Bad frame rates....

Hey there,

I REALLY love this game. Played the first level, and fell in love on the spot. I have an aging 32 meg card (in my Rev A 15" imac), so I just turned all the graphics down to lowest to get the best framerates. With this type of game, the blocky style fits fine anyway. I got about 50-60 fps on level one.

I jump to level 2, and my framerates drop to 5-10 fps - with everything still at the lowest setting. Any reason why this might occur? It's unfortunate, I want to buy this game BAD, but the frame rates make it unplayable.

Make sure every other application except the finder has quit, and if it's still too slow then decrease the graphics quality settings.

He already decreased the graphics settings.

In any case, never play it in windowed mode. That, by far, is the biggest contributor to bad framerates I've found in the game, equaling at the difference between everything on high/med and low.

Outside of that, your only possibility is to get a better graphics card. Which if you're have a 32-bit card and an imac like mine, is kinda impossible... =(

This post has been edited by Phyvo : 03 April 2005 - 09:07 PM

On the collector and pattern buffer levels my frame rates have dropped to 10-15fps, on a DP 1.8 with Radeon 9800 graphics. Lowering detail settings has no effect.

The earlier levels play fine, up around the 40-50 fps mark on the highest settings.

Bnej, on Apr 3 2005, 10:05 PM, said:

On the collector and pattern buffer levels my frame rates have dropped to 10-15fps, on a DP 1.8 with Radeon 9800 graphics. Lowering detail settings has no effect.

The earlier levels play fine, up around the 40-50 fps mark on the highest settings.
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Wow - it just doesn't seem like this game should be taxing that much. The worlds aren't THAT big, and the graphics and polygons are simple enough. Perhaps it just hasn't been optimized as well as it could have been.

Too bad, I really would've loved to play this, but It just won't run well enough to make it enjoyable past level 1.

Make sure you aren't running any other applications.

Actually, have you gone to the "screen" set of options as well as the "graphics" set, and put everything there down as well?

I am beginning to think there is a serious flaw in this game. I understand that there is a lot of AI in the game, but when UT2004 runs decently and I can't even play darwinia. My specs are as follows:

1Ghz 12" Powerbook
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce FX

I am averaging 11 - 12 FPS on the second level with every graphics option turned off and the game being run immediately after a reboot.

It looks like the more complex the level, the more taxing on the CPU. THAT's what is slowing the game down so much, I don't think it's the graphics, since changing them doesn't drastically improve anything on level 2 or more, and since users with high system specs are getting the same slowdowns.

It's understandable, since there is so much going on in the AI dept, but unfortunate. I really wanted to play this game 😞

The game is rendering multiple fractals for the terrain and trees. It's running AI for hundreds of units. It's a very complex game under the hood.