BETTER FRAME-RATE and MORE FLEXIBLE X3AP

Board Index » X3: Albion Prelude » BETTER FRAME-RATE and MORE FLEXIBLE X3AP

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

Hi, everybody,

EXAMPLE :

1) Liking the game but tired of complexes being torn apart by pilots flying into the pipes over and over again and knowing that those pipes even get frame-rate down I decided to leave vanilla and go "Modding/Scripting" or doing whatever to make the game more playable.
2) When lots of ships are involved the frame goes down until its not "playable" any more, so i am looking for every change to improve frame-rate without losing much details. EDIT: (I run AP on a 1m second screen)

Rebuilding everything over and over again and losing good pilots is not my game , when its yours, this thread is not for you !
You should be able to play it the way you like !

FRAME-RATE : what lowers it and what can we do about it ? (video enhancements already put at "medium") )

Unfinished list :

a. ROCKS : no real use, only obstructions : I removed them with "removerocks"

b. Why hundreds of ASTEROIDS ? As ai pilots are not able to fly though a field of them in a fluent way bit rather a hilarious way : I fused them together with "Asteroid_Fusion_v4" (Leaving only five in Weavers Tempest without losing ore or silicon, placed out of the way of ships)

c. FOG : no real use : removed them with "NOFOG"

d. Combat frame-rate slows down to much : "Improved_Combat_Frame_Rate" (a bit less spectacular, but not much)

e. complex building "pipes", as I stated before, much hinder for nothing : "complexcleaner" (combining hundreds into one big plant)
Roguey stated : quote "the pipes look ugly and I feel building lots of station close together isnt a better solution either (ie. in teleporter range). I always felt that when building a complex you should buy modules that plug together. Each module could house like up-to 5 stations (removing the messy amount of stations floating around - improving fps)." end quote
I agree complexbuilder could be more flexible, but it will do for me just now.

f. Civilian Ships : nice but killing fps : "no civilians"
Roguey stated : quote "background traffic is supposed to add to the atmosphere, although like you said just turns into more ships for the cpu to process" unquote

g. Some people pointed out that "ammo" guns "block" turrets, so I removed the need for ammo for all guns. (Edited)

OTHER IDEAS ? Post them !
BETTER SOLUTIONS ? Post them !

Don't worry, be happy ! Leko

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 11 years ago.

hi, thanks for moving the topic into a new thread.

Its sounds like got a lot of things to improve your fps, does the game normally run slow on your pc or are you just liking the more optimized game-play?

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

...got a lot of things to improve your fps, does the game normally run slow on your pc or are you just liking the more optimized game-play?
- Roguey

..
Hi, Roguey,

My fps goes only down after getting lots of ships and complexes going, and becoming really bad in war sectors IS doing my tests.
I do not know if many players go in the war sectors, that is where it goes wrong because there are always like 50-100 argon ships, terran attacking with the same and my few ships :
Result : it becomes nearly impossible to give mouse-commands in those big fights - sometimes I have to exit quickly -
fi: my M7 Panther (backed up by 2 M2 Valhalla), me taking personally on like 2M2, 2M7, 2M6 and small stuff will get bad hits from time to time making a jump quite necessary!

I am testing IE and IEX1.3c now (background improvements) which do the opposite, they lower fps just a bit so I am looking in to it because they have some really beautiful pictures !

My Rig : i3 quad 2.6Mhz, 4Gb Ram, 600GB HD internal (8Tb external HD), Nvidea Gforce GT540M, Logitech Xtreme3DPro, : just middle-class, nothing special.

Also, I remarked that ships and other stuff could be made with less polygons without loosing much detail, but the makers do not take this in to consideration - So sooner or later I will look into that - after doing all my tests and getting a real feeling about pro's and contras of everything.

Other anomaly:
When you see capital ships move around an obstacle or dock, hilarious ! So, why didn't they crank up all rudders ? Ships would move much more naturally !
In space "rudder" is easy even for big ships (turning around with side "jets"), only the momentum keeps them going in the old direction, with their nose already in the new direction, but then their main propulsion engines get them on speed in the new direction much faster than sea vessels. So "accelerating power" makes the difference, not rudder !

