EQ2 uses PS/VS 1.1 only

All,

Maybe this would better explain how I came to the conclusion that EQII is more CPU limited than I originally thought it was. I played EQII @ 1024x764 on an Athlon 2100+ (~1.6GHz) with 1GB of memory, Ati 9500 Pro 128MB on Extreme Performance and it was terrible ([16FPS Ave][9FPS min][26 FPS max] 5min looping around Greystone Yard). As I turned up settings to Balanced things got ever worse. The game was not enjoyable.

I thought, "Hey I am asking more from my video card and things are getting worse so I bet an Ati 9800 Pro 256MB would be significantly better."

I put in an Ati 9800 Pro 256MB card, did the loop and got the same crappy frame rate. ([14FPS Ave][8FPS min][21max]) ((please remember this is not an exact science as it is on a mmorg and 5min is all the time I gave to each test after seeing that 10min of lapping gave about the same results and was boring as hell (remember this was just an informal personal test))). As I turned up settings to Balanced things got ever worse. The game was not enjoyable.

I then thought, "Hey I got a better video card and nothing really changed. I guess EQII is much more CPU limited than I thought (for my hardware)." Chalnoth mentioned that he found the game to be more CPU limited than he originally thought and I told him I felt the same.

I bought an Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz) and BOOM even with my 9500 Pro the game was much more enjoyable with faster frame rates. I did not benchmark it as I was enjoying the game. Looks to me like the CPU made a much bigger difference than getting a better video card.

Dr. Ffreeze

 

Offhand, I would imagine there are settings that really affect performance one way or another, making the engine fluctuate between GPU dependency and CPU dependency. They key, I suppose, is playing around enough to find out what those options are.

Offhand, I mainly want to talk to Goragoth and compare notes, because my system is almost the same as his (though he doesn't mention RAM) and I don't think I'm getting anywhere near his performance levels. Heh...

 

I've been fine in most dungeons. I just want to be better off everywhere. I'll certainly take the chop of crowds in the city, but I'm aiming for good detail and solid performance. Textures over effects; people over environment.

There are SO GODDAM MANY options, though! Heh.

Now of you said "dungeons with water"...

 

Actually in dungons i found its best to put shadows on simple or off , i get the most gain from that . IN places like stromhold there are tons of lights , torches on the wall , lighting effects , flaming bad guys . , chairs , all that stuff. It kills performance with


Anyway , the game can be cpu or gpu limited .It will change with the settings you use .


At performance and balanced your not really stressing your video card .

I will try and dig up pictuers of the diffrent settings

 

Well my performance isn't exactly stellar, I'm really hoping to get a new system soon. I have 1gig of RAM (2x512meg DDR333 in dual channel) btw, and my 9700P is slightly underclocked (~10Mhz) because I was getting major corruption in EQ2, so much for it not stressing the videocard. I'm not sure what all my settings are from the top of my head but here's a few I do remember (in no particular order):
Shadows: all off
Particles: all at max (usually turn down particle quality in certain places such as RoV that give me bad performance)
High quality characters: 5
Low quality characters: 15
Character LOD: Highest.
Specular lighting: on (I turn this off again in RoV and in the catacombs if performance is dipping).
Flora: on (medium distance and density)
Complex shader distance: ~80 I think.
Animation settings: all on highest except cloth animation off (most of the time, I'll turn it on occaisonally because it just looks so cool but it can kill performance in certain areas)
Character textures: High
Other textures: High
Character LOD textures: Medium

Can't remember what the other settings are but I can give any specific ones you are interested in later. I've pretty much hand tweaked every value there is to get the best looking image while still getting acceptable performance. On occaison I've had turn most settings right down to get the game to be playable in RoV. I think there's a real issue here that performance varies so much from zone to zone. It's ok if performance dips a little in the city but the dungeons shouldn't be performing this much worse than outside areas.

 

Try these then

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=3265

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=46895

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=53932

 

Ohh,

I have also upgraded from 1GB to 2GB ram (single channel /grrr) and at the same time I started using Cacheman. Things felt better, but I really don't know if it was the 1GB to 2GB or it it was Cacheman better using the extra memory I had (HD caching).

