Uhh....duh??

Hey Funcom....I really like this game. Alot....really I do. Which I why I'm still playing it.

Because to tell you the truth, if EQ, AC or DAoC had this much LAG I would have quit them without a word.

So I've been tearing apart your technical forum...trying to find a cure...and everything I've tried yields no results.

Your RECOMMENDED system specs are as follows:

Pentium II 450 256 Mb RAM 3D card with 32MB RAM, DirectX 8X CD-ROM drive 1GB free hard drive space Internet connection, 56K Modem

My current system specs are as follows

Pentium III 550 512 Mb of RAM, Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti 64MB RAM, Direct X 9, 52X DVD-ROM, and roughly 60gb free hard drive space, with a Wireless Broadband connection

Now, while my processor is by no means a super computer, it seems to exceed your games RECOMMENDED requirements by a whole VERSION of processor architecture and 150 mhz of processor capability.

I've even tried this game with clean installs of Win989SE and fresh installs of all the latest drivers for my hardware AND DX9.

And every time I play (and I play on Rimor too...I could barely MOVE on Atlantean) I lag...and its not internet lag...its not packet loss. Its hardware based.

I've met -one- person in AO that claims they never see any lag. This person has the good fortune to own a 2.0 ghz Pentium 4 computer with 1ghz of PC233 DDR RAM, and a Geforce 4 128 MB RAM video card.

Now, I don't mind a bit of lag here and there. I can stand low fps if the situation warrants it. But I walk around a corner in Rome Blue an if theres 3 people standing there....the whole game stutters and freezes for about 10 milliseconds while all the "lauded" armor skinning loads.

If I zone into a zone with alot of signs....I stutter and freeze for a random amount of time until all the visible textures load.

If I come out of a store, I freeze for 20 - 30 milliseconds while the WHOLE city reloads around me.

And GOD FORBID I might need to go to Omni-1 Trade. I might as well step into the Whompah...and then go make a sandwich. That zone takes at the LEAST 4 minutes to load every time I go into it. And then due to the density of the people at the Trade statue...even on Rimor...I stutter and freeze for another four minutes while everything "lauded" loads up.

Now. Color me stupid here if you like. Since I don't know your file formats...but after some investigation of the AO folder it seemed to me that theres absolutely NO folder with zones in it. Like I said, I don't know enough about your file structure, so its entirely possible that you've got 20 or 30 files in there with script information to let my computer build the geometry and then your server supplies the textures.

But to me...it seems like a MASSIVE bite could be taken out of the lag in the game if you allowed for texture caching.

That seems to be the biggest cause of hardware based lag in AO that I can identify, because every time I stutter and freeze, its because I've stepped out of a mission...or a sparsely populated store, and the game seems to be loading everything around me from scratch even though I was just in that area within at least an hour. And its always the worst in the cities...where the close buildings are cutting off MASSIVE parts of my view and should be REDUCING my video cards GPU processing load because it only has to draw what it can see.

I don't really understand this lag at all. Yes its alot better than the Open Beta was...because I gave that a shot and was horribly dissapointed when I did (cause back then AO really looked good). And lately, having grown tired of my EQ and DAoC accounts, I came back and found the game to be massively improved....but still plagued with this one annoying issue.

I bought this software, I didn't download it. As I said earlier, color me stupid...but I felt it was worth the risk. I've -never- had this kind of hardware based lag with any game I've bought that my system specs were in excess of its recommended specs.

And sure...I'll eventually upgrade my computer. But I shouldn't have to have a 2.0ghz processor to run a game thats supposedly best run on a 6 year old system spec. What I've got right now should handle it.

And this box ran Everquest just FINE...even after the Luclin expansion which was a major engine upgrade that alot of people couldn't use fully until about 18 patches later.

Not saying "FIX THIS NOW OR I QUIT", just saying there are some very well established ways of reducing these kind of performance hits and texture caching is the easiest way to do it. Yeah the first few times I hit zones it might be slow...but after I've been to them once...their loading times loading in, and just moving around in them will be alot easier because the textures will be resident locally out of memory...which at this time does not seem to be the case.

Anyone that tells ya they dont lag going into Tir, Trade, or NLC is bs'ing ya. Right now I dont believe there is a cure to the lag situation entering those areas. I have less lag at tower raids, and tara raids then I do entering those towns (believe it or not :( ).

My system specs are as follows if ya must know.

P4 1.5ghz
1 gig of good ole expensive pc800 mem
2 7200 rpm WD 80 gig drives w/ 2mb cache (of course since swap file is on C, AO is on D, that actually helps some)
SB Live 5.1 with latest drivers as of yesterday
Geforce 4 w/ 128 mem latest drivers as of yesterday
DX 9
Windows ME (more money edition) fully patched.
Cd-Rom drive doesnt matter, since you dont use it in game, thats just for installing.

