frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Yes, it does ... there used to be a mod/hack around that let you see into the black because it simply lightened the shade of the black. Everything in the fog is being rendered.
Modding to increase performance
- Thread starter Buck_Nekkid
- Start date
Yes, it does ... there used to be a mod/hack around that let you see into the black because it simply lightened the shade of the black. Everything in the fog is being rendered.
phungus420
Deity
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2003
- Messages
- 6,296
Now that I don't think is true. There are cases where broken Art wol't crash when it's in the fog of war, but will crash when it's visible. But I'm pretty sure anything that's visible is rendered, whether on the screen or not. At least it sure seems this way, and performance and stability issues behaves like it is regardless.
At first glance that seems really wasteful of resources, then I realized that I can scroll my map smoothly and quickly once the turn ends AND I play multiplayer where all of us need our own areas rendered every turn. I guess it probably is beneficial or even necessary. Darnit!
Abraxis
☮
Well, okay, that sucks, but i guess it might be necessary.
But even so, how can this effect turn time enough that our graphics cards are the weakest link? I mean, moving things around that are already rendered shouldn't take much if any of the Graphics Card's RAM.
Maybe just the amount of new units and buildings popping up on all the AI's turns that need to be rendered? Could that really be what's slowing everything down?
Afforess
The White Wizard
Zappara already thought of this. Load the No buildings graphics module from the "Unloaded Modules" folder. It removes all the buildings graphics from cities, but should improve performance.
im actually playing civ now on an OCZ vertex SSD drive and i have to say it has sped up the turn times. I wouldnt have thought it, but there seems to be lots of texture loading going on with civ even on my 512MB 9600GT OC GPU. im wondering just how efficient their texture caching is.
also last night i left up process explorer, a windows task manager replacement, up and running showing all 4 cores and memory on my 2nd monitor while playing civ full screen on my main monitor. clearly i could see it utilizing most of 2 cores, hitting almost 48% sometimes though usually at around 33-35% CPU usage with about 2.6GB ram usage.
im wondering if my windows 7 64bit install is helping to offload certain tasks like video from the main game thread to help out.
also last night i left up process explorer, a windows task manager replacement, up and running showing all 4 cores and memory on my 2nd monitor while playing civ full screen on my main monitor. clearly i could see it utilizing most of 2 cores, hitting almost 48% sometimes though usually at around 33-35% CPU usage with about 2.6GB ram usage.
im wondering if my windows 7 64bit install is helping to offload certain tasks like video from the main game thread to help out.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Now THAT is an interesting idea. Is it just xml? ROM isn't really my cup of tea, but I wouldn't mind borrowing this idea. I find actually that there are alot of buildings that, in the later stages of the game, tend to just clutter up the city and obscure (or get obscured by) wonders or some of the larger improvements. I wouldn't mind removing the graphics for just some of the basic buildings like granaries and barracks and such, but it's not important enough to me if it's more than something like <NIF/>.
Afforess
The White Wizard
That's pretty much what it does. The files read <NIF>Art/Empty.nif</NIF>
and the empty.nif is among BtS files. Final Frontier mod uses it the same way as this module.
darkedone02
The Suggestor
i wish sid meier's added multi-core support for civ 4 on the latest patch... seriously, i see no difference between my computer and my father's brand spakin new state-of-the-art powerhouse computer.
my computer has:
Intel pentium 4 processor 3.00 GHz
2 GB of Ram
Windows vista 32 bit home premium
ATI Radeon X1300 512mb.
now my father's new computer:
Athlon X2 II 866 Black Edition Quad Core 1.86 GHz
ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB
8 GB of Ram, i think all of them are DDR3
Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium.
Seriously, i hate lag... even the slightest bit of it make me get irritated... I want a steady performance like i have when i start the game, no lag, 5 second turn completion, and all that, and i thought my father computer give me that, until i discovered that multi-core is not supported, therefore I still get the same performance on my computer. WHAT AN EPIC FAILURE
.
my computer has:
Intel pentium 4 processor 3.00 GHz
2 GB of Ram
Windows vista 32 bit home premium
ATI Radeon X1300 512mb.
now my father's new computer:
Athlon X2 II 866 Black Edition Quad Core 1.86 GHz
ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB
8 GB of Ram, i think all of them are DDR3
Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium.
Seriously, i hate lag... even the slightest bit of it make me get irritated... I want a steady performance like i have when i start the game, no lag, 5 second turn completion, and all that, and i thought my father computer give me that, until i discovered that multi-core is not supported, therefore I still get the same performance on my computer. WHAT AN EPIC FAILURE
.