I also installed a 4GB solid state drive for my swapfile a bit later. Not much difference offhand. I was thinking of upping it to 8GB and installed EQ2 on it, but the EQII folder is too big. hehe

Hmm, I just looked again and it says EQ2 folder is only 4.5GB. Last time I looked I thought it was a bit over 10GB install. I might need to scan my HD, but if it really is 4.5GB I could install it. =) Only problem is that the solid state drive is PCI based, so 132MB max sustained bandwidth. Would be cool to get a solid state drive on a PCI-E x16 slot! I really would like WinXP 64 to come out with a sweet consumer board that supported 8+ Gigs of memory. I could set up a sweet FAST ramdrive to dink around with. =)

Dr. Ffreeze

 

define to me what trolling is, cuz apparently posting anything that goes against the personal views of everyone on this forum is considered trolling.

so i wanna hear the definition of trolling.

 

erased

 

k i dont see how any of that applies to me, since nothing i posted envokes an angry response.

and i dont see how the eq2 engine DOESNT suck.

 

erased

 

Oh my, you think that posting that the engine of a game that clearly many members of this board play and enjoy "sucks" will not evoke an angry response? Human psychology 101: insulting something someone else likes will likely make them angry.

So in your opinion is there a better alternative or do all MMORPG engines "suck" from your point of view? From your other posts you seem to have a very low opinion of subscription based games and MMORPGs in general - could this be the reason that you think the EQ2 engine is so bad rather than any technical merits whatsoever? And remember an MMORPG engine has quite different demands and limitations to that of a FPS.

 

Personally, I'm amazed at how good WoW looks for how simple its engine really is. It's all about art direction and EQ2 DEFINITELY lacks that.

I mean, c'mon, make at least a few textures tile well.....

 

I do agree that the art direction in WoW is wonderful and I've had great respect for Metzen ever since seening his work in Warcraft2. I think the technical execution of the artwork in EQ2 is great actually but a lot of it does lack... "soul" (some things are very nice and make you go oooh ahhh but much of it does look quite generic and other parts are blantently ripped off, I mean c'mon Baubbleshire looks almost exactly like a replica of Hobbiton from LotR).

 

first of all, i could see if i insulted them for liking it, then ud have a point. but just cuz i say something u like sucks isnt trolling. if that makes u mad maybe your the one who should get help. i loved the nintendo 64, but almost everyone thought it sucked. didnt bother me. i like far cry, people always sya it sucked, didnt bother me.

as for eq2, the engine sucks because for the level of visual appeal it produces, it runs like total shit. nothing about the game is impressive enough to warrant the type of performance it has. its full of bugs, it leaks memory like a faucet, theres rendering glitches abound and more. honestly the game doesnt even look impressive by any current pc standards. the environments are drab and boring, the characters are stiff, the particle effects suck, the water shader looks like liquid metal. while all of those are clearly art related, it doesnt take away from my above post that game game runs like shit and barely looks decent.

im sure ill have 50 people saying im trolling again right now....

 

Hovz, All MMORPGs are CPU limited. I have never come across one that isnt. WoW, EQ 2, EQ 1, SWG, Anarchy Online. All of them are like this. All of them run like dogs compared to a games of similar quality. Paticularly First Person Shooters.

EQ 2 is the most advanced Mmorpg engine to date. Thus it runs like a dog and still doesnt look as good as games like Doom 3, Far Cry. These games are almost impossible to optimise for. Making them run dog slow specially in comparison to a FPS. But it's not a FPS and peoples expectation of this kind of game shouldnt be that or a next generation FPS.

EQ 2 stands alone right now as a engine for its genre. Theres nothing that compares to it in the MMORPG genre. Therefore. You can say it "Sucks" all you want. But you have no basis for comparison since there is no other game in this genre which matches it right now. Therefore your performance charactoristics are irrelevant.

I like most of EQ 2's art. Some of it I dislike though. I dislike the artwork for the Kerrans and Iksar. But love the elves. EQ 2's textures are strange really. Some look beautiful. I mean look at the longshadow alley zone. Some of the textures like the portal look great. While the walls look crappy and undetailed.

 

lineage looks about as good as eq2, runs much better. accomplishes almost the same for much less, altho im not a big fan of the unreal 2 engine either.

 

Lineage 2 looks nothing like EQ 2. Not even bloody close. If I need to clarify. I will later. But anyone who's played both (Like I have) will see the utter obsurdity in your comparison.