Mod the Mods - FPS drop in convoys, plz help

[Phylacista]

Hi there,

yesterday I experienced my first CTD - I think it was because of unsufficient memory. I was diving in the middle a convoy, strong sea wind and a nice medium fog. To increase speed, maneuverability and use the stabilized UZO sights I surfaced. At once the game got laggy and when my T1 hit the C3 in the middle and It exploded I could see some single frames...after that changing to external view again the game got stuck - every key pressed produced a much more annoying *ping* then any DD ever could (so on second thought it was no real CTD - had to use the task manager to achieve that..kind of *assisted CTD*..ehm never mind)

Before I installed the mods - RuB1.44 being the main part - the game ran more smoothly.
I believe it is because of more sophisticated graphics, explosions ant textures. Is there any way to get them back to "normal"?
I woulndt like to forgo Rub...but I can live with standard SH3 graphic.

Heres a list with my mods:

Rub1.44
latest Silent commander
Ail sky mod 2.0
NeuUZO&PeriV2
Bearing Overlay 3.0
and a mixture of sound mods (das boot sounds, internal sound .. and some others i dont remeber, I combined them in one JGSME folder) can sounds drop systemperformance significantly, too?


Heres my system:
AMD 2100+, 1.7 GHz
512 RAM
GF4 Ti 4200 128
Win 2k


Thanx for your help guys - perhaps sb has tweaked his own older system and has some good advices

Phyl

[deckard]

hi Phylacista,i had the same problems as you and im currently working on a performance mod that will be compatible whit rub for people whit low end computers

it is looking promissing and on my system i think i have managed the increase performance whit 30% whit minimal loss of game'ing experience.

some examples on what i have done to increase performance:

converted all 44khz stereo to mono (no more memory leaks)
ogg sounds converted from 32 to 16 bits.
(sounds are major performance hogg in SH3 so i have put in alot of work into this)

major texture overhaul, size of the texture folders have been significantly reduced for faster loading time,

tweaked waves and weather ect and much more..

[FERdeBOER]

That sounds great!

I will be an outsanding help for those with "poor" computers, like me :rock: :rock:

[silent_otto]

I dunno if it is the same issue, but since i installed IUB now the external views with rough weather bring the fps down to a crawl.
This didnt happen before. I didnt think about it too much, since periscope or tower view are ok, its just external view.

But I would say the culprit here could be the big waves mod which (afaik) is included in IUB, and I have read somewhere it is CPU-expensive.

[BaronVonSchnitzel]

Have you run the SHIII detection tool? It looks at your computer and tells you if what you have is satisfactory. It will tell you whether you have sufficient memory.

[Beery]

I believe it is because of more sophisticated graphics, explosions ant textures. Is there any way to get them back to "normal"?
I woulndt like to forgo Rub...but I can live with standard SH3 graphic.

RUb just doesn't add many graphics at all that would slow down the game. RUb isn't a graphics-heavy mod anyway, and one thing I always try to do when I'm adding graphical updates to mods is to improve the graphics while keeping the exact same resolution as the standard game. I am always very attentive to the needs of those who are running on lower-end computers, so I try to do everything as efficiently and as cleanly as possible using the smallest files possible to do the job. There may be one or two graphics files that are in a bigger format than normal, but the vast majority are the exact same size as those of the standard game.

I think you'll probably find that the slowdowns are caused by the other mods you have installed. Sound files are notorious for causing crashes in this game. I would uninstall the sound mods first and see if that fixes the problem.

[Marhkimov]

A good rule of thumb is try not to install sound files which are bigger than the ones that they are replacing. Although there are a few good sound fx's that are quite large, but worth it.

[Hartmann]

I have a slowdowns in ports.. :nope:

at the sea and convoys my frame rates are good

I think that some mods could increase the slowdown in some areas,like harbours, high res textures ( heavy load and load times)..or sound mods.

I prefer a less detail graphics with a decent frame rates.

My system.. 2400 512 mb gf6600 gt

[BaronVonSchnitzel]

I just checked the SHIII detection tool on my 'puter. Ubisoft requires a minimum of 512 MB Ram, and recommends 1024 MB. Your computer has 512MB, right? I'm sure this is at least part of your problem.

[Hartmann]

1024 could help in loading times but it depends of the background windows programs.

when is a memory problem, the hard disk is reading all the time in the virtual memory, causing stutter.

while stable low frame rates whitouth disk reading means other problem, ...old graphic card, memory speed...

[silent_otto]

In my case, I have terrible fps drops in ports and in external view I have 1024MB DDR ram, sempron 2600 Processor (this may have part of the guilt, since recommended processor should be 2000MHz, mine is true 1833MHz) . So the problem must be the video card.

I bought an ATI radeon 9600 XT for this game only, it cost me 150€ which is a lot of money for just a piece of hardware for a game!! :-?

What I find amazing (the bad way ;) ) is that this was not enough... so goddamn, are we expected to spend €500 in a good last of the lastest new of the newest graphics card? Thats half of what I earn some months... :nope:

Anyway if u read the specs of the computers from ppl who are really satisfied with the game, youll see there is no mistery: 1024 gb ram, fast processor, and ultra-expensive graph card, the the game will go smooth...

:roll:

[Phylacista]

@all: Thanks for responses.

@BaronvonSchnitzel: Ok 512 MB is minimum but the unmodded Version ran smoothly, only stuttering in harbours.

@Beery: thanks (and thanks for the great mod,too)- good to hear that RuB (and versions stil to come) do not include graphic intensive mods. I'll try deinstalling my soundmods

@markhimov: - its true that there are bigger and longer files than the original ones. it's also true that there worth some decrease in prefomance. I ve mixed my personal compilation of favourite sound mods/files. Have to sort anew it seems.

Before starting SH3 i kill all backroundprograms using "enditall" (small prog) and I've cleaned up autostart. this helps a lot to increase system performance.


Ok now the hard part: which sounds to deinstall - in no way I will change the Alaaarm sound file, originating from "das boot". Long but immersive... :up: