Performance/Optimization Discussion - Is Performance Still Terrible?

[Dark_Swordmaster]

A certain community member managed to throw enough bile into the old thread (which had nearly ten pages of mostly calm and rational discussion on the matter) to get it shut down. Here's the new thread, hopefully it'll remain civil and without him posting in it.

Here's the original OP made on the launch date of the game:


"I own all of the ACW Scourge of War titles and they run TERRIBLY. Even at the default settings where objects don't draw very far and the sprite ratio is 1:4 I'm lucky to hit 30 FPS. Is this game any better optimized or is this yet another grog game where the developers don't understand the concept?

And to head off the obvious "What are you running" questions:

i5 2550K (@3.3)
nVidia 970
8Gb RAM
Win 7 64-bit

I'm capable of running modern AAA titles like GTAV, Witcher 3, and Fallout 4 at 60FPS and yet this series that uses the exact same look and technology as the old Myth:TFL / Myth II: Soulblighter games barely runs."




Since then we've had multiple replies from a developer on the game as well as several Matrix/Slitherine employees acting as moderators, it's been a very active thread between the game creators and the community. We thank them for their involvement.

The discussion has been us asking for a higher framerate and them stating that A) It's unnecessary due to the relatively slow speed of things in the game B) That 12-15 FPS is perfectly acceptable for those same reasons C) That it's not profitable and a waste of their limited resources (they had a single part-time coder which is probably why optimization is so very bad in the engine)

That's how they (and many satisfied customers) feel. That's not how I and several other people have felt and we're trying to convince them to look in to what they can do to fix it.




What does your part-time coder do when he's done with these patches? If he's the only one who codes then when everyone else is working on the uniforms or OOB or whatever historical research for the next module why can't he spend the same time alongside them doing optimization?

[JuggGonzo]

Original OP claim 30 fps. I say is probably good enough.
12 FPS is not acceptable thought.
I got i5-2300 2.8ghz, 8gb ram, Ati R9 290, win 7 64 bit. Wich part of the system needs upgrade, if so?

[Gunfreak]

Dosent mater what you do, its the game not the system, unless you get a 6-10ghz SINGLE CORE cpu the performance will be bad.

[Egg Hatchings]

This is a great game, but the performance is really bad. I think fixing this should be a priority.

12 fps is not acceptable in my opinion. I would be happy with constant 30 fps

[Andrew]

I see a lot of hearsay and subjective opinion claimed as being that of the majority.

• Let's start with the motion-sickness. It's a terrible deal-braker if you have it for sure and in no doubt leaves you with far fewer options for games to play unless you're willing to spend more money on hardware.
  
  The problem here is with not really knowing how the people who suffer from this sickness are affecting the sales. There might be a considerable amount of them or there might be very few around in this genre of games (could be far more in fps games).
  
  Another variable here is the framerate above which a game doesn't induce this sickness. Is it 30 fps or 60, or somewhere inbetween (and if you think you know the number, tell what makes you think it's that framerate and not some other)? And does it differ from person to person?
  
  
• What has been given as another argument to raising the framerate, is the fact that it's somehow not acceptable to have a game on PC running at the framerates that it runs at now, be it because of certain modern standards or because it's simply just unplayable.
  
  To this I want respond with repeating what some other owners of the game have already said - this game is slow enough that it's playable at those low framerates. It really is a slow game that requires, in comparison to other RTSs, little user input but loads of planning and careful thinking. I know that I sound like I know nothing about modern gaming and I should just stop typing because I'm sort of going against with what the majority accepts and finds to be a reasonable stance in the framerate debate but please, trust me on this one - you will notice how much less this game is affected by it's framerate than others.
  
  I suggest you download the SoW: Gettysburg demo or purchase this game and use the refund system if you have the option to do so. Just try the game for yourself and remember to not consciously ruin the expierience by going in with loaded expectations (if that makes sense).
  
  At the end, I just want to mention that I'm all for a better framerate and I don't find the current one to be perfectly acceptable, running great or just fine but it certainly is playable and will allow you to enjoy what the game has to offer, provided you don't play with a whole army on a bad laptop.

