New Client Feedback

[Steelclaw]

Where to start...

Well, it works, that's a start!

Problems:

Chat: Your name in the nick list jumps.
How to replicate: Join a channel with more than one player in it, type something in the active window. Your name will pop to the top of the list and then pop back into place.
Notes: Some players have not experienced this.

Chat: Entering a blank slash command sends garbage.
How to replicate: set exactly one alias, wander around to generate network activity, enter a / in an input box and hit enter. You may need to do this a few times in rapid succession. This will not work if you have zero or more than one alias.

Terrain: A grid shows on distant terrain.

How to replicate: set your view distance so the grid region is visible. 500m or higher should work.


Performance: Hitching in windowed mode
How to replicate: (not sure if anyone else has this problem) Run in windowed mode. The client will pause briefly every second or so. I'm running my desktop at 1280x1204x32 with the window taking up almost all of the space, save for the taskbar, and a height of the taskbar above it.
Notes: My card is an Nvidia 6600gt 128M ram, AGP running on an Athlon64 X2 4200.

Performance: Lower framerate, more framerate variation
How to replicate: n/a
Notes: I'm noticing a much wider variation in framerate overall -- higher peaks, lower troughs. The average framerate appears to be lower too, by about 5-10. I'm used to getting around 20-24fps, getting 12-22 now.


Comments:
Terrain loading looks a lot better. I don't see as much sky poking through the ground when I fly around, which is always a plus.

The object loading, however, is kind of distracting. No wait, it's REALLY distracting. Things pop into view as they enter the load radius, which is less than the view distance. The sudden appearance makes me glance over at the object that just loaded and makes me wonder "Was that there already?".

I suggest factoring in an object's size on the viewport in deciding when to load it. That is, big objects (like trees, *lair entrances*, rocks and buildings) load very far out, when they appear to be small and perhaps, barely noticeable. Small objects, (like resource nodes, fungi, and broken lamp posts) can wait to load until you get closer.

If this is done already, it can use a bit of tweaking. :P

Keep up the good work! It's great seeing some progress!

[Drevar]

Hmm I am running at the same res in windowed mode as Steel, but get minimal to no hitching as the landblocks are loaded. My graphics card is a 6800 GS with 256 mb, however. I am sure the extra texture memory makes a big difference there. I do also have the environment effects turned off (no day/night cycle and no sky textures or effects like blizzards, ash, or blight fog), so the extra resources freed up probably have an overall effect as well. View distance is set to just over 1/4, no clutter, blob shadows, textures at maximum. In previous incarnations of the 382.x client, I did experience serious hitching and bad terrain LOD issues with the same hardware and graphics settings. 382.13 seems to have fixed that.

The fixed terrain rendering is fabulous for me. Out in the wilderness I am getting 40-50 fps. Terrain appears to be occluding properly. Running into the fall festival grounds where the tall walls occlude your view results in an fps jump of about 10.

I did a speed loading test by running down the road from Last Stand to the northern part of Mithril's Anvil in full Ranger Turbo Mode + tinker quest boots. The client had no problem at all keeping up with terrain loads. There was a 5 fps or so hit while moving but when I stopped it jumped back up to 40.

Player built structures and other world object loading and rendering still sucks, however. It even seems to now have a worse effect on overall performance despite the boost to the terrain engine. Buildings still take much longer to render, many don't occlude properly or at all, and eat up memory like crazy-memory that is slow to release.

I know the art team was in the middle of making a pass on the models before the sale to fix any bad occlusion issues. Hopefully that will continue now and will solve a lot of the problems.

There are also a few art asset issues but I will leave that for another thread.

Drev

[Ashuran]

I've noticed a couple things so far...

Cached terrain loads very quickly on my system, which is good.

Uncached terrain loads horrendously slow... which is bad. Basically this means if I stay in one area, everything loads fast and smooth... but if I move around I can quickly fly RIGHT off the terrain into empty space, and then it takes about 5 minutes for the load to catch up with me so I can see where I am. Likewise, portalling someplace I haven't been recently will mean I have to wait 5-15 minutes for the new terrain to load... and then once I take off I'll fly right off the terrain again.

This is only first impression though, since it's torturously slow getting around anywhere on Blight right now... I'll have more input once I can try a few more things out (if I don't go insane first, lol).

I'm running Horizons on Windows XP 64, let me know if you want additional system data.

[Ashuran]

After a bit more testing I have an amended assessment...

Cached terrain /usually/ loads very quickly on my system, which is good. Sometimes it can be a bit slow however, dropping abruptly off ahead of me only to load in chunks, and sometimes leaving gaping holes in the ground. Not pretty, but only marginally worse than the live client. FPS seems higher on average however, though it may be due to Blight's general lack of buildings, etc.

Uncached terrain loads much slower... I can easily fly off the rendered areas and out into empty space, especially after portalling, and then have to wait 5 minutes or more for the load to catch up. The slow portalling I was experiencing earlier seems to have been due to lag on my end.

Since I'd heard other people running amd dual core processors were having similar issues, I tried setting affinity for HZ to only one cpu, then the other, and then both, and didn't really notice any significant improvement with any particular setting.

I'm running Horizons on Windows XP Pro x64, amd 64 x2 (dual) cpu, 2 gigs of RAM, geForce 7900 gtx (512 RAM), in 1680x1050 display mode.

[Drevar]

Ash, when you you say cached do you mean sectors in your world cache (being blight or a new install you don't have the world cache folders filled in) or do you simply mean places that you have visited already during that play session? Also, how high up are you flying vs how short/far is your view distance set to?