Ship speeds are way off ! Overall speed increase makes the game more "playable"
Real world : USS George Washington CARRIER, the youngest : speed +-60kmh. (Same for Battle Ships, used no more)
Compared with CARRIER : Fastest combat ships and small attack boats 90 , modern Frigates being 70 , Destroyers 55 , support ships 40 , fastest civil carriers 55
In space : less friction = higher speeds , but the inter-class differences would be about the same !
Reason, modern warfare is based on attack groups, if one stays behind he will be the "shooting duck".

Adapted max speeds : M5 400 ; M7 300 ; M6/M8 275 ; M2/M1 250 ; Battle support 200 ; Civil carriers 250

Just an idea, leko

Happy flying !

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 11 years ago.

My Rig : i3 quad 2.6Mhz, 4Gb Ram, 600GB HD internal (8Tb external HD), Nvidea Gforce GT540M, Logitech Xtreme3DPro
- leko

hmm.. looking at your specs, I guess your using a netbook to play X3AP? I think your Nvidea Geforce GT540M is whats causing the slow-downs; its not bad but not the same as normal video card (on the nvidia site it has roughly 10 times slower texture fill rate than mine). However it sounds like plays x3ap quite well, just slows down in large battles which is understandable.

When you see capital ships move around an obstacle or dock, hilarious ! So, why didnt they crank up all rudders ? Ships would move much more naturally !
- leko

Agreed. Stopping, turning, starting does seam like do one thing at a time and like you said not very natural. However re-writing the AI is something ego has to do. Lets hope they do a better job in Rebirth - if we ever get any news about it.

Ship speeds are way off ! Overall speed increase makes the game more "playable"
- leko

I do feel that too many features from the bigger ships has rolled onto the smaller ships. For example, the big ships should allow for great distance travelling, whilst smaller ships should rely on being carried in a bigger ship. Atm most small ships can jump/travel/def themselves meaning there's less point to docking at larger ships.

Adapted max speeds : M5 400 ; M7 300 ; M6/M8 275 ; M2/M1 250 ; Battle support 200 ; Civil carriers 250
- leko

I feel upping the speed isnt really the problem - its the fact that big ships are limited by a small amount of turrets. It would of been so much better if large ships had like 20-30 turrets each with 2 or 3 guns, rather than just 6 turrets up-to 10 guns. This would allow better tracking of targets and allow certain turrets to have certain guns. Something like this would make the bigger ships feel more special and the lower speed would make more sense although like I said above, the larger ships should be able to act more like carriers (easily getting fighters to a sector) like a base-ship. Maybe M1/2 should be combined? Maybe also the TL should be combined too? is there not a lot of ships only doing one role?

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

Hi, Roguey

..

Yes, what I meant is when you upgrade the rudders they would behave much better! At least not killing themselves in a dock ! Since I over-tuned mine to test it I didn't lose any !

I agree, this is the reason i do not longer use fighters, only drones = real life : Fighter Carriers with fighters that have to be replenished in time or go down. Speed for fighters could be like 1000 ms but not being able to jump and with a time limit (reload,replenish). This also would be accepted by lots of people since in the big sf-series this is the case !

Speed is to slow, why do you have to wait while your ship moves slowly to the other end of the sector? Maybe in-sector warp (at a cost) for all capitals except CARRIER (M1). A Destroyer can not be a CARRIER only a very small one. My Valhalla is stronger than any M1 (and 60 docks), not realistic at all. CARRIERS are 10 times bigger than DESTROYERS !

All guns and mounts should be turrets, giving the captain the possibility to take over one himself when needed!

Taking all this and what we know about battle vessels and spacecrafts in to consideration I am recalculating a sort of standard (which should have been done from the start of x)

I post this now because my calcs take a lot of research and time, will post the result later.

I just checked that I can incorporate a small excell listing, so will do that later.

Cu , leko

OliasOfSunhillo

OliasOfSunhillo avatar

Fightguey (6)

Posted 11 years ago.