It's a rapidly ageing game, you know. It's like complaining that complaining that Morrowind runs off your CPU rather than your graphics card and expecting them to change it. I'm sure that certain things can't be changed and maybe this is one of them. If it's such an "epic" failure, why not do it yourself?
I think there is little doubt that civ 5 will run on multicore. and afaik they are working on it now, so to expect them to put more into civ4 is , well, best desribed by arakhor.
However I do understand your disappointment darkdone2. If I went out to buy a brand new computer for playing civ4 (which btw is the only game I played for a long time) only to discover it wasnt any faster than the one I already had, I too would
You can just be happy that your dad bought the computer, so no money in it for you
(and your dad can be happy that you wont sit all day playing civ4 on his computer)
However I do understand your disappointment darkdone2. If I went out to buy a brand new computer for playing civ4 (which btw is the only game I played for a long time) only to discover it wasnt any faster than the one I already had, I too would
You can just be happy that your dad bought the computer, so no money in it for you
(and your dad can be happy that you wont sit all day playing civ4 on his computer
)
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
I have been testing, testing, testing and more testing lately, and from what i found out so far is that the more you put into the modular files the more performance problems you get. So i have been moving the modular stuff into the regular game and it seems to get some better performance, but some is better than none. I would recommend not more than six files go into the modular area. But again this is just me.
Infact i put alot of the modules from the modmod area in and i USED to get to the end of the Industrial era before lag time started but now it starts about half way thru the era. This is on High by the way. But then i noticed it didnt even matter if i put it all the way to low from then on, i got tons and tons of RunTime errors.
I have the 3GB change i even had to reduce it to 2400. And i still get them. I have static LH's in the game, NBG also. But still same problems.
I started with 17 civs, now i am down to 7 civs and it STILL gives me lots of Runtime errors. I even razed all the building to make more room, it didnt matter.
I have an OLD puter with a junky X1300 ATI card, no Express either just the old AGP stuff.
EDIT: OK i am down to just 4 civs and i STILL get Runtime errors and i have RAZED 1/2 of the cities i conquered.
Also i have noticed that the Assault Mech acts very weird, on Low Graphics and adds to almost ALL the other units from Next War???
Infact i put alot of the modules from the modmod area in and i USED to get to the end of the Industrial era before lag time started but now it starts about half way thru the era. This is on High by the way. But then i noticed it didnt even matter if i put it all the way to low from then on, i got tons and tons of RunTime errors.
I have the 3GB change i even had to reduce it to 2400. And i still get them. I have static LH's in the game, NBG also. But still same problems.
I started with 17 civs, now i am down to 7 civs and it STILL gives me lots of Runtime errors. I even razed all the building to make more room, it didnt matter.
I have an OLD puter with a junky X1300 ATI card, no Express either just the old AGP stuff.
EDIT: OK i am down to just 4 civs and i STILL get Runtime errors and i have RAZED 1/2 of the cities i conquered.
Also i have noticed that the Assault Mech acts very weird, on Low Graphics and adds to almost ALL the other units from Next War???
i apologize for not having a good dll or more script evidence of things, but performance is becoming a huge stopper for a lot of us die hard RoM fans... "mamas don't let their babies grow up to play CIV vanilla..."
(1) do we still need to install NoBuildingGraphicsModule.zip or is this automatically included in ver 2.7? is this in the CTR-ALT-O tabs? i ask this because as you all go for a better performance tweaking on RoM is there a single location for all "down turning" settings, so that the end user doesn't have to go to an unzip of a supplementary fix like NoBuilding? e.g. having this show up automatically tweaked gives the assurance that at least it has been installed...
(2) does uninstalling the whole game and reinstalling it help? does reformatting or even defrag help? i cannot find an official modders thread on recommended performance settings for the end user...
(3) personally i took my 2.0 GB WinXP Pro and added another 2.0 to get that 3.2Gb max push from the 32bit OS and i see a significant change (using the Performance Monitor off my Logitech Keyboard, ooooh LCD panel ooooh) i saw a usual game peak of RAM usage around 91% or more go down to no more than 55% or so... just on the 1.2Gb increase. i tried and subsequently removed all those attempts at "/3GB /USERVA=" type tags as it blocked the boot.ini from ever working and frankly we are talking physical memory on a 32bit OS anyway... So RAM does effect the game!
