Dwongrading Graphics

[bejebus]

Ive just started PlaneShift and am liking it thanks to a couple of really helpeful people. My PC is ok - 2.5Ghz 512mB RAM but my GPU is really letting me down.
The game is totally playable, but i would like  smoother gameplay in open areas.
My question is: How can i completely reduce the \'strain\' on my GPU? e.g. lower all graphics settings to their most basic - im not too orried how it looks.

After changing to what i thought would be the least demanding settings, the gameplay hasnt really improved. Here are the things i have changed so far:

Screen Res: 800x600
Screen Depth: 15bit
Vertex Buffer Object: Off
Stencil Threshold: 50
Antialiasing: 0
Antisitropy Filtering: 1.0
Multisample for quality: Unchecked
Texture Downsampling: 1/1

I can\'t remember my in game settings. I remember reading a sticky which gave some advice... so please don\'t slate me for not reading. If everyone just searched and found their answers, there would be no point in a forum - just an encyclopia of Q&As.

Thanks for any replies.

[steuben]

try 16 or 32 for your colour depth. iirc ps doesn\'t work well with 15 bit. odd but true.

If everyone just searched and found their answers, there would be no point in a forum - just an encyclopia of Q&As.

 
you say it like it bad thing.

[Nilrem]

Mmm
there have been advices about running the game in 32 bit mode, rather than in other one.
If that doesn\'t improve your gaming experience, you\'d try moving the texture downsampling a little, and see if that helps.
Also, if you\'d post what your graphic card is, would allow to know if it\'s really the weak point of your system or perhaps you could try with updated drivers to see if that smooths the game.

Also keep in mind that the engine that the game uses (CS=Crystal Space) isn\'t perfectly optimized, so it has memory flaws and all that tend to make the game lag in crowded places or with lots of labels to render (label rendering range has been limited on the next version.)

[bejebus]

Well its not really even a graphics card... i have intergrated intel extreme graphics 2. And unbenown to me, Dell decided i wouldn\'t need a PCI-e or AGP slot. I\'m looking into a PCI grpahics card but frankly it might be worth getting a new mobo.

I cannot lower the texture downsampling from 1.

you say it like it bad thing.

I think it would be, a commuinity is a useful thing. Especially if this is pre alpha testing and needs alot of feedback.

Tahnks for all replies.

[Cherppow]

Greetings,

Hmm, I get these small \"loading stops\" whenever new graphics appear, and reducing detail doesn\'t seem to affect that. I don\'t remember them from before, don\'t know when or why they appeared.

However, if you get continuous low fps, you can try following:

In setup program:
-Use the \"Other\" resolution to degrade game resolution to eg. 640x480.
-Move texture downsampling up eg. to 1/4 to reduce texture size.
-Toggle colour settings (like mentioned by Nilrem and steuben)

In PlaneShift options window:
- Turn camera adaptive distance on. You can toggle the settings there.

I hope some of this helps.

[Nilrem]

Those loading stops you\'re referring to happen when players & npc chars are loaded, wired_crawler made a guessing about them not being cached in memory (details in the BT) to explain about that ralentization. It happens some times that those \"hangs\" don\'t occur, thus empty areas are seen (no npc nor players, while they in fact are there) normally /unstick solves this, returning you to your \"good\" last position, so you reenter the \"zone\" and you\'ve some chances to load correctly the NPC and players.
I don\'t know how it works, but it could be a corrupted/lost packet that causes that.

Anyway bejebus said he was unable to move the texture downsampler slider. There have been some bad reports of performance with embedded system graphic cards, so, given the current specifications that the game demands to run more or less smoothly, I guess he can be proud of the smooth he gets. Perhaps what he thinks is a flaw of his system is a common flaw, none of us runs the game totally \"smooth\".

To sum up, it works reasonably well -> Don\'t touch it.

[bejebus]

Ok thanks for everyones help. I was actually quite impressed with the way my graphics card could handle this game and was just curious if i could ditch good looks for total smoothness. But if everyone - or atleast evryone without the god of pcs - gets this then im happy.

Thanks for replies.

[zanzibar]

Definately use 32 bit.  16 bit is buggy.