe"
- What other processes does the task manager say are running?
- If you sort the task manager by CPU usage, what are the top 10 tasks, and with what percentages?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:36 pm

PaulH wrote:Not good Adamo. I am managing 60fps at 1024x768, even with AOL running!

That's what I'd expect to get!

FYI - you won't ever get over 60fps. Because monitors refresh at 60Hz, there's no point in attempting to update the view any faster than this (because it wouldn't get displayed by the monitor), so RTC doesn't bother trying and releases the CPU for other Windows applications that might be running at the same time to use...

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:28 pm

Not strictly true. Many monitors support much higher refresh rates. Indeed, running at 60Hz will give you headaches on a CRT as it's too low. I run at 85Hz on an old CRT and it's rock steady.

That's what V-Sync options are for though, to ensure that the game doesn't redraw frames faster than the monitor can display them (which generates 'shearing').

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:34 pm

Indeed, that's what RTC uses - I was just trying to explain it using simpler words!

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:35 pm

strange. normally there`s about 6fps, but when I run Windows task menager, it is increasing to about 15 fps with RTC CPU usage 85-95%

Post by **PaulH** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:02 am

George Gilbert wrote:Indeed, that's what RTC uses - I was just trying to explain it using simpler words!

Thanks George!

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:25 pm

[Just a quick note to tidy up this thread]

Adamo, as you mentioned on another thread (http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... c&start=30, you're running XP on a 300 MHz machine.

XP just isn't designed to run on such a low spec machine and is hogging all the CPU which explains the low frame rate you're getting (and why all other software you're using runs at a crawl).

The fix is therefore to either uninstall XP and install an OS more suited to your hardware (probably Win98) or get a better machine! For your interest, I've tested RTC on a 200 MHz machine running Win98 and it runs fine on that.

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 4:48 pm

I changed OS from WinXp to Win98 (PII 300 Mhz 96 Mb).
When FULLSCREEN=NO, there`s about 4-5 FPS, but when it`s ON, there`s about 25-35 FPS. So I think the program runs fine. It`s something with my machine I guess!
The troble is, that I NEED to run it in a window (since my monitor burned, it doesn`t work well on lower resolutoions - there are black gaps on a screen).

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 4:54 pm

Do you have active desktop enabled on windows 98? Disable it - remove any background picture you have. It's not much, but it still uses up some resouces.

Also, kill any applications happening on start up unless you really need them (from the start up folder, or go to the run menu and type 'msconfig' )

mikko · Post by **mikko** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:57 pm

It just might be that in full screen mode Direct X routines are accelerated but when in windowed mode it's all software..

Post by **Sophia** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:04 pm

Make sure RTC is running at the same color depth as your desktop-- if they're not the same, then it is probably doing a lot of on-the-fly remapping, and that eats up a lot of CPU cycles.

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:37 pm

yeah now I can play RTC

now runs fast at my new machine (acer, 2Ghz, 512Mb). I get about 50-60 fps even in windowed mode

:D:D:D:D

PadTheMad · Post by **PadTheMad** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:31 pm

WOW! New machine adamo? Nicely done!

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:35 pm

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Post by **Lunever** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:37 pm

Probably it's more like coming from the world before yesterday to the world of yesterday

Post by **linflas** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:06 pm

welcome to the 20th century then...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:38 pm

Welcome to the world of the day after tomorrow the night before last back in the future of the land before time.