Live Update (06.14.2006)

[AmonGwareth]

Completely understandable. digging through my prefs some more I came across some additional items to check. These are in the ClientPrefs_Main.def which is in your individual character folder.

bool agfDiag = false
bool agfCompressVerts = true
bool agfConvertTest = false
bool convertIGBToAGF = false
bool aghConvertTest = false
bool updateAGHFiles = true
bool convertAGHDDS = true
bool ddsHighQuality = false
bool useAGH = true
int aghProxySize = 64

Good luck!

[Seranthor]

Fireclaw, just for my understanding, when did this problem begin? was it happening before the pref file change patch, or did it start afterwards?

[Fireclaw]

The problems I've had with inadequate framerates and "drawing in" of objects and tiles while I watch?

No, this isn't a recent problem. I've had these problems since I got the game nearly 2 years ago and 4 days after it went live. The problems are just more noticeable to me now because it is no longer possible to avoid towns and plots because they are all over the place and so built up.

[Dhalin]

Hmmm, have you tried running the default settings to see if your FPS goes up? I have a fairly weaker computer than you have:

1.4Ghz Sempron
N-Force3 motherboard (DFI Lanparty 250g to be exact)
1GB RAM
256MB GeForce 6600
On-Board Sound (I forget which type of sound)

And I get 40-50fps out in ther wildnerness and I get 15-20fps in the middle of NT after recalling/teleporting there for a few min until everything loads up. My settings:

Resolution: 1024x768
Everything else Default Settings

What you might want to make sure, Fireclaw, is that you don't have nothing stupid like Adware running in the background. I know McAfee and Norton claims to do all of these checks and all, but from what I've found out, they miss a lot of adware and other malicious crap running on the computer. You might wanna try prograbs like Spybot Seek and Destroy (I think that's the name of it), or Ad-aware to try and nuke some of this stuff running in the background if you haven't already.

There's no reason why a 2GB RAM Pentium4 should not run this game 30+ fps with decent graphics settings. There's gotta be something else wrong. Do you own a factory-make like Compaq or Dell? From my experiences they load a lot more programs to run on them than Just an AV and/or mouse software.

Also, what type of motherboard do you have? What's the brand of chipsets (north and southbridge) does it have? Please tell me its not a VIA-based board, I've had very crappy experiences with VIA in the past, and I refuse to buy anything with VIA on it in the future.

--Dhalin

[Seranthor]

Dhalin are your observations current, or are they from before the last patches?

[Dhalin]

I was in-game just 10 minutes ago. I averaged 40-60 FPS (it peaked at 64.8 FPS for 10+ sec in a row even) while walking from Dralk to the Hermit, and while I was visiting the Pool of Teeth, I fought a couple ghosts and I was getting 30-40FPS there too. Occaisonally, like once per 3-5 min, I'll get a 1-2sec pause where my FPS will drop to the teens, but it only lasts a sec or two and does little other than mess up the sound for a second.

Though I will have to admit, I'm starting to see LOTS of sound errors since that last patch. When I killed the first ghost (I killed it within 3 seconds, with gold rage) the battle music continued to play long after the ghost was dead. In fact, I killed the ghost, sat in the pool of teeth and halfway back to where the entrance pad was, the music was STILL playing until I killed another ghost.

Also, when I ported to Chiconis, all 3-4 different "Chiconis" tracks would play 5 sec, choose another track, play 5 sec, choose another track until it finally decided on which track to play. Also, last night, while trying to kill Kaa the Shade, an ambience (or a spell effect) played repeatedly over and over and over again the entire night. When we Finally got done, and I ported back to Dralk, it was still playing non-stop loop. Even when I closed the game down, it was STILL playing when I was looking at my desktop until the game was fully terminated.

--Dhalin

[Justa Mirage]

I am getting sound errors too.... battle music playing after the battle is over and won't turn off... even after porting, and it played after I logged off and was waiting for it to do its game ending cleanup.

Then it went into the ever familiar 1/2 second skip playing the "I've locked up" repeat a note.

[Fireclaw]

I tried lowering the max texture size as Amon sugggested, but I noticed no difference in performance. My files were already set with the other settings Amon suggested.

Dhalin: Yes running the game at everything at default settings does speed it up. At those settings I do see 40+ fps in the countryside and at least 10 fps in towns. Unfortunately, at the default settings the view distance is extremely short - maybe 5-10%. With such a short view distance I feel like I'm playing a 15 year old game and I have trouble navigating. And even then, I still don't see smooth framerates in town.