(4) Crashes to me may have had a correlation with the NVidia driver version I was using/not using. reading the BSOD dmp files i found a NV4_mini.sys tag that made me think video was the problem here... i upgraded the NVidia to 190.62 and haven't had any video related CTDs or BSODs... i also messed with the check mark options for Video setting and not the drop down ones (think Lower Terrain Texture tweaks as opposed to Anti-Alias lowering to 0). so far all of this has helped. now on a solo reboot of the game that cause me all the BSOD headaches, i could not manufacture the same errors. the only time i had an error it was a CTD from going to a zoom out globe view and massively clicking all over the planet view. a lot of multiplayer errors would appear to come from same geo-positional game play -- imagine dozens of AI units and human units all being moved in the same location on the planet... even though the AI turn is over (lower right corner shows turn finished) you will still see his units moving. to me this shows a delay in the graphics displaying units and the core programming that has determined their turn has ended.
(5) Folks with Vista/7 seem to be most irritated. by the preceding posts i see the more powerful the rig does not mean a better performance (and a mixed review on multi core is very interesting). are Administrator rights causing a dysfunctional game within CIV itself? WIN2K ad WINXP folks are always having an easier install and workings of mods. Do you guys have any evidence of better Vista/7 performance when someone installs outside the Program Files default location? From World of Warcraft advice they go with "...from all that I have read, if WOW is installed in your program files folder, it can cause problems with Windows Vista because of some caching that can mess it up." Do you guys think CIV caching in Vista/7 is a major reason why those OSs cannot handle CIV RoM as well as 2K/XP?
(6) why no paypal? get a little greedy, i know it looks puss to put out that paypal thing but what if you bank a dime an hour for all you coding time? this CIV is more of a hobby than just entertainment... i started in the IT business twenty years ago because of having to tweak every game to make it work (thank god the highmem and other issues have changed into UAC of modern times <sarcasm>). So in order to work on CIV RoM errors i have learned a good college semester of RAM knowledge, VISTA prep work, and other technically tidbits... and also RoM is why now i have moved my alcohol into my computer room (Wine on Top, Hard Liquor on bottom -- glasses in between).
(1) do we still need to install NoBuildingGraphicsModule.zip or is this automatically included in ver 2.7? is this in the CTR-ALT-O tabs? i ask this because as you all go for a better performance tweaking on RoM is there a single location for all "down turning" settings, so that the end user doesn't have to go to an unzip of a supplementary fix like NoBuilding? e.g. having this show up automatically tweaked gives the assurance that at least it has been installed...
(2) does uninstalling the whole game and reinstalling it help? does reformatting or even defrag help? i cannot find an official modders thread on recommended performance settings for the end user...
(3) personally i took my 2.0 GB WinXP Pro and added another 2.0 to get that 3.2Gb max push from the 32bit OS and i see a significant change (using the Performance Monitor off my Logitech Keyboard, ooooh LCD panel ooooh) i saw a usual game peak of RAM usage around 91% or more go down to no more than 55% or so... just on the 1.2Gb increase. i tried and subsequently removed all those attempts at "/3GB /USERVA=" type tags as it blocked the boot.ini from ever working and frankly we are talking physical memory on a 32bit OS anyway... So RAM does effect the game!
(4) Crashes to me may have had a correlation with the NVidia driver version I was using/not using. reading the BSOD dmp files i found a NV4_mini.sys tag that made me think video was the problem here... i upgraded the NVidia to 190.62 and haven't had any video related CTDs or BSODs... i also messed with the check mark options for Video setting and not the drop down ones (think Lower Terrain Texture tweaks as opposed to Anti-Alias lowering to 0). so far all of this has helped. now on a solo reboot of the game that cause me all the BSOD headaches, i could not manufacture the same errors. the only time i had an error it was a CTD from going to a zoom out globe view and massively clicking all over the planet view. a lot of multiplayer errors would appear to come from same geo-positional game play -- imagine dozens of AI units and human units all being moved in the same location on the planet... even though the AI turn is over (lower right corner shows turn finished) you will still see his units moving. to me this shows a delay in the graphics displaying units and the core programming that has determined their turn has ended.
(5) Folks with Vista/7 seem to be most irritated. by the preceding posts i see the more powerful the rig does not mean a better performance (and a mixed review on multi core is very interesting). are Administrator rights causing a dysfunctional game within CIV itself? WIN2K ad WINXP folks are always having an easier install and workings of mods. Do you guys have any evidence of better Vista/7 performance when someone installs outside the Program Files default location? From World of Warcraft advice they go with "...from all that I have read, if WOW is installed in your program files folder, it can cause problems with Windows Vista because of some caching that can mess it up." Do you guys think CIV caching in Vista/7 is a major reason why those OSs cannot handle CIV RoM as well as 2K/XP?
