Speed issues on Yard Level

Andcarne, on May 21 2005, 08:17 AM, said:

The update is coming soon, but a couple last minute issues are cropping up. All I can say is to hold on, and we're sorry it's taking this long.
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Well, better late and better as early and still buggy. I'll wait for my review at MacUpdate/MacGamefiles a little longer then.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Stupid question, but does Darwinia take advantage of a G4's altivec?

Because the game runs slightly better on my G3 900mhz ibook than it does on my Dual G4 tower with twice as much ram (though the G4 tower has 867mhz CPUs, so the ibook is technically faster). The G4 tower also creams the ibook in video capability, a 9800pro in the tower, and a measly AGP2x radeon 7500 in the ibook....

AND, if I minimize out of the game really fast, the CPU meter in my menubar isn't anywhere near full (whereas on my laptop its VERY solid). (I have it set as a graph, when the CPUs are under heavy load, the graph is a solid block of blue...but with darwinia the processors on my G4 tower aren't doing all that much (less than half of the graph).

Thats very strange. It might be some sort of load balancing issues in OS X due to the multiple processors. I'll try to run some tests of my own here, and point it out to the devs.

As far as I know, load balancing and Altivec usage is implemented by the OS and the compiler, respectively, although I know little about either.

How do we contact the management to let them know just how disapointed we are that they forced the release of a product when there were known major bugs (I want to be sure to contact the right people, since this was a joint effort between two companies)? I think if enough of us complained directly to them perhaps they'd think twice about tarnishing the reputation of the company. I have honestly lost a lot of respect for Ambrosia SW over this. They may have made up losing my registration for EV Override by porting it for free into EV Nova, but releasing a product this buggy this is unexcusable.

The 'management' isn't crazy, they read these forums, no doubt. So yes, our complains probably have been picked up for a long time already.

I wonder why they don't mention any of this stuff on their site. This is still tricking people into a not-working-as-advertised purchase, which I think is a crime. Just mention it and say there is being worked on an update, it isn't that hard is it? Yes, you'll lose purchases until then, but I think I never, ever register an Ambrosia product again without knowing for sure it works. Same goes for Aspyr (BloodRayne, etc?) already. Not very tactical to waste a 15 year reputation like this, it was the reputation that made me register this game... Oh well.

I just couldn't stand it... I HAD to finish Pattern Buffer, regardless of the crappy frame rate. The FPS actually increased enough so as to allow decent play as progress was made - it seems that as the quantity of red Darwinians lessened in appearance, the speedier and more efficient the FPS became. By the time the Pattern Buffer had been completely controlled by the little green guys (i.e. no more "red scares"), the FPS was fairly fluid - still not 100%, but much better than 1 FPS for minutes at a time.

It may have also helped that, in addition to lowering all sound, graphic quality, buffer, and sound memory settings to low, as well as turning off the "help" option, a resolution of 800x600 and set to "windowed" was made in options. However, this last bit was done simultaneous to "red scares" becoming less frequent, so difficult to tell which was most helpful.

Onward and upward..!? Seems Escort will be fairly easy, and then... biosphere? Hope the FPS continues relatively unencumbered!

Looking forward to the patch... I hope it works well for 10.2.8 w/ dual 867's, not just the new G5s..!

Peace,
Homo

So the main point here seems to be that the AI consumes the processor at the point of going very slow or even crashing ? Seems like a freaky demanding algorithm here...

I figured out the crash I was getting on the Yard level, and finally beat it.

Apparently the game crashes if it produces too many armor units, and the new ones have no where to go. The solution is to continually move new armor units away to random locations, even if you don't actually use them.

Lindley, on Jun 6 2005, 03:36 PM, said:

I figured out the crash I was getting on the Yard level, and finally beat it.

Apparently the game crashes if it produces too many armor units, and the new ones have no where to go. The solution is to continually move new armor units away to random locations, even if you don't actually use them.
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Indeed, this is a known issue and has been addressed in the Windows and Linux patches, so it should be addressed in the Mac patch as well. It has something to do with armour collisions.

xander

Leen, on May 24 2005, 06:38 PM, said:

I wonder why they don't mention any of this stuff on their site. This is still tricking people into a not-working-as-advertised purchase, which I think is a crime.
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ah... now this might become an interesting question if the patch won't come any time soon - as often promised on this forum.