Poor performance at times

[IsenoAlpha]

So I just picked this game up during a sale. I've gotten over the no widescreen support but I'm having some performance issues that are kind of weird for a game of this age. I have a i5 4670k and a 670 for reference. So I set everything to max in the game and started the tutorial. The game was running at 60 fps until I moved the camera (whether panning or zooming in, etc) at which point the framerate would drop to 20 fps or lower. After the camera stopped moving it returned to 60 fps. This was accompanied by weird shadow twitching all over the place (also, I'm using the unofficial patch on the front page if that matters). I went around messing with the config file and that issue was fixed by turning sky textures to 0. Even after that though, if I zoom the camera out all the way (and even if it's close, it seems the further the camera goes out the lower the framerate gets) my framerate drops to 30-45 fps. Again though, if I leave the camera there it'll settle to 60 but will drop again when I move the camera. It's all so weird. Anyone got any info on any way to stop this from happening?

I think it's worth noting that I am forcing 4x sgssaa in this game but I turned it off to see if it was the issue but it was still happening. The framerate drop seems to start at the 4th mouse wheel turn from having the camera all the way zoomed in. At this point it'll drop to 50-55 fps. Once more is the maximum zoom out level and that'll drop to 30-45 like I said above. It happens when I turn off the vsync and triple buffering options I have forced as well.

[nickaepi1]

Having similar issues here. Anytime i pan the camera left or right, all the buildings get all jagged looking. Everything looks great when I'm not moving the camera. Like it's a v-sync issue.

I've messed with all my video card settings. If I spin the camera, holding the right mouse, everything renders great. It's just when zooming and scrolling camera causing tearing effect on buildings. I have AMD Quad Core CPU running Win 7 64 bit, ATI 6870 video card. Anyone else ge this issue or know of a quick fix? It's just annoying.

[KittyKittyBang]

Hmmm .. I haven't seen the tearing problem before. I have seen the performance problem when the antialiasing is set high or very high in the video settings. (even on modern hardware.) ..maybe it's just not well optomised for some modern hardware? I found switching the antialiasing down a notch or two helped for me. ..If I got really desperate I'd attach the cfg file, and get at the more granular stuff. (which I always find to be fun.) :)

[nickaepi1]

I'll try lowering AA. The AMD Catalyst center is very overwhelming. Morphological filtering, surface optimitzation, tessalation, triple buffering, different AA sampling levels, etc. It's hard to troubleshoot because of so many card options. I know my card and rig can run the game obviously, but I am missing something that's making the rendering of trees, textures really choppy when scrolling the camera. I appreciate the advice and will go troubleshoot.

[olaf.look]

for me its totaly fine i have a amd radeon hd 6670 and i play on max and get 100 or less fps

[KittyKittyBang]

I'm not sure about the antialiasing options for the video-card itself, but I found that in the game, in its video-options, the antialiasing option was the one that had the most affect on performance. (I think, in the game engine, that activates some quite intensive tasks.)

If that doesn't do anything, try playing around with the lighting settings too. ..otherwise, I guess it's a peculiarity with the game and the type of hardware you have. {shrugs}

[IsenoAlpha]

I'll try messing with the aa. One thing I noticed was that the slowdown wasn't there in the actual game. When I made this thread I had only played the tutorial. The first (and second) level of the actual game were much smaller and so I suppose the performance was better because of that.

In regards to the antialiasing, one thing I noticed was that turning it off, even though I'm forcing sgssaa and saying to override, the game gets really blurry. When you turn off aa the game apparently drops the resolution or something and causes the game to be blurry. It's an option in the config file so maybe I'll check that next as well.

[nickaepi1]

I figured it out on my end. Same issue as Zona. Seems the tutorial was just a bad section to be troubleshooting in. Once I got into the campaign, I switched resolution to 1024x768 75hz, cranked up all settings in app (AA, AFx16) and it's playing great now.

I started on hard difficulty and enjoying it but man, these bad guys are hard to kill. Point blank rifle shots to the face and they don't die. Might lower to Normal and start over if AI guys have unrealisitic VP's on hard. I even have on "headshots should kill mod" ?? Anyone know if "hard" changes the VP values of enemies to an unrealistic level?

[KittyKittyBang]

These guys are hard to kill. That's part of the fun. :) ..I don't use the head-shots should kill mod. I have two ideal team sets: either two scouts, two snipers, a medic, and an engineer. Or swap out the two scouts for two more snipers. Snipers rule.

Use a scout or sniper to scout ahead and spot enemies, and use the snipers where possible to knock them off at a distance with rifles. If you get surprised by someone up close, use the small machine-guns or grenades.

..snipers are fragile, but stealthy, and get beautiful bonues to hit and critical-hit. If you find your sniper too fragile for scouting-ahead, use a scout instead. They're much hardier if they get shot-up. (And the medic is great for healing whoever got shot-up.. one or two of the enginners makes a passable backup medic too.) :)

If you have to go through doors, or chance a close encounter, have at least a group of three soldiers. Always good to have someone back you up if you get caught short. Most doors I prefer to shoot through, or booby-trap with a grenade and blow that up.

Keep looking for better-damage sub-machine-guns and rifles (scoped rifes add range.) ..There's even the odd silenced model, which is always weaker, but great for keeping the enemy unaware of where you are. (Not totally unaware .. they hear the bullets impacting on scenery.) .. if you want to be totally stealthy, try scouts with thrown blades. I hear some people love those.

That's all the advice I have for now. :) I play the hard level: IMHO the enemy VP isn't so bad, but I think your guys get hit harder, you heal less between missions, and you get severely limited on when you can save the game. (medic's really do become important.)

[nickaepi1]

Thanks Kitty for the great insight. I'll keep pushing on then. I might take a closer look at some of these mods I'm using and see if it's making it "harder or easier". I like realism. I need to understand about weapon familiarity, also. I will go a googling and maybe actually read the manual. :)

[KittyKittyBang]

No problem. :) .. don't worry too much about the manual. I had the real paper manual back in the day, but I think the tutorial mission, then the tips that you find along the way in the game make for a beautiful tutorial-as-you go kinda thing. ..just play the game on a medium-to-easy setting for a start, and ramp up the difficulty as you feel you're getting better.

If you want to spoil yourself a little, maybe after you've completed it once, hunt for info on the "Sea Devil" and the "Prototype 8M1" weapons. You can very easily go through the game and never find them - they're in random missions. Random missions are great for training up your team .. and the Sea Devil isn't too tricky to find if you seek out a random mission on the way to or from most real missions. It's sitting in plain view.

My style is rifles, sub-machine guns, and grenades for all my people. But a friend of mine loves full machine-guns and going all Rambo. I've heard the scouts are dangerous with some thrown-knife training. Play it stealthy, play it destructive .. it's a great game that can be played many ways.

Oh, and one last but important tip that I didn't know for years: once you've got a rare weapon, put it in your weapons-locker and auto-sort the list. For some of them you might get replenished-ammo. ..oh, and there's no penalty for carrying a higher-density cartridge that doesn't fit your weapon - so long as the *bullets* fit your weapon it's fine. Carry the highest-density cartridges you can find. (Machine-gun cartridges for your rifles, for instance.)