(6) why no paypal? get a little greedy, i know it looks puss to put out that paypal thing but what if you bank a dime an hour for all you coding time? this CIV is more of a hobby than just entertainment... i started in the IT business twenty years ago because of having to tweak every game to make it work (thank god the highmem and other issues have changed into UAC of modern times <sarcasm>). So in order to work on CIV RoM errors i have learned a good college semester of RAM knowledge, VISTA prep work, and other technically tidbits... and also RoM is why now i have moved my alcohol into my computer room (Wine on Top, Hard Liquor on bottom -- glasses in between).
Yeah Munky, I upgraded my whole computer, trying to optimize for ROM without paying too much. I find that 4 gigs of RAM, a good video card with 512 MB RAM and a decent 3 gig single core processor helped a lot. I think the video is part of it... multiplayer we hypothesize that part of our lag problem at the end of turns is the sorting out of massive amount of AI moves, etc. We were on a Huge map and had to give up and are starting our next game on Large.
That reminds me I need to move a few things in my unloaded modules - static leader heads and no buildings graphics if I remember right. My computer is still the slow down one on the multiplayer games, but I love the farthest away and have the slowest net connection, so thinking that might be a big part of it.
We are not having a lot of trouble with crashes or OOS, but we also aren't getting into the modern age either. There's some custom modding going on messing with governments to make everything more interesting (harder if you ask me!) and we are running with Rev on atm having toned it down to let the AI have a lot less trouble with it and the humans a bit less. Our OOS tends to happen when someone first goes to war and starts a battle. Later battles seem less likely to cause this, but I haven't seen an OOS unless someone is at war (usually one or more of the players). Losing or taking a city often causes OOS.
Performance is an issue - this is the only real reason to play BTS and it can be a bummer when the game gets unplayable due to performance issues. I can't really justify getting a computer like Zapparas just to play CIV!
I find that 4 gigs of RAM, a good video card with 512 MB RAM and a decent 3 gig single core processor helped a lot. I think the video is part of it... multiplayer we hypothesize that part of our lag problem at the end of turns is the sorting out of massive amount of AI moves, etc. We were on a Huge map and had to give up and are starting our next game on Large. That reminds me I need to move a few things in my unloaded modules - static leader heads and no buildings graphics if I remember right. My computer is still the slow down one on the multiplayer games, but I love the farthest away and have the slowest net connection, so thinking that might be a big part of it.
We are not having a lot of trouble with crashes or OOS, but we also aren't getting into the modern age either. There's some custom modding going on messing with governments to make everything more interesting (harder if you ask me!) and we are running with Rev on atm having toned it down to let the AI have a lot less trouble with it and the humans a bit less. Our OOS tends to happen when someone first goes to war and starts a battle. Later battles seem less likely to cause this, but I haven't seen an OOS unless someone is at war (usually one or more of the players). Losing or taking a city often causes OOS.
Performance is an issue - this is the only real reason to play BTS and it can be a bummer when the game gets unplayable due to performance issues. I can't really justify getting a computer like Zapparas just to play CIV!
Yeah Munky, I upgraded my whole computer, trying to optimize for ROM without paying too much.
That reminds me I need to move a few things in my unloaded modules - static leader heads and no buildings graphics if I remember right. My computer is still the slow down one on the multiplayer games, but I love the farthest away and have the slowest net connection, so thinking that might be a big part of it.
We are not having a lot of trouble with crashes or OOS, but we also aren't getting into the modern age either. There's some custom modding going on messing with governments to make everything more interesting (harder if you ask me!) and we are running with Rev on atm having toned it down to let the AI have a lot less trouble with it and the humans a bit less. Our OOS tends to happen when someone first goes to war and starts a battle. Later battles seem less likely to cause this, but I haven't seen an OOS unless someone is at war (usually one or more of the players). Losing or taking a city often causes OOS.