I have an up-to-date adware checker which I run daily. The performance problems I've had with Horizons have been pervasive. Even occuring when I've installed Horizons onto a completely pristine reformatted harddrive right after doing a fresh system install.

My motherboard is a cheap one. Its an ECS 848P-A rev. 2.0. Its the third motherboard that I've tried running Horizons on (when I upgrade my CPU I also get a new motherboard).

[Ophelea]

Fireclaw,

HAVE you submitted a ticket? (not to sound like a broken record)

But Reyem is more qualified than anyone on the forums to work with you. Until you can work with him, it's all guesswork on our part.

[Fireclaw]

Yes, I submitted a ticket.

[Reyem TG]

Fireclaw,
Right Click desktop and select properties
Select Settings tab
Click Advanced
Select GeForce xxx tab (where xxx is your video card name)
A flyout will appear - Select Performance and Quality settings
Move Image Settings slider to the middle for balanced performance
-Reyem

[Drac-Terrak]

Two macro's I used to use before all of the patching and improvements was around initial release were...

/setpref loaddist 50
/setpref fogenddist 50

When I teleport or travel through a city I used these settings. It cuts the lag dramatically and removes almost all of the port time. When I'm ready to hunt, craft and or scout I go back to...

/setpref loaddist 450
/setpref fogenddist 450

Which are my normal play settings.

I know this isn't start and play nor does it fix the problem at hand, but it helps. I use these macro's today. I have an older machine and if I upgraded I'd probably game more so I stick to my old Dimensions P4. 2.2Ghz, 1GB, GeForce 6200 PCI 256MB.

[Fireclaw]

Thank you Reyem. However, I already had the slider in the video drivers set all the way to the left to "max performance". I'll try moving it closer to the center and see if I notice a difference. Whether it works or not, thank you for your assistance.

Drac Terrek: yes I still have hotkeys in my ui for different view distances. However, I have avoided touching them because cranking the view distance up from a low view distance tended to produce a lot of "drawing in" where terrain tiles and objects would draw in when they were well within visible range instead of hidden within the fog. It looked very weird to be flying along with empty white squares ahead with a few buildings or trees hovering over infinity because the terrain tiles hadn't rendered.

[Frith-Rae]

I feel your pain Fireclaw, I too submitted a ticket long ago and to this day I run at a graphic settings much like yours, lower than Amons.

My view distance is at like >15%. On the old graphic options my detail level was at 50% or less on everything, and I was set at "performance".

The new graphic settings' sliders unfortunately doesn't allow you to get minor adjustments - I tried setting things at like 30 or 60% and you don't have those options. You have 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100. I'm still tweaking right now but I see no improvement, though I see no huge disadvantage again either.

When I submited my ticket, not long after the merge, it was because half the player towns and Tazoon and Feladan - were unplayable for me - not because they were 7 FPS but simply because they lagged so bad the game crashed as soon as I ported there.

THey helped with the same initial advice Amon gave you at first (though no they did not get detailed as he has..unfortunately), turn stuff down, turn stuff off. Did all that with no effect.

So until a patch earlier this year, I coudln't go to half the game - period. Ultimately after exhausting their brief list of suggestions, they simply said wait for the engine to be updated.

I think that is still the case for many of us suffering in towns - due to the loading of everything possible in your foreground wether you could actually see it or not. Once this is fixed, I'm hoping I can crank up some of those sliders and options .

But ultimately that may be what you wait on. Luckily for me a patch allowed me to be able to port to Feladan, Tazooon, New Rach (I had about five minutes there before I crashed, so whatever i needed to do I had to do it fast lol) and other player towns again after about 6-9 months. Due to my laidback playstyle, I didn't have to just quit playing because of it. But let me tell you when quests called for it, or when new quests came out placed in Tazoon - I was ticked! And had good reason.

You have good reason as well, I wish you good luck!

(and its intersting I have a Sound Blaster Audigy Card, I thought Creative Labs did those as well?? No problems here...)

[Eni]

Update to sound system to support newer sound cards and fix sound play issues, such as looping combat sounds, or no music playing.

Never got issues like this before. But since this "fix" i get it all few minutes and often it only stops with a relog.

[Asteral]

I also noticed when i logged on tonight that the sound file for the dragon wing beats in flight seems to be off a bit. I'm flapping once yet getting 2 down beats. Never noticed that before...