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FPSC Classic Product Chat / Game testing on a low-spec pc.....encountering a strange problem.

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Benjamin A
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 03:06
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I'm not at my regular pc at the moment, but a lower-spec pc for testing purposes. At the moment I'm testing my build game on it. The pc is a P3 1000Mhz, 384Mb Ram, ABIT Siluro T400 64Mb and XP Home (will switch to Win2000 even as soon as it arrives from the pcshop).

The game itself runs amazingly well, most of the time I'm getting 20-27fps. I've got framerate drops at times (10fps) and bursts to 33fps also. But on the whole, the game is pretty much playable.

When playing I did encouter a strange problem, some the text (like press enter to use), shadows and decals are obscured somehow, see picture. Does anyone know what causes this and how to avoind or take care of it?

Bored of indoor? Add outdoor to your FPSC games!
http://www.aeilkema.dds.nl/mega/index.html
Need music for your games? Check the above link also!

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Les Horribres
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Location: My Name is... Merry
Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 03:40 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2006 03:41
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Don't use old PC's of course!

Do a Test Game and record the memory usage... possibly more then your computer can handle.

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I believe society is flawed; our notions on life, on child rearing, stem too far back to be of relevance in this day and time.
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Benjamin A
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 09:33
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Well, the testing is just to see what the bottomline requirements are for the game.

I'll try your suggestion, perhaps others have insight into this also?

Bored of indoor? Add outdoor to your FPSC games!
http://www.aeilkema.dds.nl/mega/index.html
Need music for your games? Check the above link also!
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Opus Games
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 17:01 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2006 17:02
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Hi,

Given the specific nature of the problem it sounds very much like a video card issue. Possibly only having 64MB or that the card is a MX400 which was built with DX7 in mind.

Possibly check to see if this PC is running the latest DX9.0c (there's an additional patch for DX released earlier this month too) and download recent (84.21 latest, 81.98 what I'm using) Nvidia Forceware drivers.

If that doesn't work (or you've already tried it) if possible try a different/newer video card that you know should work.

Hope this helps, let me know how you get on - I'm trying different set-ups myself.

Cheers, Rich.
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Benjamin A
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 19:08 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2006 19:10
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Opus Games, I already did download the latest DX version, so that wasn't the problem.

I did follow your advice and looked for the latest card specific drivers and installed them. That solved the problem.

Now the shadows and texts are all normal as they should be!

Quote: "Don't use old PC's of course!"


I'm thankfull that I've got a much faster one also, but it's helpful to determine the minimum requirements for the game.

So for my game I can definitely state that a P3-1Ghz, 384Mb Ram and a GeForce2 MX400 64Mb or equivalent are the minimum requirements.

I did use 512x512 textures & soft shadows to build the game. Didn't use shaders or dynamic lights, only static ones and additional light effects have been achieved through manipulating the ambience in the game. I also wrote scripts to achieve flashing lights and such in certain room, without using dynamic lights at all.

Imo shaders and dynamic lights are just best to be avoided in FPSC at the moment.

While FPSC itself will not work to well on a lower specs machine, the games, when created wisely, will run on them and I'm happy with that. If the games would only run on high-end machines a lot of people would miss out all of the fpsc gaming fun

Bored of indoor? Add outdoor to your FPSC games!
http://www.aeilkema.dds.nl/mega/index.html
Need music for your games? Check the above link also!
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Opus Games
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 19:46
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Glad to hear it helped, it's almost always the drivers.

With regards to performance have you noticed any differences in framerate when playing the game from a fresh boot vs. playing it after having already played and restarting the game?

I mention this as the way Windows manages memory it will read from the HardDisk as it tranfers data to system ram, but if you quit the game and then reload the cache will already be there and the overall speed should be better. This is generally especially true of low memory machines.

If I notice anything specific myself I'll let you know.

Cheers, Rich.
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randbo
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2006 22:43
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thx benjamin for testing it on a low end machine. i have wondered how low you can get to run a fpsc game. also, your suggestions about using ambience is very helpful.
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