low fps

[slobber]

Hi, I saw SA2 at pax this weekend, and thought I would buy it, but...

When I play the demo (and even SA1), the fps are really bad. Maybe 15-20 or so...

Even turning off everything I could (sound, music, bloom, etc) it is the same.
I tried windowed mode, low resolution modes, resolution matching my screen (1680x1050), still no joy.

My system doesn't totally suck (I thought!)
2.6GHz AMD64, 2Gig ram
GeForce 6600GT (128MB) w/ DirectX 9.0c

That seems well within the requirements shown on the site - would you expect it to run smoothly on such a system? I'm just trying to decide whether it's worth trying to solve...

During gameplay CPU doesn't go higher than 40%
I suspected it is my somewhat antiquated video card, but as I said using low resolution and reduced effects didn't change anything...

It was running really smooth at pax, what kind of machine/vid card was that?

[Eric Walker]

Hey,

Thanks for stopping by the booth to give the game a try.

I just got back to Michigan, and I'm exhausted. At PAX, we were running the game on Chris's laptop, and I don't know what kind of specs it has off the top of my head. I will see if I can get him to post them here tomorrow.

I will do what I can to look into this more once I get settled in again.

[Bret Alfieri]

Thanks for letting us know. I'd imagine there is something more subtle going on here than just a gerenal horsepower issue. Your PC specs are nearly identical to the PC I developed on asside from the video card I used, a GeForce 7900 GT. Further, I have run the game on PCs with integrated graphics and got about 30fps out of them. Please drop us an email at ominousdev(at)gmail.com and we can try to work out this issue with you. Thanks again.

[slobber]

Hey - I sent an email and just wanted to be sure it didn't get spamboxed

to: ominousdev@gmail.com
date: Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 11:05 AM
subject: low fps (forum post)

I don't mean to nag, just checking (:

[Eric Walker]

No problem! We got the e-mail and we are trying to come up with a plan of attack. I will be in touch with you in a little bit.

Thanks
-Eric

[admin]

Yea, the test machine we had at PAX was a Pentium M 1.6GHz with 2 gigs of ram and a 7800GTX GO card. Not shabby 3 years ago but pretty average by today's standards. I'd have to check again, but I believe it runs it in the 30+FPS range.

[Bret Alfieri]

Problem solved. Our timer function was not behaving with multi-core CPUs. Expect an update to the installer shortly.

[Eric Walker]

The new update is live. Try this version of the demo and let us know if you still have any problems. Thanks again for the feedback!

[slobber]

I just tried the new version - this one crashes immediately when i run it.
To be more precise: The dialog that asks for a license key pops up, I click "Evaluate", and *boom*.

My debugger says it's dereferencing a NULL pointer.

Maybe I should do a new thread...

[Eric Walker]

I haven't had a chance to actually look into this at all yet, but there is a 'Restore Defaults' utility that installs with the game. Try running that, and then the game and see if it fixes anything. Let me know if that helps at all.

There might also be some files called Ominous_Log.txt and Global_Log.txt in the SA2 directory. If you could send them to [i]support (at) ominousdev.com[/i] we might be able to get a better idea of what is going on.

Again, thank you for the feedback.

[slobber]

Well, I had uninstalled it before I read your post, then I noticed there were some "leftover" files from a previous install (i've re-and un-installed it a few times), and I moved those away.
Then I reinstalled to that old directory, and now it works.

and yes, the FPS are great!

+$15 for you!