[Spaceman-Spiff]

I just tried Vampire Bloodlines today, and the game lags a lot when i'm in the middle of the town. I tried lowering the settings, disabling the shadowing, etc, even had the lowest settings for sound, video, and visual settings at one point, and the lag is still there (didn't seem to improve at all).

I play HL2 in medium settings, and it seems to run quite good. I get around 40-50 fps in outdoor maps. I wonder why it's so different with Vampire Bloodlines. Is it only me or maybe the game makers didn't optimize the code that well? Anyone else feels the same? Or is it because Vampire Bloodlines is more optmized for Nvidia (like the case of Doom 3)?

Comp specs: Athlon XP 2500+, 512 DDR, Radeon 9600 (128MB)

[Gollum]

It is quite a bit more demanding, yeah. My puny 1600+ could handle Doom 3, FarCry and even HL2 pretty well, yet Vampire is really choking...

[Tim Murray]

I think it likes RAM a lot...

[Gnerma]

Athlon 64 Winchester @ 2.25ghz, 1gb PC3200 & X800 XT


1280x1024 2x AA / 16x AF
Outside in Santa monica 20 - 40 fps

1024x768 no AA or AF
Outside in Santa monica 30 - 45 fps

I don't know what you mean this games performs chugtastically

[Frank]

It performs quite nicely on my laptop (AMD XP2500, 512 MB, ATi 9200, 1024*786 full detail), but then again, I don't really care about framerates as long as it is running smoothly (no occasional freezes). Only the sound is sometimes stuttering, like HL2. I'll fix that.

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Originally Posted by Gnerma

I don't know what you mean this games performs chugtastically

Wow, didn't expect it will be that slow on X800. What's the command to enable the console?

I'm also experiencing the sound stuttering sometimes.
I wonder if a patch will be released after Valve fixes that problem in the Source engine.

[Gnerma]

Originally Posted by Spaceman-Spiff

Wow, didn't expect it will be that slow on X800. What's the command to enable the console?

Oh believe me I was unpleasantly surprised myself. I should say though that it was raining when I took those numbers so they might be 5fps lower than they would be otherwise. Also, performance is MUCH better indoors than outdoors. When indoors, my FPS is usually at least twice as fast as when I'm outdoors.

I don't know how to enable the console. I used FRAPS.

[Frank]

After the tutorial, I had to turn most graphic options down quite a bit to have any fluent gameplay.

[K.I.L.E.R]

Originally Posted by Gnerma

Oh believe me I was unpleasantly surprised myself. I should say though that it was raining when I took those numbers so they might be 5fps lower than they would be otherwise. Also, performance is MUCH better indoors. Usually at least twice as fast.

I don't know how to enable the console. I used FRAPS.

You get 10fps indoors?

[Gnerma]

Originally Posted by K.I.L.E.R

You get 10fps indoors?

No. You must've misread my post. My FPS is at least twice as fast indoors as it is outdoors. I'll reword it to prevent further misunderstandings.

Any of the 3D technology gurus around here want to take a stab at why this game would perform so dismally outdoors?

[Randell]

Why blame the GPU? Hasn't experience told us most RPG's are CPU bound because of all the NPC/mob AI?

Plus outdoor area's in all games perform worse than indoor areas for obvious reasons.

[Druga Runda]

it doesn't look like I'll have any luck with this @ 1024 with my R9800 vanilla.

meh... I have to have at least 25 minimum to play it OK... I remember morrowind with GFG3ti200 that was on the verge of unplayable at any higher settings.

GF4 made it OK.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Spaceman-Spiff

What's the command to enable the console?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest it might be the same as HL2, just add "-console" to either your shortcuts run-line or else right-click on Half-life 2 under "Play Games" in Steam and select "Properties" and then "advanced options" and enter it there in the start-up area.

cl_drawfps 1 is the next command you'll be wanting to know...

[Spaceman-Spiff]

thanks, it works

i'm only getting 15fps when doing nothing in downtown area, 5-10fps when walking (Athlon XP 2500+, 512MB DDR, Radeon 9600 128MB)

i wonder if this game is highly optimized for nVidia, since there's an nVidia logo at the beginning.
any nVidia gamers tried this game yet?

Originally Posted by Randell

Plus outdoor area's in all games perform worse than indoor areas for obvious reasons.

Outdoor areas were done pretty well in HL2, I can still get 40fps in medium settings. So, it shouldn't be the engine limitations, but more how the game was designed/coded?

[Randell]

Originally Posted by Spaceman-Spiff

Outdoor areas were done pretty well in HL2, I can still get 40fps in medium settings. So, it shouldn't be the engine limitations, but more how the game was designed/coded?

so you got more than 40fps in indoor areas in HL2 yes? I'm surmising, (as is the nature of RPG's) that the outdoor areas are actually bigger than in HL2 with more freedom to roam around and with more NPC's?

So yes game design is the fault, rather than the engine, so maybe CPU limits are more an issue than GPU limits for a given card?

[Moloch]

Here's a fux fir the page file related stuttering, i.e you move and it's laggy and you see you HDD light blinkin,

-heapsize 384000

change to about half your ram, I have 512, but it runs better with that setting- it will use about 300MB phyiscal that way, so its a bit smoother than 256.. but game exiting takes longer obviously.

[Frank]

My laptop *AND* my Radeon 9600 Pro in my other computer both died...

So, now I'm playing it on an Athlon XP1700+ @ 1800 Mhz (same as the XP2500+), 512 Mb and a GeForce 2MX...

While the graphic options are all about the lowest (except for shadows and bump-mapping, wich are both enabled), it plays surprisingly well. Fluently. Only sometimes it freezes for half a second, but that seems to be the sound, not the graphics. Probably decompressing soundfiles and/or decompressing and uploading textures.

Btw. except for some white pixels shining through, it still looks surprisingly great, although now I see how it looks totally teriffic in comparision on a good graphics card.

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Vampire: Bloodlines Patch Plans

German sites Gamesweb and PC Games Online (thanks zerra) each have word (in German) that plans are in place for a patch for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, addressing performance issues and other glitches in Troika's Source-engine Vampire RPG. No release schedule for the patch is projected at this time.

- Copied from Blue's News


I hope the patch will be out before I finish the game :P. Almost finished all of the quests in Hollywood.

[Tim Murray]

hmmm, that's about where I am. must get back to college so I can keep playing.