I will have to do some flying around on my draggy as my experience so far has been soley as a biped.

Drev

[Drevar]

Logged in with my draggy and bumped the view distance up to 50%. Took the normal fps hit associated with that, but the terrain still drew fine and with no hitching. Landblocks assinged as actual water take a much longer time to load, however. The seabed terrain loads fine, but without any water, leaving the ugly square holes of missing ocean textures.

Drev

[Ashuran]

I mean places I've visited recently...not necessarily that session. The game seems to keep the last area(s) I visit in memory until I go somewhere else... for instance, if I'm travelling back and forth between Dralk and New Trismus, both areas will take almost zero load time, until I decide to go to Kirasanct. Kirasanct would then have to be loaded slowly. Then if I decided to return to going back between Trismus and Dralk, one or the other would have to be reloaded again when I portal (most likely the last place I visit).

My view distance is set around 75-80%.

[Fratricide]

Well.. Since i don't have one them All mighty Dragons there on blight to test the speed at which the graphics load... So I logged in my little peon and wandered about where I could safely travel (though I didn't make it to Tazoon yet).

I first had issues with that error 12 problem... but I was noticing on the login window that it was having an issue finding my Character information, as it got stuck on that for like 2 mins or so before crashing out (this was with the stand alone launcher). So.. I decided to try to login using the webpage. It was once again finding it difficult to find my character info, but right before I thought it was gonna crash.. Boom.. if found the character info and was able to continue loading.

After I get in.. tis been a while and forgot where I was... I was watching the FPS window... I was doing markedly better in terrain only areas approx 15-20 FPS... I wasn't watching the memory usage, but I didn't go through a whole lot of teleports over a wide range of distance...

In towns.. I was at about the same FPS perhaps slightly higher... but that could be because the amount of player buildings isn't as great.

Ill have to run through some more stuff I suppose, but it looks good so far..

system specs...
e6600
2GB DDR2
fx7950gx2 w/1GB DDR3
using Windows XP SP2
others specs upon request.

[Drevar]

Ran the same type of tests on Order using the Blight client and had the same results, but slightly lower FPS in player towns due to the much higher density of structures.

Drev

[Hasai]

Could someone refresh my memory as to the command to display FPS and memory usage?

Thanks.
.

[Fratricide]

Could someone refresh my memory as to the command to display FPS and memory usage?

Thanks.
.

Well... for fps, I just use this command..

/window fpswindow

That puts up a window with the current fps and the build number.
Don't rightly know if there is an in game way to test the memory.. usually when I do that, I have to Alt+Tab out and check the task manager. Would be nice though to have the ability, on at least the blight client, to be able to check that in a little window of its own...

[Deth]

/window lagwindow for FPS and memory use.

[Hasai]

Thankee.

]:=8)

[gopher65]

With the exception of the dragon only issues (I can't fly to see a grid in the distance) I saw the same problems as Steelclaw did.

1) Framerate was either the same or lower by 0-10 FPS in any given situation

2) Severe jumpiness at times (I have a 6600gt 128meg AGP card as well)

3) At 2 points, once while running along, and once just after porting, I noticed that certain parts of the terrian didn't load. I'd run up to a point, and there would be models (like trees, builds, etc) loaded beyond that point, but no ground. It took amount 45 seconds for the ground to pop into existance.

EDIT: This is with view distance set to min.
Specs:
2.8P4 processor
6600gt 128meg video card
Audigy 1 soundcard
1.5 gigs of ram
XP Home SP2

[Drevar]

Did a bit more testing after making a few changes to my system. Had to remove my extra hard drive as it was going bad. It happened to hold my page file and I noticed an increase in hitching now that the PF is on the same drive as the game files. I can imagine this effect will be magnified on slower and/or non-RAID drives.

Also noticed that after switching to full screen mode, this client is much much more unstable with alt-tabbing. With the old client I could alt-tab all day and not have a problem. I will probably go back to windowed mode.

Drev

[gopher65]

I've never been able to alt-tab with HZ in fullscreen mode. Insta-CTD every time.

[brainbasher]

I down loaded client and then made new char with no adjustments to game.
What i observered as a new player on blight.
No problem running around the training system seems clear enough,plenty of help info.
Was confused when asked to kill pigs...these took age,s to spawn,the spider spawn was worse i got a blue box coming up saying something like don,t go down their the spider,s are back here....no spiders seen.
After a while they started appearing....gave me a frustrating start to game.
I was the only player their so i assume would have been better if other,s had started spawn up....don,t see why they have to spawn as they don,t attack you..better to have them running around allready.
The sea was odd ie. no sea i could walk around the sea bed...
Also the river was missing...waterfall running into nothing with some fish swimming around in the air
I will try playing with the graphics when i get back in game

these are only first impressions..will do crafting next

[brainbasher]

the game ran no problem yesterday..i even put the graphics up higher and no problem with spawning in starter area....i wonder if the problem was something todo with being new to a area? i seem to remember the game,s better after you have been their before?
the sea still comes and go,s
but in general seems better than when unity was shut no lag etc...
keep up the good work

[Steelclaw]

Performance: Hitching in windowed mode
How to replicate: (not sure if anyone else has this problem) Run in windowed mode. The client will pause briefly every second or so.

I have found that this happens only when the task manager is up and running. Go figure.

The client still hitches a bit when loading terrain, which is completely different.

[Royal]

Isnt this only when there is another program overlapping HZ? "Always on top"
Try clicking your start button (windows) will it happen then?