Graphics speed (slowness AAMOF)

[TheDaze]

There have been a few topics about this before, with no real resolution, so excuse me if I bring it up once again.

1st of all, let me congratulate on the work done with wz2100. Version 2.06 is as beautiful as never before. Really, really impressive, and with those shadows quite sharp looking. I mean, I am trying to get myself hooked on Supreme Commander, but with all the jinglejangle that has been hanged on that game, I don't know, I still like a good wz mp game better.

Alas, there is this slow gfx problem. Version 2.06 works great on my  Intel 1.8 dualcore with 2GB RAM, with Radeon x1300 256MB, running XP sp2. Funtastic. However, I also run it on my a bit older Dell notebook with Pentium M4 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, with Nvidia FX Go5200 128MB RAM.

The notebook doesn't handle it very well. Shutting shadows off does help, but only to a degree. I mean, the machine is still probably fast enough to handle OpenGL menus speedily enough. But how can I be sure it really is falling back to software OpenGL or something else is up? Is there a key combo to bring up some info? Something in the log file?

Unfortunately tis make of gfx card is not supported directly by Nvidia and Dell didn't update its drivers for a while.

What puzzles me most: I ran version 0.22 on this same notebook and it was so fast that 20x speed really ment just that. I would kind of expect it would still work like that if I shut the shadows off... And if it really falls back to software OpenGL, I don't get it, this hardware was quite supperted back in version 0.22.

So, maybe there is still something I can do?

With Regards
Damjan

[Watermelon]

I think fx5200 go should have no problem handling wz without shadows,my old pc had a card that is worse than that,but I got pretty good framerate(40ish at 1024x768) without shadows with that card.

I dont know of a way to know whether it stores the surface in HW or SW without using a debugger,but it'll be easy to make stderr(the text file generated by warzone in warzone directory) to output the results of opengl HW/SW surface test.

You can try lowering the color depth in config file(config without any extension),it's called bbp and its default value is 32,find it in that file and change it to 16,if performance improves,then your game is very probably running in software mode.

// Edit: Giel: Chop down on post size by cutting unreferenced (full) quote of first post

[Giel]

Unfortunately tis make of gfx card is not supported directly by Nvidia and Dell didn't update its drivers for a while.

What puzzles me most: I ran version 0.22 on this same notebook and it was so fast that 20x speed really ment just that. I would kind of expect it would still work like that if I shut the shadows off... And if it really falls back to software OpenGL, I don't get it, this hardware was quite supperted back in version 0.22.

If the drivers for your GFX card don't support OpenGL 2.0 this is fairly easy explained by the fact that 0.22 still used an old DirectX version (which probably is supported by those drivers).

So, maybe there is still something I can do?

Yes, find out if your drivers do, or do not support OpenGL 2.0.

[DevUrandom]

1st: DirectX???
Afaik all versions since 0.2 use OpenGL exclusively. This includes 0.2.2.
2nd: OpenGL2???
Afaik we don't use any OpenGL2 feature. Currently most of the game should be pretty happy with even OpenGL 1.1 or something like that. (At least <1.5)

[kage]

1st: DirectX???
Afaik all versions since 0.2 use OpenGL exclusively. This includes 0.2.2.
2nd: OpenGL2???
Afaik we don't use any OpenGL2 feature. Currently most of the game should be pretty happy with even OpenGL 1.1 or something like that. (At least <1.5)

perhaps there isn't any usage of gl2 features or functions, but afaict, if the binary was built against gl2 libraries (which would provide a gl1 compat shim), then it'd still be running gl2. don't quote me on this though

[Giel]

1st: DirectX???
Afaik all versions since 0.2 use OpenGL exclusively. This includes 0.2.2.
2nd: OpenGL2???
Afaik we don't use any OpenGL2 feature. Currently most of the game should be pretty happy with even OpenGL 1.1 or something like that. (At least <1.5)

Hmm, my memory must be failing me.  :-X

[TheDaze]

Yes, find out if your drivers do, or do not support OpenGL 2.0.

Yes, that's one thing I tried to do, but I was so far unable to find documentation that would confirm either. Also, I was unable to find a suitable diag software, in soite of all the googling done. Do you have any suggestion?

[lav_coyote25]

maybe here they may have something...unless you already been there...


opengl documentation

[Watermelon]

wz utilizes opengl 1.1 features only,so a opengl 1.1 compliant driver should have no performance issues.The only extensions wz used is the stencil buffer 2 side and wrap,without them you will have reduced performance with shadows actived.