configuring aa for low end system?

juwb · Post by **juwb** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:39 am

Hi,

I got an old PII-233 with a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee card at home. Sometimes we (family, friends, ...) use it together with other machines to play LAN games.

Unfortunately, Armagetron Advanced does not seem to scale very well... the game runs fine as long as there is only one opponent, but with each opponent added, the framerate is like cut in half.

So I'm trying to figure out how to improve things - if it can be at all improved. What's the most CPU intensive part of the game? Does coordination / collision detection take that much? Or is it just a graphic/render issue (many bikes = many polys?)

If it's a graphic issue, is there a AA theme that uses REALLY LOW poly counts for models? I don't care much for the graphics, actually, as long as I can see where I (am not allowed to) drive.

Unfortunately I haven't found a 'how to make your own AA theme HOWTO', otherwise I'd have tried to do this myself.

Oh yeah, anything else I should configure to improve speed on low-end system? System's Gentoo, so everything is already compiled optimized for the machine.

Phytotron · Post by **Phytotron** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:57 am

1) Turn off the Moviepack. (System Setup -> Misc Stuff)

2) Turn off sparks, sky, and sky movement. (System Setup -> Display Settings -> Preferences)

3) Go to System Setup -> Display Settings -> Detail Settings and turn everything either all the way down or off (depending on what option is there). This includes:

Font textures: nearest
Object, wall, and floor textures: off
Alpha blending: off
Floor mirroring: off
Floor detail: off

The only things you shouldn't mess with are those that have a "system default" option. I only say this because the little fade-in instructions say it's best to leave those at the default (which your computer decides).

It'll look fairly ugly, but you'll definitely up the framerate. It also helps a bit if you reboot before loading it.

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:32 am

Oscilloscope wrote:The only things you shouldn't mess with are those that have a "system default" option. I only say this because the little fade-in instructions say it's best to leave those at the default (which your computer decides).

Those are OpenGL hints, which can be set to fastest (off), nicest (on) or don't care (system default). An OpenGL implementation may or may not take the hint. If it makes a difference for you, there's nothing holding you back from setting it to your liking. Note: Antialiasing is not set up well. The setting is like a hint, and there is a hint, but antialiasing itself can only be on or off.

juwb · Post by **juwb** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:46 am

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try my luck.

juwb · Post by **juwb** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:52 pm

So, fps go up to 80 now in single player... it's hard to play without the sparks, though. They really drag the game down (13fps) -- maybe some developer can invent a low-cost spark replacement, like one of those pyramids on top of the bike or some other static model. Would be cool

I still want to try using bike models with lower polys, though... 16 polys must be enough

Post by **Tank Program** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:21 pm

juwb wrote:So, fps go up to 80 now in single player... it's hard to play without the sparks, though. They really drag the game down (13fps) -- maybe some developer can invent a low-cost spark replacement, like one of those pyramids on top of the bike or some other static model. Would be cool

This was/is being investigated.

juwb wrote:I still want to try using bike models with lower polys, though... 16 polys must be enough

Somewhere there's a model that's just a pyramid... Almost no polys

.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:40 pm

Tank Program wrote:This was/is being investigated.

Clarification: we identified the code that causes sparks to be so slow in the first place and killed it for 0.2.8. There's no low-cost replacement planned (a particle system is ready to fully replace the effect with better performance and looks, hopefully), and to be honest, I don't particularly like the idea of one that's not immediately recognizable (like another colored pyramid would be). I would not know a better way to tell the player that he's scratching a wall than sparks and a scratching sound, but of course I'm open to ideas.

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:03 pm

z-man:
- Reduce lifetime of sparks.
- Learn to find out without sparks. I have plenty of GPU to run at high res, but at 320x200 and a custom cam 50 m away, I have no problems seeing how close I am (compared to sparks). Sparks only clearly show IF I'm 'close', are distracting/obstructing and make it harder to see HOW close.

Phytotron · Post by **Phytotron** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:50 am

I would think that seeing that your tail is right up against the tail parallel to you, with no visible space in between, coupled with your cycle being bisected by the neighboring tail, would be indication enough that you're grinding said tail.

I could be wrong, but I've never used sparks, and have never had trouble recognizing whether I was grinding or not. I've always figured they were just some flasy aesthetic thang.

TiTnAsS · Post by **TiTnAsS** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:05 am

same as osc here..sparks are just to glamourize the look of the game i thought...

Post by **Lucifer** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:14 am

I love sparks and I don't care who knows it.

Jonathan · Post by **Jonathan** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:22 am

Note that by default sparks are not useful at all to find out IF you are grinding, because CYCLE_WALL_NEAR is 6 by default.

The game does this:
Point a sensor 1 back and left, and detect until CYCLE_WALL_NEAR. If we have a hit, continue if |cycle dir . wall dir| > 0.9. Add REAL_CYCLE_SPEED_FACTOR * CYCLE_ACCEL * (1 / (distance to wall + CYCLE_ACCEL_OFFSET) - 1 / (CYCLE_WALL_NEAR + CYCLE_ACCEL_OFFSET)) to speed (per second of course). Do it again with the sensor pointed to the right.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:41 am

Well, yeah, sparks are not meant to indicate you're grinding (in the sense of: accelerating by wallinfluence), they were just there as a cool effect. But, for certain rubber settings, and if you're somehow unable to tell the distance to the walls accurately by other means, they are an indication that you're grinding close enough to reasonably block followers. That they're not meant as useful information is another reason I won't code a low-cost replacement.

juwb · Post by **juwb** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:05 pm

I just installed 2.8.0_beta2. Seems to work fine. However, I can't seem to find out where the movie packs (for the faster computers) and the models (to use one of the 8poly's I downloaded on the slow machine) go... I put them into my ~/.armagetronad/resource directory, seems that was wrong?

Anyway. the model I downloaded is .ase, but the only AA thing that looks like a bike model I could find is a three-part *.mod stuff.

Is the directory structure explained somewhere?

PS: TiTnAsS, you owe me a new keyboard. I just barfed on mine when I saw your Avatar & Sig!