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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [Sports] >> Maximum-Football 2.0 >> Public Beta Forum >> Frame Rates

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Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 5:17:44 AM

MitchG

Posts: 18
Joined: 12/18/2005
Status: offline

Beside turning everything off and using hte minimum features in the game, is there anything I can do to increase teh frame rate? Is there any update that is going to improve the frame rate issue people seem to have?

Post #: 1

RE: Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 5:58:11 AM

nmleague

Posts: 2361
Joined: 1/14/2006
Status: offline

The frame rate problem is a thing of the past, within the past month David has made changes to the game that have eliminated the frame rate problems that existed. Maybe David or Maruarders can give you more details, but I can say that with release 2 I would get messages about my frame rate being to low, and thus have limitations with graphics and instant replays etc.. In the last month of beta testing I have not had a frame rate warning and I now have instant replays throughout the game.

(in reply to MitchG)

Post #: 2

RE: Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 6:02:16 AM

David Winter

Posts: 5158
Joined: 11/24/2004
From: Vancouver, BC
Status: offline

The version you have has the frame rate locked at a maximum of 32 Frames per second (from huddle break to play dead)�so you're not going to exceed that no matter what you do.

However if you're under that, there are unfortunately, only a couple of things you can do.

1. First the obvious. Better hardware. Better video cards and more video & system memory is the biggest impactor.

2. Turn off all other software, including background applications. msn messenger, icq, email, etc are system hogs. Antivirus software is another system hog. One of the testers noted a 10FPS average improvement in frame rate by turning off his antivirus software. The game needs to read and write a lot of data to disk. Antivirus software wants to scan that before allowing the actions to occure. This can kill performance if you don't have a 7200 RPM drive. If you do turn off your antivirus software, be sure you turn it back on afterwards.

That's probably the two biggest things you can do. Ensure that Maximum-Football is the only thing running, or get better hardware.

There is nothing done to the game in R3�to improve the overall performance of the game to make it execute faster. It's running as fast as it's going to run.

Now, that said, significant improvements to the game's physics engine have been made. The 32FPS limit has been removed (although if you wish you can turn it back on.. but I don't know why you would) so the game now runs as fast as it can given the hardware. I have a new Toshiba Satillite�laptop that produces about 90FPS.

The improvements to the physics also improve the game play on slower machines... to a point. There is really nothing I can do to make the game run better if you're only getting 20 or fewer frames a second. All movement by all objects�on the field�is�calculated with time based�modelling.�High frame rates slice up the time it takes things to move into very small bits allowing for smooth movement and well working physics. Very low frame rates don't slice up the time interval enough causing chunky movements. And, if the time interval is really high, you get broken physics.

So far though, I've been getting very good feed back from the testers in regards to the physics improvements and they have a wide range of computers and hardware. The main development machine is a 5 year old desktop and has�a Geforce4 TI128 card (about 4 years old) and the game produces about 60FPS. One of my testing laptops with a 64MB integrated intel card gets about 34FPS with Release 3. I have several other laptops I test with.

As long as your hardware can keep the game up over 25 frames a second the old frame rate problems seem to have gone away. Under 25 frames a second and I'm afriad there is little I can do to help. At that point, it's a hardware upgrade issue.

< Message edited by David Winter -- 9/25/2006 6:05:22 AM >

(in reply to MitchG)

Post #: 3

RE: Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 6:06:18 AM

David Winter

Posts: 5158
Joined: 11/24/2004
From: Vancouver, BC
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: nmleague

The frame rate problem is a thing of the past, within the past month David has made changes to the game that have eliminated the frame rate problems that existed.� Maybe David or Maruarders can give you more details, but I can say that with release�2 I would get messages about my frame rate being to low, and thus have limitations with graphics and instant replays etc..�� In the last month of beta testing I have not had a frame rate warning and I now have instant replays throughout the game.

Well, you're not getting the warning because I've turned them off

.. it's a setting in the settings.ini file that turns them on or off. They'll need to be turned back on before release, but they're easily turned off if people don't want them.

That said, with the physics fixes, only extremely low frame rates (under 20) should cause problems.

< Message edited by David Winter -- 9/25/2006 6:08:14 AM >

(in reply to nmleague)

Post #: 4

RE: Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 6:50:17 AM

Marauders

Posts: 4428
Joined: 3/17/2005
From: Minnesota
Status: offline

The two easiest ways to get better frame rates if they are too low are to turn off replays if one's computer doesn't have 1GB of memory and to turn the shadows to a lower setting if one's graphics card is not quite fast enough.

(in reply to David Winter)

Post #: 5

RE: Frame Rates - 9/25/2006 7:24:12 AM

David Winter

Posts: 5158
Joined: 11/24/2004
From: Vancouver, BC
Status: offline

The game does not�require 1GB of ram and replays certainly do not. A typical replay takes about 400k of memory. The reason I turn off replays if the game finds it's getting low frame rates is that I need to take back every byte of memory I can get in order to render the scene. Replays are a nice to have, but it's better to turn those off, get back that 400k, and hopefully use that memory for better things.

The video card is the single biggest factor in game performance. The integrated, Intel type, that share system memory etc will probably not be able to run the game on anything more than the lowest possible settings. If you're going to spend money upgrading, spend it on a good graphics card than putting in 1Gig of RAM. Although if you can do both, that's even better.

< Message edited by David Winter -- 9/25/2006 7:27:32 AM >

(in reply to Marauders)

Post #: 6

RE: Frame Rates - 9/26/2006 12:07:07 PM

Marauders

Posts: 4428
Joined: 3/17/2005
From: Minnesota
Status: offline

Maybe my reply was not clear. If one want to have higher resolution in game, and does not have a tricked out machine with a fast card and 1GB, then one or the other method can be used as a trade off to try to keep the higher resolution graphics and color depth. In other words, if the graphics are topped out, then one can get a little better performance with these methods.

My machine runs the game well enough with 512MB and a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 128MB graphics card. I have replays off and the shadows setting set one step down.

Intel integrated shared memory graphics are the bane of any 3D game, and I recommend getting a cheap $40 card instead of trying to deal with that mess. I understand that laptop owners don't have a choice, but any desktop with that should be upgraded.

(in reply to David Winter)

Post #: 7