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FPSC Classic Product Chat / CPU and Graphics Card does make a difference

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Flatlander
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 20:49
I have done several tests in this regard. A lot of you are not going to be happy to hear this.

If you are using a computer that is running FPSC very satisfactorily, then any computer that has less performance may not run as expected or as you have tested it on your development system.

Whatever your system happens to be you should test your games on lesser systems to see how they will work. Only in this way will you be able to offer information to possible users as to the minimum requirements.

Unfortunately this is the nature of FPSC.

I am experiencing excellent performance with my desktop development machine; and, it isn't even the top of the line. Bond1 recommended a better graphics card but I figured he needs a better one for making his models. He did say that the one I did get would be adequate, though, and it certainly is for me.

Here are my specs and system ratings:

==============================================================

processor - calculations per second 7.4
memory (RAM) - memory operations per second 7.4
Graphics - Desktop performance for Windows Aero 6.9
Gaming Graphics - 3D business and gaming graphics performance 6.9

7.9 is highest 1.0 is lowest possible

----------------------------------------------------------

Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Installed memory (RAM) = 8.00 GB
System Type: 64-bit OS

----------------------------------------------------------

GEForce GTS 240
Memory interface: 256-bit
Total avalable graphics: 4095 MB
Dedicated video Memory: 1024 GDDR3
Shared System Memory: 3071 MB

-----------------------------------------------------------

Core Clock: 675 MHz
Shader Clock: 1620 MHz
Mmeory clock: 1100 MHz (2200 Mhz data rate)

------------------------------------------------------------

Although my system has a DirectX runtime version of 11.0 my video card only supports up to DirectX 10. That of course is a moot point since FPSC only runs DirectX 9.x

Bugsy
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 21:35
Quote: "If you are using a computer that is running FPSC very satisfactorily, then any computer that has less performance may not run as expected or as you have tested it on your development system."


Just saying this again because A WHOLE LOT OF DEVELOPERS, EVEN THE MORE POPULAR ONES, NEED TO HEAR IT.

I MEAN REALLY, LISTEN, AND LISTEN GOOD.

there we go. nice comp flatlander!

bruce3371
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 22:01
I'm doing things the other way round! I'm developing my game on an old dinosaur, so I already know the minimum specs required!

But seriously, very good points you've made Flatlander

Flatlander
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 23:02
Thanks guys.

Bruce3371, I was going to mention doing that as it would be one way of making sure of minimum specs.

MrValentine
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 23:40
Two things you can try if you only have one pc... if you have four gigabyte RAM then if theres two sticks... take one out and the like if you have more...

Underclock your cpu to get performance differenciation... phew what a word...

Or ask peeps on here to download and bench and feedback ^^

use something like DROPBOX to distribute
Some do not know how dropbox works and overlook the public url links... I suggest you look into it or ask here ^^

elbow
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 15:29 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 15:35
Hi all

I agree - I am working on an educational game and although my program is only in English, my research showed that most of my potential customers reside in Malaysia.

The good news:Malaysia has the third largest population in the world.
The bad news: What Flatlander said applies directly to my target market.

I have three computers that I use during development - 2 XP PCs with different graphic cards and one Windows 7 64 bit laptop.

Regards

Eugene
maho76
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 15:31 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 15:34
take your friends and family machines and test on all computers you can find. there is a big difference between kingston-RAM and noname, graphic cards work better or less depends on the mainboard, AMD is another thing than Intel ... pc-hardware-combinations are too manifold. dont trust only 1 hardware-combination, you should test on a minimum of 10, as much different as they can be.
my old singlecore-3,6ghz-intel runs some maps way better than my 6x2,8ghz amd, even with smaller gpu and less ram.

just my 2 cents.

s4real
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 18:17
Uhmmm has it got to the point we now have to tell people that the higher the specs the better fpsc will run lol.

best s4real


Pack ya games with vishnu packer its free. Vishnu game launcher is now released.
MrValentine
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 18:24 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 18:25
@s4real sadly yes you STILL have to do that lol

EDIT

many people still pressume they can drive a fiat 500 just as well as a ferrari... no idea where their logic comes from lol

maho76
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 18:52
Quote: "Uhmmm has it got to the point we now have to tell people that the higher the specs the better fpsc will run lol."


its more the question for wich specs you are asking.

8cores, 16 gb ram, 4gb graphics.... in a 32bit-machine??? ... for a 32bit prog that uses only 1 core and 2gb of ram max???? yes, baby, seen it often enough.^^

rolfy
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 18:52 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 19:01
Since the majority of the gaming market is gamers themselves I would think they dont expect any game to run on a machine with low specs.

