How Do I Improve Performance?

[Mordoth]

I have been playing since release and the performance of the game has been better and worse than it currently is for me. For the most part it's fine, except in player cities, Dalimond and Aughendell.

Additionally, as always, in large group combat situations, performance is aweful. I have played other games with my current setup and everything is super even at high settings.

I have a P4-HT 3.0, 2gig RAM, 128 mb ATI Radeon Pro (Catalyst 4.5 and newest Drivers). I have thought about getting a new graphics card, something like the ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256mb. Anyone know if this will help or give any other suggestions?

[imported_Twelvebagger]

For me, the two biggest things that improve performance are (you may already be doing this):

1) Reduce your view distance slightly.
2) TURN OFF SPELL EFFECTS <-- this one is big.

The command for that is /setpref combatspelleffects false

(false or off) <--- dont recall which one.


Sorry if that's obvious info, but try it. If you have your effects on currently, you'll notice a marked improvement in combat once you turn them off.

[Mordoth]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've adjusted the viewing distance where I like it and I don't like turning off the effects really. I'll do that if I have to, like in mass group combat situations. I just hoped there was some other things that could be done, especially since the effects are an integral part of the game, IMO.

[Bedevere]

I havn't had a chance to group much since my return, but in the old days the spell effects killed you in a group. I could find myself seeing my own spell effects go ff minutes after I cast them. I think the engine is better now but I am not sure why the spell effects ae such a big deal.

My suspicion is that the server tells the client what spell effect to fire off as opposed to maybe just letting the client figure it out. Like I said, what do i know.

[Tryagain]

umm with that system a newer video card will do next to nothing. The game mostly uses ram and you have well 2GB of it. Your processor is as well more than adequate. If you insist on upgrading the video card than go nvidia cause this game does not like ATI or the cat drivers in any revision.

Things to make sure on computer end.

If you are not running NTFS than make sure that fat32 partition gets defragged at least once a week when it comes to horizons. As well make sure your Virtual memory is NOT on the same partition or better yet same disc as horizons runs off of.

Since the game also writes so much to the hard disc you might do well looking at the hard drive that it is on and consider upgrading than to for example faster RPM's and larger cache SATA ( if you Mboard supports it etc etc). I got a performance increase by simply sticking Horizons on its OWN sata hard drive... kinda warped but it worked.

[C`gan]

Things I've found to help reduce lag:
1. Turn off ground clutter.
2. Turn off music.
3. Enable the option of clearing the world cache upon exiting.
4. Clean out Temporary Internet Files before starting Horizons (don't necessarily have to delete cookies as well).
5. Turn off weather effects (along with this, keeping everything at daylight did a tremendous boost for my system, a 1.8GHz P4 768MB RAM).
5. Turn off shadows.
6. Turn off showing others' equipment.

Hope some of these help as well.

[Gunder]

What is the command for turning the weather effects off?

[Knossos]

/setpref environmentsystem true (or false) turns it on (or off)

Knossos