[Brennus]

Ok, after an extensive 3 day marathon of tweaking and pulling my hair out, I have found a solution to unexpected poor performance! First, we need to understand that its not the configuration of your machine, it is in fact the fault of the game itself. Running other Quake3 based games flawlessly, especially on "highend" machines, leads to confusion about the really bad performance we have come to love. So, "how do i increase my performance" you ask, I'll be more than happy to tell you. First, my system specs are below, so this WILL work on similar configurations. If your system is different than mine, its hard to tell if it will actually work, but it should. Here are the options that I have singled out that you need to change:

- Anisotropic Filtering: Disable this in your "Display Properties", gives you a +10FPS increase, and ONLY effects distant textures.

- Shadows: From the "Advanced" menu under the "Options" menu turn the "SHADOWS" to "simple" or "none" (this is by far THE most effective technique, especially in single player, trust me, +20-30FPS increase!)

Now, this next option is of the "do this OR this" type, that requires only one of them to be changed. It is based totally on prefference, and just for the record, I prefer detail over smooth colors. If "Texture Detail" is lowered, details become blended. A good example are the details in the weapon model, they become blended, and not so distinct. Posters become hard to read, and wall textures become less focused, like you had on a pair of wrong prescription glasses. Now, if "Texture Color Depth" is lowered, colors contrast more abruptly. A good example are the textures in the sky, they become less transitional, and more like Operation Flashpoint. Your just gonna have to make a choice between the two, but lowering both will not yield twice the boost, and I don't recommend doing so!

- Quote from README: "Video cards with less than 64MB Video memory cannot set texture detail to high and texture color depth to 32 bit simultaneously. These cards can get very poor performance at times, so lower your texture detail [AND/OR] lower your texture depth to 16 bit." (I suggest that even 64MB cards lower ONE of these.)

- Texture Detail: Turn this down from "high" to "medium", although it uses the Q3 engine, it does'nt manage textures very efficiently. (lowering this value "blurs" the details, so if you prefer detail over smooth color blending, leave this on "high".)

- Texture Color Depth: Lower your texture color depth to "16". (lowering this value makes texture color transitions less attractive, so if you prefer better color blending over detail, leave this on "32".)

Now, I also believe that the lockups that occur with a sound loop are single player ONLY, and are a result of the newly released multi player patch. My suggestion is to play the single player game WITHOUT the patch, then when you are done, install the MP patch to play online! Keep in mind that every other option can be set to "max" or "highest", and just the options that I have singled out have any effect on performance! System specs:

- AMD Athlon(tm) Processor @ 1GHz
- VIA Tech KT133 System Controller
- 384MB Kingston PC/133MHz
- NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro (23.11)
- Creative SB Live! (5.1)
- Microsoft Windows 98SE

[Brennus]

Patton. That kind of drop is exactly what I am talkin about! There is nothing you can do about it, it seems that some arctitecture in door ways, trees, and even vehicles (mostly destroyed vehicles), have an unusual effect on frame rates. It is not the actual FPS that I'm concerned with...its the DROP in frames that bothers me, especially in multi-player! But, the options that I have pointed out arent what I use for other Q3 engined games, they are what seems to cause the most problems for MOHAA itself! If you were to read the README that is hidden in your "eReg" folder, it even includes confesions for this kind of strange drop in frames when these options are selected, that is where I got most of my information. Looking at trees and buildings, seems to be the culprit, and the frames never drop below a certain point. Going from 85-21FPS in the middle of a fire fight is VERY distracting, but you can determain just how far these frames drop with the options that I have pointed out, THEY WORK! Instead of dropping to 21FPS when looking at trees or some buildings, it will only drop to 30-40, which is far less distracting! And the option to lower the shadows, this was a surprise for me, it gave me a whopping 40FPS increase durring fire fights in single player! It made the difference between a slide show, and a very enjoyable experience, especially during fire fights! So, I'm not concerned so much with higher FPS, I am ONLY concerned with making those low frames a bit higher, so it's not so distracting! Anyway, until they patch the game, or you get yourself a GeForce5, your just gonna have to make a comprimise...good luck!

[thinkfast]

hmmm thats odd guys.. im running a geforce 2 pro on an athlon 800 with 256mb ram and it's always playable... in advanced, i have all the settings maxed out. 32 for the color and texture depth and high for texture detail. 1024x768 resolution.
It feels like i run 30-45fps in general, i might drop to 20 on a few parts. I really dont think tweaking it is worth it. The game looks so nice with all the settings on, and 30fps-60fps isn't a big difference for your eyes.

Whats the command to show your fps in game anyways?
I didnt't feel any difference between running everything at low or medium settings at 800x600 and having it all maxed out at 1024x768.

[thinkfast]

sorry double post.

[This message has been edited by thinkfast (edited January 31, 2002).]

[Mustang]

Ive had the most success with turning the shadows off and the curve detail way down to low, everything else medium and a 1024x768 res. The differences you see on screen are minor and it's a good performance increase. I rarely notice a drop below 15 fps and Omaha ran quite smooth, no blistering frame rates but I was sitting on about 20 fps during the stroll up the beach.
Thats all on a PIII800 with GF3 and 512Mb Ram.

Either way if your getting nothing below 15 fps, you should be pretty happy.

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It's our wits that make us men

[Patton]

I'll tell ya what.. no matter how much tweaking I do to my system, I can't get this one thing right.

In heavy foliage, I drop from 62fps (its as high as it will go... I think I need to change the in-game refresh rate... looking for the command) to 30fps in heavy foliage. Like the big open area on the france DM/TDM/RB map. It doesn't chug, and I'm not complaining about 30fps. Its just that when you are playing at 60 something fps and then drop to 30, you can see the difference for a split second, and sometimes it throws off my aim. I've tried turned up/down different values, and I finally found the perfect contrast between detail and performance (max everything, 16bit color, 32bit textures, no shadows, and no volumetric smoke, I also took out the weapons bar, I didn't like it, but that doesn't have an affect on performance.)

But I have tried turning everything off/down and changing my resolutions around, but I can never get more than 30fps in the heavy foliage. It refuses even to drop BELOW 30fps, even with an assload of people on the screen. I dunno if its me or the game. I can live with it, its just something I would like to avoid. My system specs are as follows:

1.4ghz Athlon on a ASUS A7v266A-E
512 DDR PC2100
GeForce3 Ti200 (64 meg, not O/C'd)
SoundBlaster Live! (Audio detail at high/medium doesn't affect performance)

So as far as I can tell, the game runs fine except when I get into heavy foliage (or omaha - which coincidently refuses to drop below 25fps, regardless of the settings I change.. but this doesn't matter. It runs at about 25-30 throughout the map, so the FPS drop doesn't affect gameplay.)

Thats another thing I want to bring up. You fellas with high-end systems like me are getting bad performance, but only because you believe you are. If you were to play a game at 30fps constant, you would barely notice it. But if you let it go up to 60fps, and then it soemtimes drops to 30, you notice the drop, not the actual FPS change. 30FPS is playable, but for that split second that the speed changes, you notice it, and it annoys the fuck out of you. At least thats what happens to me.