Ok since nobody wants to do anything about this and that the maps are getting nicer, combined with the fancy particles, my avg fps is now going down the drain. I'm fed up. I've no choice but to finally downgrade my settings. Does anyone know any settings that reduce particle quality or give me better fps without too much drop in quality? This is the first time since 1.7 that I've had to care about my graphics. The old particle pack that I used is no longer useful now. I'm calling SOS now. My fps now is outrageously low during battles in the range of 10-20 fps. I love the fact that Empires is getting nicer but it doesn't help that most people's computers have difficulty with the seemingly harmless particles and other stuff. Many other players have voiced out their concerns about their fps issues. If you're gonna make steam release, trying to settle this first. Below are some screenshots of low intensity situations. 2.25 particles New particles (always goes below 30fps) Using particle pack (doesn't work now) Now here are the "real-life" screenshots. Fancy arty debris Fancy smoke Normal battle Terrible non-realistic smoke Having you tried moving your mouse at 0fps?
lol Lordz...right there with you buddy...been averaging around 16fps for the past year and a half. Lows of 9 with usual highs of 24 when actually doing anything worthwhile.
Ok without the particles, if the map is simple, I can get pretty high fps. If the map is complex, I get 30-40fps. Thing is I never had a problem with graphics until now Going below 20 all the time kills it for me. The particles stay below 20 fps for like 70 percent of the time. Previous particles would be 50-30 now it's 30-10. Good thing is that I haven't broken the single digit barrier yet...soon.
Was that arty debris from 1 shell? I thought it only emitted 100? I'll look into that. Also what's the issue with cheap particles. EDIT: what are your other settings on, your textures seem really high for someone who can't run basic effects. What antialiasing are you using (I'm assuming 0x but I'd like confirmation) And what is your specs. EDIT2: Also the cannon smoke is pretty close to the real thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLb5MiP3tcM
Exactly that "cheap" pack looks ugly, blocks thing even more and has no improvement to fps. And Wow, even sonecha, who rarely posts, is helping me out here, I'm honoured! I'm obviously not the only one having problems... I have no AA, high models, high textures and everything else low or off. Those are the only two settings I can use without my Empires turning into worse than HL1. E8400 C2D ATI HD 2400 Pro 1GB RAM I'm not trying to annoy you, Empty. My graphic cards sucks but I could still play Empires decently before the sudden special effects update. I'm not complaining about the particles anymore. I hoping for something like Pickled Heretic's particle pack so I can enjoy Empires again. Or perhaps the current effect could be halved. If you want to talk about cheating, the people with the better computers are cheating now. They can process the effects better while we can't. Ever tried moving your view in <20 fps? At least we can still match those richer players without the special effects. That smoke maybe realistic but remember than Empires still very much a close quarter combat game, tanks are not moving around in a giant open space so alot of effects are pretty much in your face. Even BF2's tanks don't have that intense effects which are meant more for single-player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putRj-2hP2Q In this video, the "smoke" is actually the dust from the ground due to the shockwave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XYvmTnIFlU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42t4FBJMvp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HiuhjbNSpY No fancy smoke from these tanks, just a quick 1 second muzzleflash and dust from the floor, though they may not be the actual power. Also, why would a round leave a smoke trail behind, it's not a rocket.
If the cheap ass particle pack doesn't fix your fps, chances are particles aren't actually the problem, it might be something one of the code devs added to the rendering engine. Record a demo where you lag, then when replaying it enter "sv_cheats 1" in the console, and then enter "+showbudget" and post a screenshot of the showbudget graph to narrow it down.
There is a combo of low res packs that I was using that I might post on here. It's basically all the cool explosions with none of the FPS eating smoke. And it's not ugly like the squares on the low res pack she made. My FPS was like you guy's but with this combo of packs I was using I get 40 to 70 fps. Hopefully it still works though I haven't tried it on this version. It's hardly an advantage to just get rid of the smoke since you can't see through the fire and with the smoke you can't look left or right with out it being a slide show and skipping around.. Maybe I will post this later or if you guys are lucky the "particle" dev could do it..
Nah it just pretty much makes the game play able. You are at a disadvantage with out it. Just cause you can see an enemy a half a second faster than someone else doesn't mean you will kill them first. You don't stop shooting at someone when smoke blocks your screen, you just don't get to see the awesome kills or great ragdoll body deaths like I get to see.
I would like to try that low res pack you use. Sure, it might be a little advantage over them using the standard ones, but it's nothing compared to the disadvantage of having close to one digit fps or how much the official low res pack obstruct your screen in comparison to the standard particles.
Thats not true the performance bug in the dx9 version of the game comes on top of the fps eating particles. I can run through every particle effekt in any source game without problems exept empires where it kills my fps.
Stop taking your accusatory tone with me, I'm trying to help you out here. The lowres stuff blocks only slightly more than normal effects because the sprites havent been shrunk to the size of normal smoke, that's fairly laborious to do so I haven't done it yet, but a crap computer isn't an excuse for wallhacks. And don't try and tell me the lowres effects are just as expensive as normal ones, they are not. They are a lowres texture, less overall particles, minimal overdraw and have minimal extra features which drain fps to look pretty (animation and forces etc). The effects on tank cannons aren't that huge and the lowres pack update I released (did I release it? I can't remember actually) removed them altogether since they're not game affecting. 1GB ram is very low, it shouldn't be too hard to budget in an extra gig, even though that won't really help with effects it'll make your computer run way better. Your card is also really old, I'm sure you could easily pick up a better card for cheap, not like a card released this year, but something less than 4 years old will still be cheap and basically a free upgrade. Just don't buy coffee or something for a couple weeks and save up like 40 bucks for a new card. Or spend some more hours at work instead of playing empires. Also, please actually think about the things you complain about, cannon shell trails have been in empires since the FIRST SOURCE RELEASE and there are plans to replace them with cheaper/ more fitting effects, the only problem is the current effects are hardcoded so someone needs to spend some time adding the code for OB support to make them cheaper. Finally, what exactly do you want me to do? Make the entire game run on 4 transistors and a capacitor? I'm trying hard to meet you halfway, I make official effects as pretty and cheap as I can to find a balance, and I've even made the lowres pack for people like you who have shitbox computers. At the moment it just seems like you're complaining for the sake of complaining right now Iselore, I'm trying to be nice to you but you're making it hard to sympathise when you just keep bitching instead of acepting that there will be compromises made, I'm making the compromise of coming halfway, and spending my time making effects your computer can run, the least you can do is act civil towards me.
I can play l4d2 no problem and his solution to this is don't buy coffee for week and get 2 gigs of ram... wow
It's called a suggestion you annoying dickwit. I'm not forcing him to upgrade his computer, but I am suggesting that it will help and it's not unrealistic to be able to afford upgrades. VALVe also has a dedicated team of like 60 people making sure all theri games scale up and down between all platforms and computer specs. I'm one person, looking after one facet of what drains fps in a game, not to mentiont he fact that L4Ds largest effect is what, the pipebomb explosion? Our largest effect is bigger than most L4D maps. (The nuke)
