Particles. Round 2. This time, it's personal. by Empty

I have a 5 year old computer...it's a 3.0GHz HT Pentium 4 with 1.5GB ram (yes I know), a 512MB X1950 Radeon Pro gfx card, and an Audigy4 sound card.

It's not bad. It is old.

I'm upgrading probably sometime in this coming year, but so far, the biggest game that I have a problem with is Empires, since 2.25. I can play with 9-12fps, that's not so much of a problem, but...your attitude annoys me.

 

I got quite surprised when I found out that it's old flash done in the code. Removed in 2.25b.

 

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

 

I have a duo core processor, ATi Radeon HD4850, a 6 year old motherboard, 2 gigs of RAM, a 6 year old 150 MB Hard Drive (Pretty sure its non sata so slow to load and whatnot), and a 650 watt Corsair PSU. Granted, I did upgrade quite a bit of stuff but I always have at LEAST 30 FPS on Empires on max settings with all the particle effects, large battles, and with a so so internet connection.

The new particle effects are perfectly reasonable and where they should be. Granted, the visual appearance of some effects need to be tweaked but performance wise they are fine.

 

A 4850 is pretty high-end for the Source engine, boyo.

I was thinking the same thing. There are weapons that fire faster.
People have pings thrice as fast as that framerate!

 

I don't understand what you meaaaan.

 

For Empty's sake: Worry not, Empty, M00tant is on the case. It's nothing to do with particles.

 

Mootant is silly, I don't like to make effects before they're implemented because I can't tell if the scale is right and then he bitches at me because they aren't perfect the first time.

 

This, especially that.

 

lol hay guys lets make empires more exclusive than it already is and eliminate the existing playerbase by making particles that are more demanding than anything you would encounter in episode 2!

 

I just don't understand why people are complaining that they have to lower their settings. Sure, old engine. But it's a POS computer! My 7600GT ran all high sttings @ 1440x(960?) and it got around 35FPS heavy tank fights and 60 just looking around as infantry. That card is what? 4-5 years old?

Granted; people might be using an x700 or something. That card got me 35+ FPS all low settings 1280x1024 (Athlon 64 3200+ 2ghz).

My HD4650 which is a very low-level entry-budget card got me 40+frames all vhigh settings/4xAF/1920x1080. The only thing that lagged was nukes and bio missiles. Considering that this card is $50, and it's available for AGP, I don't know why people complain. Just turn down the settings.

Then my HD4850 gets me ~60Frames tank fights ~140Frames looking around (3.3ghz phenom ii x4 920).

 

1. Episode 2 wasn't technologically impressive or graphically impressive when compared to HL2, or EP1.
2. Episode 2 was optimized by VALVE, I think they know the engine and coding practices better.
3. Episode 2 was short and samey.


If you are using EP2 as some sort of relevant standard when it is now the year 2010 and EP2 was pretty much the same as original HL2, you really have no idea how computer technology is supposed to progress. Please die.

 

@pickled
Since when are the hardware requirements for Empires exclusive? Before 2.25 they were ridiculously low for a multiplayer FPS. What does drive quite a few people away are not the "exclusive requirements" but the seriously outdated graphical aspect of Empires. Empty's particles do a great job in making the game look more up to date.

I know, we all fall in love with our shiny new PCs when we buy them and then a few years later it's a painful process to accept they are just crap anymore. When it comes to PCs, old equals bad. We aren't talking about french wine here. :p

Well, when you upgrade you will then remove two annoyances at once! I'm not for artificially rising hardware requirements a la MS Office and if the particles make you lag because Empty wasted CPU ressources it's OK to invest time to redo them.

The problem with particles is that the Orange Box prefers to calculate particles on a second core. That's why most single core CPUs start to choke when there are many effects thrown at them at once.

According to the Steam Hardware Surve more than 82 % of all users have a two CPU core system or better. So you have a choice, focus on making the game look better and therefore make it more appealing to 82 % or keep the game ugly but ressource friendly to include the 18 % with old computers.

 

It doesn't prefer any core. If particle effect is split into subeffects it will use all cores available for simulation. Particle rendering is done with 1 core and is GPU-bound.

 

Or, O:

 

I'm single core and I have no problems whatsoever with any of the particles.
I'm not saying I'm the benchmark, but cmon.

 

Ever considered that perhaps the people with the crap computers are already on the lowest settings, because, you know, their PC's are ancient crap that can hardly handle 2.24 on low? You assume that before 2.25 all the complainers could play on medium or high

 

I used to get about 30fps...it fluctuated between 15-60+. It's a pretty new and decent graphics card I have in my machine, it's just the old CPU architecture that slows it. The HT proc is a little useful for running two instructions at once, but generally, doesn't do too much - esp compared to a multi-core machine.

I did learn to play the game on a american server for over half a year. I didn't even know the game could get any better until I first played on an EU server - when 2.0 was released. Of course, I had a pretty high and constant fps then, as well as a good internet connection (which I still enjoy), so it actually gave me an edge most of the time.

It's not crap, it's decent. It's ok, I just won't bother playing anymore, if it handles everything I want it to do except play a couple games, I can go without those games.

I don't disagree with removing 1/5 of the playerbase per se, that's why i'm not complaining at Empty. I'll just remove myself or play on 12fps, it's not a problem.

 

4. Episode 2 looks 10 times better than empires ever will and takes a fraction of the resources.

ROFL. I love how I can run crysis on max settings at 1650x1080 and 4xaa but I have to lower my settings to run empiresmod smoothly, and the only reason for it is all of the excessive smoke. I'm one of the lucky ones... I've got a computer powerful enough to power through all of the inefficiencies. People like dubee are not so fortunate.

I really can't stand the attitude of "if your computer can't run empires mod, you should just go fuck off... after all, it runs fine on my machine." If game developers had originally made games like that, we probably wouldn't even have PC gaming at all right now. People like that have no place on the development team.