Jerkey Graphics on Temple level

[whyowhy]

I've got 1 island left to go on Temple level, then suddenly the graphics has become very jerky.
I restarted the computer, but the same problem.
Checked the previous level, it was fine.

The last battle is going to be real tough and I can't win with jerky graphics, can anyone help?

Here's my spec:
P4 3.2ghz
1gb Ram
ATI radeon X850 XT Platinum (Catalyst 5.4)

[xander]

The last battle is very tough when it is jerky. What kind of framerates are you getting (hit F5 to find out)? Also, have you installed the lastest patch, bringing yourself up to version 1.21 (I assume you have, but I have to ask)?

If it is of any consolation, I managed to play Temple through at framerates that occasionally got as high as 2 and even *gasp* 3 frames per second. However, I am on a Macintosh laptop, and there are known issues with Darwinia and Mac. I am not sure that I have seen any Windows install get quite that bad ^_^

If you want advice on how to defeat the level at low framerates, let me know. I would be more than happy to give it to you.

xander

[Darksun]

Do you have the latest patch? That makes some changes to the rendering engine. Otherwise try playing around with the Realtime and Hardware3D Sound options, see if that helps.

I get a decent performace through the whole game on my P-M 1.7GHz/512MB/Radeon 9700 so you should get equal or presumably better than mine.

[whyowhy]

I downloaded and installed the patch, and lowered the graphics and sound options, but it is still very jerky in Temple.

Framerate is around 6 in Temple, but ourside Temple and in other locations, it is around 80.

I've had no problem up until now with highest settings. It was smooth when I started playing Temple, it just suddenly became jerky after I spent some time in Temple. Even mouse pointer response is slow in Temple.

I am getting motion sickness moving around Temple now.
Any other things that I can do to fix the problem?

[Cyberdyne]

Did you try adding the RenderLandscapeMode line to your preferences.txt file as it explains in the 1.21 patch changes.
Here:

There are 3 possible rendering modes for Darwinia's landscape, which can be set by the preferences variable 'RenderLandscapeMode':
- RenderLandscapeMode = 0 uses Vertex Arrays
- RenderLandscapeMode = 1 uses Display Lists (default in v1.0)
- RenderLandscapeMode = 2 uses Vertex Buffer Objects
The default has now be seen to 2 (Vertex Buffer Objects), which should be faster in most cases than Display Lists. If VBO support isn't detected, we fall back to display lists.

Try adding this line to your preferences.txt in Darwinia directory,
RenderLandscapeMode = 0
It may or may not be better but its worth a try.

[xander]

You could also try reducing some of your graphics settings, or reducing your resolution. However, I do not think that this will have much effect. I suspect that the problem in Temple is with the AI. There are a lot of DGs and DRs running around -- they seem to slow things down quite a bit. However, if that is the case, Bioshpere should also have been rather slow.

At any rate, you might be able to get it up to maybe 10 or 15 FPS by changing the render mode and by reducing some of your graphics settings.

xander

[whyowhy]

Yes, the problem started after I started spawning lots of Darwinians.

But it was fine in Biosphere...

I lowered the settings to the lowest but still jerky in Temple.

I don't think I can ever finish the game...

[whyowhy]

As I found no solution to the problem, I gave up and reset the level to see what happens.
It went back to normal, frame rates went up high, problem disappeared.
But I am sure it will come back as soon as I start to spawning Darwinians.
I had no problem in Biosphere with a lot more Darwinians.

Do you think there will be a patch to fix this problem?

[Killa B]

can you post a screenshot when the porblem reappears?

[Mudi]

If you mean jerky as in "framerate drops suddenly every few seconds and returns to normal after a second", this happened on one of my older computers on Biosphere and Temple. I think it has to do with the DG's AI update, since it always seemed to coincide with some of the DG's changing direction, etc.

[Killa B]

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILER!!!
oke
im through with the temple map now.

i also got low fps as only the island with the second cube was left.
i think it is, because the incubators on that island keep spawning thousands of red darwinians as well as huge amounts of virii are crawling all over that space.

my way to clear that out:
forget about the enemy.
get a squad from the island with the incubator and the teleporter right next to each other, and send the squad armed with airstrikemarkers over to the crowdet island.
keep clicking where the markers should land, or where you think its best to destroy the red cube.
your squad will be dead in no time, but mostly will have enough time to get rid of the airstrikemarkers.
as soon as the cube is destroyed, the level is done.
you dont have to clear the virii and darwinians off that island.

i did it that way, and i also got bad fps.
normaly i have about 60 fps average.
at the end of temple i got 10 or 6 fps.
i hope i could help. =)

[EDIT]
thers another thread i just found.
i think that could be the reason for the bad FPS.
you can find that thread there: onehttp://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/viewtopic.php?t=2240spawnerhttp://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/viewtopic.php?t=2240onhttp://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/viewtopic.php?t=2240temple