My own FPSC dev comp has only
1GB ram
AMD x86 1603Mh
NVidea GeForce 6100

If your specs are lower than this then you really need to rethink your gaming experience.

Very few 3D games today will run on this thing but it suits me to use it for dev as I know if it runs on this it will run on most anything and I know for fact I will have room for any extra stuff, but I dont expect any games I were to buy off the shelf would have a chance on it.
If the market is gamers then most would have a decent comp to run them, if the market is education then what do you need with all the eye candy such as full screen shaders which will bring your game to a standstill on a low end pc?

Awesome! Its one of those threads.
MrValentine
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 19:05
for one... you have to remember newbies are joining the gaming world daily... so you have to cater for them too so informing the obvious is mandatory regardless of your userbase

maho76 - Although your app may very well be single core... think of the overhead that single core will have if there was not another core to handle the AI and other aspects of the OS?

Multicore is about overhead management and keeping things steady in short...

TheK
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 19:06 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 19:09
Hello there, want to leave my two cents here.

MrValentine, you probably can imagine why you still have to tell people that FPSC runs better with a better PC.

Since about two thirds of the forum's "population" consists of people who want to make a kickass FPS-game with FPS Creator on computers that have the performance of a five year old laptop, you can't insist that they neither know about new hardware at all, nor have the money to buy it.
Most of the people simply don't have a thousand dollars for a new computer, especially a 13 year-old whose parents don't want to spend a fortune on PC's that (in their imagination) only make their kids get bad marks in school.

I don't want to protect anybody here. It's just my point of view.

And by the way, I have a system rating of 7.6.

Processor - calculations per second 7.6
Memory (RAM) - memory operations per second 7.6
Graphics - Desktop performance for Windows Aero 7.8
Gaming Graphics - 3D business and gaming graphics performance 7.8

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3,4 GHz
RAM: 2x Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 (2x4GB, CL8-8-8-24)
GPU: ASUS ENGTX470 (1280MB GDDR5 VRAM)
64-bit Windows 7

Greetings,
Jan

Skype name: thek491
Flatlander
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 20:17
My purpose of showing my specs was to let people know what specs will run FPSC very well. Yup, TheK beats me hands down. However, one does not have to have my specs or TheK's specs. I'm glad rolfy has given his specs so that others realize they don't have to spend a lot of money for a dev machine. However, problems with the engine can also be attributed with a machine that is not up to spec and not necessarily a bug. I believe the cost of what I own has already come down and I didn't think it was outrageous to begin with.

BTW, Lee's dev machine is top of the line.

MrValentine
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 20:21
Thek... I was not on about Developers lol we should know what is needed already... I was on about the end users...

But yeah... I often attribute and find that slower pc's cause more issues than the opposite end of the board...

rolfy
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 21:24
Quote: "Since about two thirds of the forum's "population" consists of people who want to make a kickass FPS-game with FPS Creator on computers that have the performance of a five year old laptop"

I dont have any idea how many users of FPSC use those kind of specs, nor am I sure of the age group, but I suspect those figures would be other way around if these forums are anything to go by.

Awesome! Its one of those threads.
bruce3371
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Posted: 19th Mar 2012 21:47 Edited at: 19th Mar 2012 21:50
Quote: "My own FPSC dev comp has only
1GB ram
AMD x86 1603Mh
NVidea GeForce 6100"


That's pretty much the same specs as my FPSC dev comp!

Quote: "However, problems with the engine can also be attributed with a machine that is not up to spec and not necessarily a bug."


Yes, that's certainly been my experience. For example, I have to exit FPSC every time I want to load a new map to edit, after saving the previous map I've been working on, otherwise the editor crashes.

michael x
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 00:12
this is so true i have two computers one have 2.0ghz and the other 3ghz. build the same level on both computers. where it will lose frame rates at one part of the level on the computer with 2.0ghz it does not lose no frame rates at all with the 3ghz computer. both of my computer are very powerful but its the cpu that really matters to fpsc.its not about a duo core or a quad core computer. sure multiple threads may help speed up the loading time but fpsc perform off the cpu speed. I have notice this with pb mod and now with 118. both computers use windows 7.

more than what meets the eye

Welcome to SciFi Summer
s4real
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 00:17
Lets have some facts on the matter.

The problem with fpsc is its a 32bit program that can only use up to 2gb ram (unless you patch it.) and can only handle single core cpu for most things apart from lightmapping that handles multicores( and i think that only to make the loading faster).

So even with a nice high specs rig you still going to have the limits of the engine.

A single core cpu with a good graphics card could still see the same results as a high end machine.

example :- single core 3.6 vs a 2.5 8 core cpu. in theory the 3.6 single core should be faster than the 2.5 when using fpsc being fpsc only use's the single core.