The min reqs are usually for running the game with all the bells and whistles turned off and min res. I run with everything turned all the way up, but I can live with lag in only the 3 areas above.

Jagdtyger
Vampiira

Right but I didn't post their minimum reqs.

I posted their recommended reqs...which my system exceeds. My system far exceeds the minimum reqs.

And I agree with you on the lag...theres alot more of it in the cities than there is in populated outdoor regions. Which is absolutely absurd because in outdoor regions your video card can be stuck having to render everything out to the horizon...whereas in a city theres always buildings blocking your GPU's "view" of parts you can't see, thusly rendering them needless to draw til the player POV changes.

Unless of course Funcom is doing it the backwards way and not doing that....which would be absolutely absurd.

[B]
My current system specs are as follows

Pentium III 550 512 Mb of RAM, Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti 64MB RAM, Direct X 9, 52X DVD-ROM, and roughly 60gb free hard drive space, with a Wireless Broadband connection

Need a better processor to run ao man. I lag like hell on my 1 ghz labtop, I don't know how you could live with a PIII 550. :D


Now, while my processor is by no means a super computer, it seems to exceed your games RECOMMENDED requirements by a whole VERSION of processor architecture and 150 mhz of processor capability.

A whole version of processor architechture? To be honest, that doesn't mean much when looking at the Pentium line of processors. It just means they got tired with their name and changed it. :rolleyes:


I've even tried this game with clean installs of Win989SE and fresh installs of all the latest drivers for my hardware AND DX9.

DX9 wont really speed it up, it just has enhanced features that games can use.


I've met -one- person in AO that claims they never see any lag. This person has the good fortune to own a 2.0 ghz Pentium 4 computer with 1ghz of PC233 DDR RAM, and a Geforce 4 128 MB RAM video card.

1 ghz of RAM? lol =P


Now, I don't mind a bit of lag here and there. I can stand low fps if the situation warrants it. But I walk around a corner in Rome Blue an if theres 3 people standing there....the whole game stutters and freezes for about 10 milliseconds while all the "lauded" armor skinning loads.

I concur, I think the processor requirements are based assuming that no one else is playing AO. ;) Also, I assume you mean seconds? 10 millisecond frame-pauses would mean that you have 100 FPS. :D

If I zone into a zone with alot of signs....I stutter and freeze for a random amount of time until all the visible textures load.

I doubt it's the signs, it's just the polygons that you can't see that are probably being rendered.

If I come out of a store, I freeze for 20 - 30 milliseconds while the WHOLE city reloads around me.

I assume that in the term "milliseconds" you mean seconds right? And, of course, it has to reload - you zoned. The stores and the city is an entirely different zone, and therefore reloads.


Now. Color me stupid here if you like. Since I don't know your file formats...but after some investigation of the AO folder it seemed to me that theres absolutely NO folder with zones in it. Like I said, I don't know enough about your file structure, so its entirely possible that you've got 20 or 30 files in there with script information to let my computer build the geometry and then your server supplies the textures.

No. Check out \Anarchy Online\cd_image\data\db\resourcedatabase.dat

That's where they store all the info. You don't download a single texture from their servers. It's all from your computer. The computer is loading the zone, as in, building it.


But to me...it seems like a MASSIVE bite could be taken out of the lag in the game if you allowed for texture caching.

No. Do you have any idea how much RAM would be taken up? Even the store zone is probably dozens of megs in size. As I said, all the stuff is on your computer.

That seems to be the biggest cause of hardware based lag in AO that I can identify, because every time I stutter and freeze, its because I've stepped out of a mission...or a sparsely populated store, and the game seems to be loading everything around me from scratch even though I was just in that area within at least an hour. And its always the worst in the cities...where the close buildings are cutting off MASSIVE parts of my view and should be REDUCING my video cards GPU processing load because it only has to draw what it can see.

Let me say it AGAIN. ALL THE STUFF IS ON YOUR COMPUTER. What you're doing is ZONING. Your computer is clearing the old zone from your memory and crap while loading the new one. If you want to cache all the stuff in your RAM, fine, but it wont help much, being that A) It'd fill up your RAM in half a minute and B) your computer would still have to draw all the polygons and whatnot so it wouldn't speed it up that much, especially on your computer.


Anyway.. just thought I should let you know.

You can easily buy a crappy computer from some cheapo computer company (or ebay if you want to take the risk) for a few hundred bucks. Make sure it has a crappy video card but a motherboard compatable with your current card / ram and then pop it in to help speed it up and you aren't in for much of a loss as far as pocket money goes.

I'm not saying that AO doesn't have problems with graphical lag, but you have a few misconceptions I needed to straighten out. :D

~Chris

Hi Chris, I appreciate the fact that you cleared up a few misconceptions for me.

Mainly where the game resources were, because the rest of it was absolute crap. I build computers, I know what they do.

