Beta 3 is signifigantly more battery and CPU-intensive

[UberBuckley]

Well, I can't actually confirm this, as I can't see the activity monitor while Darwinia is running, but Beta 3 makes my CPU make the noises that it only makes when doing some intensive computing, which isn't very often. It also drains laptop batteries very quickly– withing about an hour, my battery was near depleted from 97%.

The frame-rate jumps all over the place from 4 to 20 fps. (On the old version [the one that crashed] the frame-rate always hovered near 20.) By the end of the game, when tons of enemies have been spawned on the battlefield and are engaged in an epic struggle with my Darwinians, looking at the play-field at all will cause the computer to struggle to keep the frame-rate above 6 (which causes twitching problems, as already reported).

It's a great improvement guys, especially in terms of stability, but the fact that a 1.33 GHz G4 has trouble with it is a bit extreme.

[Red Intruder]

I just tested this on my iBook 900 mhz G3, 640 MB RAM, 32 MB graphics card... I tested beta 1 and beta 3, and charged my computer to 100% before each trial. No other programs were running.

beta 1: 92% power remaining after 7:23
beta 3: 92% power remaining after 7:23

7 minutes and twenty-three seconds just happens to be the time in which beta 1 crashed, which I tested first. Maybe it's a problem with the G4? The only consistent slowdown I seem to get is just before bombers drop ordinance for an airstrike- but they might just be slowing down instead of it being choppiness.

[Miah]

I've taken the time to test this on my own laptop, with Beta 2... (as much as I could... :/)

I have found that there really is not a whole lot that can be done about this, other than dimming the display.

If any of you have purchased the Macintosh version of Uplink and played it for a long length of time, you would see that the battery comsumption is very close to that of Darwinia, while at the same time, not being very as graphic intensive. The issue here it that both of this games run some sort of clocking device that cannot really allow the CPU to rest for long. I'd rather NOT see this ever change, personally.

Also, I was running this on a G3 700MHz... and I didn't seem to have as many issues as you did with a G4. If this was a Powerbook you were on, that would likely explain it. The G4 cooling processes require MUCH more power than G3 processes, and the inch-thick computer does not allow much room for the cooling system. This might help explian your jumpy framerate, as well.