But the reason this example does not work out that way all the time is the fact that a single core cpu would prob have a lower end graphics card and the newer versions of fpsc need better graphics cards.

Also newer cpu's and better made than older single cores and should be faster using a single core of the 8 they have.

So in the end when you making your game make sure u have all the factors worked out like if you have a lot of AI in a level its going to lag on a high spec machines and prob at a stand still on a lower spec machine.

best s4real


Pack ya games with vishnu packer its free. Vishnu game launcher is now released.
MrValentine
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 00:34 Edited at: 20th Mar 2012 00:36
umm my point was not about the application itself just the overhead of background services...

EDIT

Missed out C no not the language just the character XD

BlackFox
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:08 Edited at: 20th Mar 2012 01:15
Quote: "So in the end when you making your game make sure u have all the factors worked out like if you have a lot of AI in a level its going to lag on a high spec machines and prob at a stand still on a lower spec machine."


And that is the key right there. I can take a level with characters that all spawn at start, run on my desktop (has a 1 GB AMD Radeon 6450 video card) and get 32-40 FPS; then take that same level and only spawn a character when I am close to that character, and then spawn another when needed and run it on my wife's Dell laptop (which has a low end graphics- ATI Radeon Xpress chipset) and still get the same FPS; or I can spawn two characters at a time on my Acer laptop (has AMD Radeon 6310 chipset) and still have the same FPS as the desktop. It is not just having a video card or CPU, but how you use it with the application you work with.


Twitter: @NFoxMedia
bruce3371
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:17
So, to sum up; It aint what you've got, it's the way that you use it

Seriously, the 'spawning one character at a time' trick was one that I learnt early on, it really does make a difference...

michael x
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:20
that is true s4real but you will be able to push for a better type of game with high specs. but no need to have anything to high like a 560geforce card or a 3.6ghz cpu. at some point fpac just will reach its peek and the high end specs wouldn't matter. but the peek would be hard to get to with a normal 3.0ghz and a 8500gt or 8800gt card with 512 to 1gb ram. plus 2 to 3gb of ram. you dont need a super computer to run fpsc at its peek. it was never met to be a high end performing program. but with all the additional features and performance fpsc is at it best.

more than what meets the eye

Welcome to SciFi Summer
BlackFox
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:22
Quote: "Seriously, the 'spawning one character at a time' trick was one that I learnt early on, it really does make a difference."


True, and we had expanded that technique for other things too. A room the player might enter half way through the level for example. The room walls are constructed and anything static is in the room. Any of the dynamic items that the player interacts with- they spawn when needed as well, such as a trigger the player hits just before they reach the door to the room.

Quote: "So, to sum up; It aint what you've got, it's the way that you use it "


Although it might be nice to have a newer fast computer, you sometimes have to work with what you have. These three systems for us have worked great in the last few years. They are used in FPSC, used for model making and texturing, etc. The only thing is the video card tends to highlight more on the textures than the video chipsets, but that's why we always check on the desktop before a final release.


Twitter: @NFoxMedia
bruce3371
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:32
The WASP (and now 1.19) culling helped/helps as well. With the new commands you can pretty much have any dynamic entity appear when you want it to. With the culling on by default, all you really need is the 'cullrange=x' and 'cullevenifimmobile=x' commands.

Those, along with the 'spawning one character at a time' trick, have made quite a significant impact on my game's performance.

However, since there's always room for improvement, I might just try your triggering dynamic objects trick as well!!

BlackFox
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:37 Edited at: 20th Mar 2012 01:37
I have not had the pleasure of trying v1.19 yet so I will have to wait to see that.

Quote: "However, since there's always room for improvement, I might just try your triggering dynamic objects trick as well!!"


Just make sure you also remember to turn collision on in your appear script for the item you spawn. I spawn consoles that have to be dynamic for scripts to run player interaction and forgot to turn it on. I ended up walking right through it.


Twitter: @NFoxMedia
rolfy
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:40 Edited at: 20th Mar 2012 01:41
The comp I referred to above would sit around 43fps with a 4x4 bare room and one character now sits at 60fps, so its not just the culling in v1.19 thats making a difference.

Awesome! Its one of those threads.
bruce3371
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 01:40
I'll remember that, thanks

ASTECH
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 07:12 Edited at: 20th Mar 2012 07:22
Just a little input about FPSC performance: (I'm using 1.19 V8)

I've come to terms that water in any level will kill the frame-rate on even some of the best CPU's. I was getting 70-65 FPS in a map without water (decent size) and when I added water it dropped to 40 something. That's just not good in my book. I think water and excessive particles really hamper down on the CPU and grind the game to a halt. Now, if FPSC focused on more then 1 core... I'm sure this "information overload" could be handed off to different threads and cores.