[Nats]

I second the fact that you can try the game for under 2 hours on Steam with no worries. If you are interested in a game enough to post in the forum then buy it and try it. Its the only way to be sure. If you dont like it you claim a refund if under 2 hours played with no questions asked. This is what I did with several car racing games recently to try them all out. I decided on Project Cars in the end. Its a great way to try out games. In that case I got a refund for PC and then bought it off Steam for a lot less. Obviously that doesnt apply here because this game is actually more expensive elsewhere but the fact is you do have a means to try them out and see what the frame rate is like.

[Sargon]

This may not be the solution, but I bring my experience.
Some months ago in summer, during my activities as soww tester, I noticed a low level of my PC performance.
In battle I always took 3-4fps in huge scenarios, max 10-12fps with small scenarios.
After a lot of inconclusive attempts, I tried to clean inside my machine.
Many dust everywhere. Especially close the fans. In particular, the graphics card fan was clogged.
Surprise! After restarting a new scenario I took always 24-30fps, with small or big scenerio.
So always keep your PC clean.

[Egg Hatchings]

It is true that the framerate doesnt necesarily prevent you from performing well in the game. Indeed, the slow pace of the game means high framerates arent as important in this as in other kinds of games. The problem is too low framerates make using the camera controls a lot harder and sometimes nauseating. This is my experience after playing the game. I think the game would benefit a lot from better performance.

[Nats]

I honestly dont know what all this is about framerate. I have played the first scenario a few times and there are a few troops in that yet my game is very fluid throughout. I have an AMD X6 with 12Gb RAM and a GTX550ti card. I havent noticed any slow downs yet and no mouse lag at all. I will have to try a larger Corps scenario next though to really test it.

[PIAT]

In my experience you'll need to adjust a few settings in the options menu to get reasonable performance. Percentage of trees showing is a big one for me, I usually adjust to less than 70%. Also viewing distances, the game presets to 1500 yds but on my laptop I have set this to 1100 yds and makes a marked improvement to the frame rates. All in all, there are plenty of options to change if you're not happy with frame rates, just takes some experimenting if you haven't got the latest i7 or i5 PC. It's worth doing - the game experience is like nothing else out there.

[Egg Hatchings]

I have been tweaking the graphics options and it seems map object quality was the main issue. I turned it to the lowest value and now it runs quite well. I also lowered the visibility range and set the tree percentage to 20 percent.

[PIAT]

Yeah Sargon - I actually remove my graphics card every 12 months and blow out all the dust from that as well as the rest of the case. A PC is a big, active dust collector :-)

[[Falcon] Redblaster100]

I'm glad to see that the invidivual who got the previous thread closed hasn't felt the need to terrorize this thread.

As for the FPS problem, I personally have no real 'issues'.

I mean sure, I wouldn't mind a few extra FPS but to me personally it's defintely not a must at the moment. I understand if people have 12 FPS and motion sickness issues, that's a different story entirely.

I'm quite happy to report to have a solid 30 FPS around the clock, even with larger corps battles, and all settings maxed out. :D

I have to try army vs army, but I have a feeling it'll be quite alright.

Lucky ducky I suppose!

[Nats]

Originally posted by Nats:

I honestly dont know what all this is about framerate. I have played the first scenario a few times and there are a few troops in that yet my game is very fluid throughout. I have an AMD X6 with 12Gb RAM and a GTX550ti card. I havent noticed any slow downs yet and no mouse lag at all. I will have to try a larger Corps scenario next though to really test it.

Well I did test it with a Corps sandbox battle and yeah framerate is fine, no issues. One thing though - why does my game keep pausing mid battle? Seems to be when I select the split off a unit as skirmishers option.

[glynnenstein]

Just my opinion on the topic to contribute a customer viewpoint. I have Gettysburg and while it's a very good game, the poor graphical performance and choppy action do put me off a bit. If Waterloo had better performance and a bit of polish I would not hesitate to buy it sooner than later. I will probably still get it when it's on sale down the road. Bad looks are not game-over for me (I enjoy various John Tiller games which look straight out of 1996), but the better looking a game is and the smoother the controls and panning, the happier I am to spend money on it!

[Spud]

I haven't noticed any performance issues, I choose not to display all dead bodies, play with a ratio of 1:4 and the lowest FPS i've experienced so far is about 30.

With so much going on beneath the hood of this game, so many calculations etc that it's a wonder it runs at all. The price for this level of accuracy and realism is inevitably less eye candy and lower frame rates, a price i happily pay.