Performance is an issue - this is the only real reason to play BTS and it can be a bummer when the game gets unplayable due to performance issues. I can't really justify getting a computer like Zapparas just to play CIV!
regarding ISP lag check out your upload/download speeds at http://speedtest.net/. i am 16/10 which should be good but from experience there are things like "hops" that can add to it all... in theory a run of traceroute or pathping could tell you if your multiplayer games are going through too many routes to their target, solution near impossible regardless of findings... in theory a problem with ISP traffic should result in an OOS mostly? or a disconnect from game, which is mostly the least problematic event in multiplayer (although we have found upon reconnects sometimes the city build queues are all blank and do not show up in the normal alert rotation).
i messed with my .ini file and got nothing but OOS errors until (stupid me not backing it up, although in defense i changed one item and unchanged it later) a reinstall. i would think people in this thread would like to see a success tracking for multiplayer performance based upon a one by one by one modmod add/remove. we dont play revolution nor barbarian out of CTD fear (could this have a reverse effect, think about it, maybe not having those modmods could cause CTDs?).
but right now the problem has shifted to my buddy's high end rig. he gets CTDs all the time, and we just have the active player wait for the other player to join but this in itself may not flush the problems away... ?
it simply could be VISTA. i want to hear from someone using VISTA/7 that installed to a non default directory...
Interestingly... for a time most of our OOS problems were one of our friends and his wife sharing a router. Then my husband joined a few games and he and I, also sharing a router got all the OOS problems. I'd love to know if there is a chance of router settings affecting the OOS through dropped packets or??? just some interference in the traffic? Or is it more likely to be the route - forgot about using a traceroute and we're going across the country.
Crash to desktop doesn't seem to be a problem except in leaving games or loading a game while I am playing a single player game without going out to the menu.
Crash to desktop doesn't seem to be a problem except in leaving games or loading a game while I am playing a single player game without going out to the menu.
is your friend and wife playing through gamespy or through DirectIP? curious...
on prior versions of RoM we got OOS on every LAN hookup, in theory that is sharing a same router albeit internally (no public IP address involved). we havent tried since.
there is a thread on router port forwarding that helped us shed the awful gamespy game hub [see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146735 but more useful is specific router model numbers entered into google with the catch phrase "port forwarding" -- plus using www.whatismyip.com/ which meant i did not need a static ip address in order to broadcast my IP]. directIP has opened the whole multiplayer back up for us in RoM. i cannot think of how to take two local IP addresses and translate them both to individual static public IP addresses in a sense that CIV would benefit. somewhere there is a Cisco engineer shaking his head at my ignorance...
so there are two folks on one IP address playing another two folks on another one IP address? so let me guess that the OOS issues come from not your same house playing partner but rather from one of the remote dual players? when the OOS message pops up you see which player is the culprit being different in their OOS number? i would reason it is most likely one of the remote users? since i am in a techy geeky mood i want to check this out, let me know your router and model number (i dont think this is a security risk but just in case rethink this and/or make sure you dont have default login settings for it - or private IM, or pass on it!). between DMZ and NAT there is something out there that can trip this... what would a Proxy Server do, that kind of thing.
i always have to quit to desktop going from any one RoM game to another.
hey i just realized we were talking windmills on the 2.8 idea thread!
[edit -- i cannot recommend enough using TEAMSPEAK rather than internal civ controlled VoIP, we use it all the time and if you use the http://teamspeak.com/?page=getstarted link you never have to pay a dime, or a male lyrebird dancing 10 cent australian coin]
Ok, our host is one computer in MI on a network (not a problem unless someone is streaming video on another computer. Ooops!!), in SC there is a couple sharing a network that joins and here, in WA state (all USA) there is me and sometimes my husband on our network. We use the IP connection. It didn't work very well when the friend that plays with his wife wanted to host it though. He could start a game, but we couldn't rejoin when it was exited and restarted.
So, we are already using the direct IP method and pretty successfully. We we do start to get OOS, its later in the game, usually involving a battle or the loss of a city and usually if one person on a network is OOS, the other one is too. So, if I'm OOS, my husband will be for instance. Or if one of the couple on SC is, the other will be.
I don't remember how my husband's computer is set up, I go DMZ when I play. Not sure if I need to, but it's easy and I don't really understand routers that well. I don't know my new router very well, though it seems to help a bit. Can I PM you with the details?
We communicate on the phone, most of us have long distance plans so it doesn't cost us.
So, we are already using the direct IP method and pretty successfully. We we do start to get OOS, its later in the game, usually involving a battle or the loss of a city and usually if one person on a network is OOS, the other one is too. So, if I'm OOS, my husband will be for instance. Or if one of the couple on SC is, the other will be.
I don't remember how my husband's computer is set up, I go DMZ when I play. Not sure if I need to, but it's easy and I don't really understand routers that well. I don't know my new router very well, though it seems to help a bit. Can I PM you with the details?
We communicate on the phone, most of us have long distance plans so it doesn't cost us.