"i3 quad 2.6Mhz"
It is not a Quad it is a 2+2 (hyper-threading is the +2), an Intel marketing ploy and not knocking your Knowledge in any way!
X3 in all it's guises is a CPU hog the faster the CPU the better experience, I'm running a 3.6G processor on my my lappy and all is good, graphically my R6970 on my desktop hardly hits 40% usage during game-play even during Terran war missions which spawn 100's of ships (dependant on rank).

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

"i3 quad 2.6Mhz"...It is not a Quad it is a 2+2...
X3 in all it's guises is a CPU hog the faster the CPU the better experience, I'm running a 3.6G processor on my my lappy and all is good, graphically my R6970 on my desktop hardly hits 40% usage during game-play even during Terran war missions which spawn 100's of ships (dependant on rank).
- OliasOfSunhillo

Hi, OliasOfSunhillo,
It's not the CPU, but foremost the video capacity of your R6970 (350$) being double in fps of my Nvidea Gforce GT540M (150$)!
The GeForce GTX 690 is much better but costs 999$ !
So, technically we are both lagging behind !
Don't worry, be happy ,
Leko

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 11 years ago.

Well X3AP/X3TC are still only written for single core cpus. So a fast single/dual core can play X3AP fine - quad core probably doesnt help what-so-ever. Is the i3 an dual core (with hyperthreading)?

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

Well X3AP/X3TC are still only written for single core cpus. So a fast single/dual core can play X3AP fine - quad core probably doesnt help what-so-ever. Is the i3 an dual core (with hyperthreading)?
- Roguey

..
Hi, R

2.67 GHz
2 cores x 2 t
Notebook CPU L1 Cache L2 Cache L3 Cache
GD RATING :
Core i3-M390 2.67GHz processor has been approved by GD Admin. GD CPU hardware score: 5

Well, nothing special, sure, any CPU is "old" after six months, but I do not change so often and I am not in to "hypes", because even the "hype" of 3 yrs ago is bypassed today. I only change when necessary.

Indeed, "quad" means nothing because few programs use it. Programs do not follow the trend because most of their customers have "older" rigs, which would not be able to use them.

I started to work with CPU's in the 80's, when we wrote our own progs in assembler and C, even changing the hardware. Example : Tandy model 1, 14 k memory! but changed internally (about 8.000$, )and programmed ("mem switch" and so)that could run the accountancy of a really big firm.
We had clubs to challenge each other writing the smallest prog to execute a given job. When MS "tricked" us into Windows all this faded away because rewriting for every new cpu becomes tedious, so you follow the "mainstream".
Modern programs are badly written, they use unneeded hd and cpu memory because they simply cannot catch up anymore and work quickly, selling before everything changes again, even "bugged" (they learned this from MS).
But, since very few people know the basics like assembler, they do not really understand how their CPU works, only following the "hypes".
No code can be faster than assembler, since it uses the internal cpu-commands directly, but windows does not accept the fastest commands to "protect" itself ,as it itself is badly written.
I inserted data from the screen directly (structured memory-block-switch): result : screen changes much quicker than today! But nowadays this is impossible to code alone : the printed "debug" of 1 Megabyte of assembler code would fill a supermarket ! So, you work on a big prog with like 500 people, creating chaos and "bugs" because "the weakest link of the chain...".
Structured means "blocks" (declaring variables in one block, all "screens" in one block, standard routines in one block, and so on) : result, if you have to go inside my code you can easily find and change anything. Avoiding firms to state "code completely rewritten", yeah ! Surely, if you yourself cannot find anything in your own code anymore (happens often nowadays) because it became a mess you have to start over !
So, who is "able" to write quad-code? All to few people I'm afraid. CPU speed is topped, no gain anymore in going faster, so the idea of "quad" or more is okay but for now stays a "hype" because the few programs that really use it are written specially to sell us the "idea". The show must go on ! If not people would not buy new CPU's fast enough, "crashing" the market.

Whatever, I am always happy with the rig I work with, like a car : "As soon as you can get where you want to go it's okay"

A laptop is nice but , like mine, you cannot improve much . Desktops are easy upgradable , plugging in a new video card can open a new world.

