Running Sauerbraten on crap hardware.

by Nixot on 02/02/2010 22:19, 9 messages, last message: 02/06/2010 05:05, 1689 views, last view: 04/26/2024 03:02

Hi all. I have previously been running Sauerbraten on an Eee PC 900, this was the CTF edition, but it only got 12 fps at best and all the textures kept disappearing so there were plusses everywhere. This was the CTF edition that ran at 20 fps on Hog2 on my deaktop computer at 800x600. Now with the Trooper edition, the same map runs at 60 fps at 1280x1024. Did you make the rendering code more efficient or something? This is supreme! I hope then that Sauerbraten will be able to run on my tiny net-book, at it can manage most Cube maps at 25 fps at 800x600. Is there things I can do to make the FPS faster?

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#1: ..

by eihrul on 02/03/2010 19:52

What hardware? Was it an old Radeon 9200 or some such?

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#2: ..

by Nixot on 02/03/2010 20:33

It has a 900 MHz Celeron processor, 1 GB RAM, and an Intel GMA950 graphics ... thingy (not a card).

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#3: Re: ..

by eihrul on 02/03/2010 20:54, refers to #2

Hmm, Intel GMA performance depends on many factors. The Windows driver gets like 3-4x the performance of the Linux drivers, and the Intel GMA can't handle more than like 20K triangles on screen per frame.

Though, I dunno, maybe you had some setting on before that killed performance. The only thing I remember adding that might affect an Intel GMA is I added blob shadows, which were way cheaper than the stencil shadows.

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#4: Re: Running Sauerbraten on crap hardware

by LeftClicker on 02/04/2010 04:44

Maybe turn off vsync? Oh, and what comments would you give on your Eee PC? Is it worth buying as far as price/performance? (Sorry if/that this is off-topic.)

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#5: Re: Running Sauerbraten on crap hardware

by LeftClicker on 02/04/2010 05:01

Sorry for the double post, but I'm guessing you're gonna get some RTFMs here. I'll just post the relevant info from the wiki ( http://cube.wikispaces.com/Performance+Guide ):

> If you are using an Intel GMA chipset, then certain player models will be much faster to render than others. Use the "Ogro"
> player model, which can be selected in the options menu, or you may choose him from the Sauerbraten console by typing
> "/playermodel 2".

> Your resolution has the largest effect on performance. Change it in the options menu under the res tab, or force it
> explicitly on the command-line with sauerbraten.bat (Windows) or sauerbraten_unix (Linux/BSD/etc) in the base game
> folder (the -w and -h options, try -w640 -h480 for example). If you have an extremely low framerate, lowering the
> resolution will have immediate effects.

I guess the resolution will already have been applied, seeing as you are using a netbook. Anyone know if forcing matching playermodels increases or decreases performance?

== LeftClicker ==

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#6: Re: Running Sauerbraten on crap hardware

by SheeEttin on 02/04/2010 08:46, refers to #5

Forcing playermodels would increase performance as long as they were forced to the Ogro, as it's the cheapest model.

As for performance in general, all the graphics settings in the menu should be turned way down, of course, as well as fullscreen shaders off and no shadows.
Water is also rather expensive, so turn down or off the following settings: waterlod, waterrefract, waterreflect, waterenvmap, and waterfade. The watersubdiv setting, however, should be set high.

In addition, try settings like maxtexsize, texreduce, and texcompress. (I don't know how effective that'll be for integrated graphics, though, because system memory is used, due to no dedicated graphics memory.)

I'm not too familiar with implementations of occlusion, but I suspect PVS would help (though generating PVS data on a netbook would be painful and slow).

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#7: ..

by Nixot on 02/04/2010 19:39

OK, thanks for all your tips. I think blob shadows look better than stencil shadows as they look more like soft shadows!

I followed everything in the performance guide, forced all the player models to ogro, did /texcompress 128, and set all of the graphics settings to low. I also discovered that turning off texture filtering, although making it look crap, increases the FPS by about 50 percent.

I get ~20 FPS playing against bots on Academy but only 17 FPS on Hog2.

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#8: Steps

by LeftClicker on 02/06/2010 03:58

Can you list all of the steps? I'll consider putting this in the performance guide on the wiki.

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#9: Re: Steps

by eihrul on 02/06/2010 05:05, refers to #8

In general there's nothing you really need to do. The defaults Sauer chooses based on your hardware are good enough. About the only real thing that helps is forcing everyone to Ogro beyond that. :P

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