1...no game should be drawing unseen faces...thats just absolutely ridiculous. The advanced GPU architecture of the GF2 and above chips are designed to draw as POV changes, loading absolutely every face and texture in the zone is patently backwards in the face of todays graphics technology.

2...Your telling me that textures alone are going to fill up my memory? Need I remind you that textures are not 1 megabyte in size per texture? Need I remind you that on a huge buildling of nearly uniform gray I shouldn't need to load a new instance of that uniform gray texture into my memory for every face (Geez anyone thats EVER made BSP enviroments knows that)? Need I even bother mentioning that no game I've ever OWNED yet could fill 512 megs of RAM? Caching is not a process of long term storage but of short term storage. So if I've got 86 megabytes in textures (WHICH IS A WHOLE LOT OF TEXTURES) cached, thats got to be more than enough to texture all of Rome Blue at the very least.

3...You happily ignored the fact that this very same box with these very same specs ran Everquest:Shadows of Luclin, which is damn well known as one of the biggest lead balloon expansions in MMORPG history due to its incompatibility with the games PUBLISHED RECOMMENDED SPECS.

4...As far as stopwatching (digitally I suppose) the stutters and lags I haven't actually taken that much zeal to it. Some stutters are very slight and only last in the millisecond range (And I'm quite familiar with milliseconds, having been a twitch shooter for years I'm very good at seeing minute FPS changes) others are long drawn out processes that start the the entire character stopping moving....and end up with me stutter stepping into the nearest wall because I've lost control somewhere in the middle of all the loading.

5...Yes I will upgrade my computer (as stated), my issue is not the fact that I will upgrade...but the fact that the game, to the stated specifications, is untweakable for smooth play in the cities.

6...Oh and if you think the difference between a PIII and a PII is just the name you've got absolutely NO CLUE about hardware. 512 mb inline cache maybe? Hrrrm...I wonder if the PII had that....no. And thats just one slightly obvious difference that if you'd been building computers back when these processors were common place you'd know.

Sorry to flame back, but your tone really annoyed the leet piss out of me. Try to concieve, for a moment...that possibly...just possibly...someone other than yourself might be right on occasion.

Thanks for reading!

Megabio- I'm not so sure it'd take that much ram to texture the shops.

Sid Scheer- It might be the wireless internet? Or does that work well with everything else? As always turn down your settings, but I would really recommend a processor upgrade, at least into the 1 Ghz'es. Shouldn't be too costly unless you want to get a Pentium4... (hint-Athlon)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sid Scheer
6...Oh and if you think the difference between a PIII and a PII is just the name you've got absolutely NO CLUE about hardware. 512 mb inline cache maybe? Hrrrm...I wonder if the PII had that....no.

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Hmm... the PIII doesn't have a 512 MB inline cache, either. :p

Sorry, but if you're gonna flame someone, get your facts right.

So, let's go down the list:

1) Shouldn't? Sure, but that doesn't mean that FC coded it properly. It's pretty obvious to anyone who plays the game that their hidden surface removal code is problematic.

2) Yep. Look at how many textures are used ON EACH player's body. Add to that the number of textures used by the environment, and you've probably got (in a reasonably busy area) an easy 200-300 textures (a different texture for every sex/breed combo for each piece of armor, a different texture per weapon, etc., etc.). Even at a relatively conservative 333k per texture on average, that's giving somewhere between 70 and 100 MB of textures. Add to this game consumption (~100 MB off the bat, after an hour or two usually up to 200-400 MB), OS consumption (anywhere from 60 to 200 MB depending on system loadout and actual OS used - my XP setup usually hovers around 100 MB), and you've got pretty full memory.

3) I'll stay out of this one, as I never played EQ, but by now it should be obvious that AO doesn't adhere as well to its published specs as it ought.

4) I played FPSs for a long time as well (pretty much taking a break after competing hardcore in T2). Seriously, if you can get upset over 10-20 millisecond single glitches, you need to start a new genre of games, because MMOs are not FPSs; they will ALWAYS have glitch-lags like that. Longer glitches are a different story. Generally those are zone-loads, and could probably be minimized with a better coding technique.

6) I already addressed above, but might I suggest that if you don't realize that architectural differences between PIIs and PIIIs are minimal (FFS, you could use the same motherboard for both architectures in some cases!) then your flaming is a little bit unjustified.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Cronos
Megabio- I'm not so sure it'd take that much ram to texture the shops.

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Yes, I know, but it isn't so much the loading of the zone into the RAM as it is processing the polygons. More or less I ment dozens of megs for all the shops (omni/clan/neutral) and whatnot.

~Chris

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sid Scheer
3...You happily ignored the fact that this very same box with these very same specs ran Everquest:Shadows of Luclin, which is damn well known as one of the biggest lead balloon expansions in MMORPG history due to its incompatibility with the games PUBLISHED RECOMMENDED SPECS.

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It's also important to note that EQ still looks like it did in the 90's when it came out. You're comparing apples to oranges.