Frame rate?!??!!?!?!

posted on April 6th, 2009, 4:58 am

I looked thought the forum and didnt find this anywere.

I get a MASSIVE frame reate drop when ever a borg (and only borg) vessel explodes.
Iv got the latest patch 3.0.5a and media pack 2.

I have a
Q6600 quad core 3ghz
8Gb DDR2 ram
9800 GTX+ 1Gb
vista 64bit.

I have compatability issuses with any program. If a Dominion, fed, rom or klingon ship explodes theres no pause. im going to try a reinstall see if that works, i may drop back to patch 3.0.5 see if that works.

I can max crysis out far easy, but i get perfect frames in FO but it drops to 2 fps when ever a borg ship explodes on screen.



anyone have this issue?

posted on April 6th, 2009, 5:50 am

It's due to the complexity of the models, in particularly how they break apart. See this thread for more info.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 5:55 am

Yeah, the same thing happens for me as well. Everything else in the game runs smoothly on my computer, even when there's well over 9 full groups of ships under my command. However, whenever a Borg ship explodes the game freezes for several seconds and then proceeds to lag horrendously until the explosion is about halfway through it's animation. The same thing also happens when a Borg ship is completed at the collective uplink. I think this issue might be caused by the massive amount of frames in the Borg explosion sprite.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 7:22 am

no, the animation sprites are not the cause of it. even if you entirely disable the explosion animation, the slowdown still is present. the chunks are responsible for the slowdown alone.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 9:18 am

thnx for the info.

If you have ever played Haegemonia, the explotions in that looked amazing, but they were largely sprite based, same in legacy ultimate universe mod.

makeing a ship blow in half with a cool explotion and lots of sprites filling the parts of 3D debris, say twisted metal, sparks, hull plates even ppl  could all be done with spinning sprites.

posted on April 6th, 2009, 1:31 pm

yea, i played haegemonia. it's graphics were impressive at the time. i don't remember the explosions though

posted on April 6th, 2009, 10:37 pm

ill get some screenshots for you, ill post the link when i get back from college.
Its well worth looking into, the explosions never slowed the PC down but at the same time i think have the best explosions in any game

posted on April 8th, 2009, 4:44 am

ok here are some pics

http://www.fileshack.com/images/finclud ... demo04.jpg

http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/art ... 79-000.jpg

http://medialib.computerandvideogames.c ... umb300.jpg

http://img.jeuxvideo.fr/00055846-photo- ... nnante.jpg

posted on April 8th, 2009, 7:27 am

some small shots there but yea, they had nice graphics back then for sure. personally i didn't like its gameplay that much

posted on April 8th, 2009, 8:40 am

yeah, it attempted to copy homeworld 2 way of moving, and only relic can do that.

Once i find larger images (mabye reinstalling to get them) ill post them up.

but my point im trying to make is, that the explosions look great but are made up of only sprite, no 3D objects (save the ship splitting in half), and there was little issue with performace.

I think that even if its just for the borg, the borg vessels explosion should be made of mabye only 4-6 3D parts and the rest like, twisted metal, sparks, small chunks, hull plates, pipes, borg drones . should all be done with sprites.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 1:15 pm

yea, we are working on that however it's not that easy as you might think it is

posted on April 8th, 2009, 2:35 pm

i am quite aware its not that easy. you need to actualy make a good sprite, then give it peramiters (size, rotation, etc) populate it and give it rules (time till fade, speed of anim, etc).

i was just pointing it out