I've had this happen to me in my past two games. I'm almost at the point where I don't even believe water to be an acceptable mechanic in a serious FPSC game. Sure, some could pull it off but no good sized map + water added in will hold a decent frame-rate. That's just what I've been thinking while reading all these posts.

PC Specs: AMD X4 2.7Ghz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia 9800GT, Win. 7 Pro 64 Bit
maho76
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 10:51
water causes problems with the used/builded portals and npcs, so the more portals you use, the more water eats performance. when i use the visoverlay-trick to get only 1 portal on the map, i can uphold fps constantly on 60fps when not using any npc, even with 300.000 polys in fov. it beats your pc when you add npc-characters (not nonstatic entities) to the scene. in the wrong place, 1 is enough to break down fps from 60 to 10.

but that also again depends on your gpu used. ati has much more problems with water-shader than nvidea-cards (nearly double the framelagg), even if they are less powerfull. maybe its the chipset, maybe because fpsc is optimized for nvidea, dont know. thats why i said: test readybuild game on as much different machines as possible.

ASTECH
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 16:19
Quote: "when i use the visoverlay-trick to get only 1 portal on the map"


http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=186092&b=21

I see where you did that. Well unfortunately I'm using segments with Visoverlay set to 1. The game only lags when in the areas with water. You go a "layer" up on the FPSC grid and the lag stops. Well, what can you do. I will just have to keep what you said in mind in my future project.

Thanks for the input.

PC Specs: AMD X4 2.7Ghz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia 9800GT, Win. 7 Pro 64 Bit
Flatlander
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 21:38
Quote: "I've come to terms that water in any level will kill the frame-rate on even some of the best CPU's. I was getting 70-65 FPS in a map without water (decent size) and when I added water it dropped to 40 something."


I'm using b1.18+ I'm not sure if the recently added fixes had fixed what you are saying; however, I loaded the water sample level and I still get 79/80 fps. Even underwater. I just discovered the added player voice of being out of breath once the player comes up for air. Good addition. Love it.

@maho, if you have an fpm you could upload (the one where you had a drop in fps), I'd like to test it. As I said the sample level created by TGC works find for me.

s4real
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Posted: 20th Mar 2012 22:45
The sample level is a very small room and has hardly anything running apart from water.

The slow down is due to the extra cameras for reflection and refraction, one tip is to use the command to take the reflection off that was introduced in v1.19 you notice a big performance increase but no reflections.

best s4real


Pack ya games with vishnu packer its free. Vishnu game launcher is now released.
maho76
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 10:25 Edited at: 21st Mar 2012 10:27
what s4real says, start adding an additional level into the waterroom,some characters and 1 or 2 additional rooms to the watersample.fpm and you will see a massive framedrop. thats why i test in very complex maps, its a total difference if map has 1gig all-one-level or 1,8gig over 10 levels, even for running scripts propperly. dont know why.

Quote: "one tip is to use the command to take the reflection off that was introduced in v1.19 you notice a big performance increase but no reflections."


thanks for this, i will check ... but water without reflections?^^

Flatlander
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 13:16
I added an ally and a friendly from Bond1's pack on the platform which is on layer 6. I added stairs to go to layer 7 and then put a scifi lift that goes to layer 9. Within that room I have Grendel 3 from the viral outbreak pack. When I start the level the fps is now between 59 and 80. It spends a lot of time between 60 and 70 and hits 80 every once in awhile. To tell you the truth this does not concern me. FPS 30 is considered an acceptable frame rate. If it goes below that for a long time (or all the time) then I will be concerned. Oh, I forgot, when I go into the water it will go to 47 and 49 at times.

Just think if we did not have Scene Commanders v1.19 for increased frame rate to begin with. We would be starting out around 30 and this would probably take us to below 10 or almost a stand still. Then Lee reset the cap to 40 fr. Probably wouldn't have help much until we got into v1.18 and then especially v1.19.

maho, if you would like send me an "fpm" of a stock example of something that really lowers your fps. I will test it on my computer.

maho76
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 15:35
you are right, flatlander, i didnt test water under v119, have to do this evening. i will do a testmap and see where i can get laggs through watershader and tell you here.

but would be cool if you want to betatest "habitat" when there is enough content to call it beta (its the only project i m opening fpsc for^^).

Flatlander
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 16:05
s4real
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Posted: 21st Mar 2012 17:52
Quote: "Just think if we did not have Scene Commanders v1.19 for increased frame rate to begin with. "


And think if you used wasp mod you get even better framerate.

best s4real


Pack ya games with vishnu packer its free. Vishnu game launcher is now released.

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