But , I do not worry, i am happy, leko

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 11 years ago.

hey leko,

thanks for explaining about your programming experience - it helps. My dad used to do assembly code too, I thought he got quite far with it too - I think protect mode. However like you said, windows kind-of blew everything out-of the window so called to speak. I dont know assembly that well, although I do know what you mean about badly written code - windows code is bulky and can be not very optimized compared to assembly code. However just the amount of people who use it make it an requirement, and that programmers arent required to know each gfx, cpu etc. inside-out. I guess if windows wasnt around then there be a lot less people on pc's as it was a lot harder to play games (DOS isnt as friendly as windows). So whilst the hardware has to fight worse code, we has users get to play with more people - which can only be a good thing, on a wide range of hardware.

A laptop is nice but , like mine, you cannot improve much . Desktops are easy upgradable , plugging in a new video card can open a new world.
- leko

A few years back there was a thing about a desktop replacement - however they fought back and lost. The upgradable is what PC's are all about. Like you said, laptops are nice but will struggle to replace a standard pc. So you probably want a pc to run x3ap without any slowdowns Smile

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

hey leko,

...desktop replacement - however they fought back and lost...
- Roguey

..Hi, Roguey

The moment you buy a laptop it can be as good as any desktop PC , but like some months later new HD's, Video cards, quicker RAM, faster CPU's or whatever hits the market: In a desktop I can change everything, even the motherboard, so you can keep it "alive" longer and cheaper because its mostly standard-parts whereas for a laptop few upgrades are available and to expensive because most parts go only on certain laptops, not other so become expensive because only sold by one brand.
Even on company level : most people thought IBM was the best, saying "those asian things...". But when I bought IBM and had a HD-crash it was a IBM HD, "made in Taiwan" ! Nowadays all brands are partly or completely build in asia so to compose a "high end" desktop yourself is not that difficult, not really difficult to assemble yourself as some specialists in your neighborhood will do and sell their "home-brand" at reasonable prices. Only , beware ! : "compatible" does not mean everything works together with all "compatible" pieces.
fi: A HD refuses to work together with an new one of the same brand, but works fine fine the same PC with one of another brand (shit will happen). One thing I learned : if hard- or software does not work dive in to it and you will get it working, sometimes even you will not know how you did it (changing a lot of things) but that is not important, as so many components work together. A PC does not work, you disassemble it, change nothing, put it back together, it works ! Why? Heaven knows!

But, compared to others, the "GOD" of X seems to be a thrown out angel! Just kidding!
Just one advice, if I may do so, never buy the latest "hype", it will need "debugging" for 3 to 6 months, then buy it if you need it and it will be lots cheaper to.

Returning to your topic : laptops have (only) one big advantage, you put in a bag and can use it everywhere !

Don't worry, be happy ! Leko

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 11 years ago.

The moment you buy a laptop it can be as good as any desktop PC , but like some months later new HD's, Video cards, quicker RAM, faster CPU's or whatever hits the market
- leko

I disagree, you may get a similar cpu on a laptop however laptop graphic cards do not match anywhere near a normal pc. Nowadays the gfx card is the most complex, and the biggest way of increase your frame-rate. Just take a look on the transistor count, gfx usually have more than cpus now. Laptop are also limited by power (cpu/gfx throttling), where it doesnt matter on a standard pc.

Returning to your topic : laptops have (only) one big advantage, you put in a bag and can use it everywhere !
- leko

Agreed, sometimes portability is more important than cpu/gfx power.

leko

Stickguey (8)

Posted 11 years ago.

...similar cpu on a laptop however laptop graphic cards do not match anywhere near a normal pc. Nowadays the gfx card is the most complex, and the biggest way of increase your frame-rate. Just take a look on the transistor count, gfx usually have more than cpus now. Laptop are also limited by power (cpu/gfx throttling)...sometimes portability is more important than cpu/gfx power.
- Roguey

Hi, R,
Oh, there are some blasting laptops, but fully upgraded cost like 5-6.000 Euro ! So staying "reasonable" you are right!

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