Pilot Archive

Hi SOE! Thanks for making a great game (although you do have to clean up the engine, its chug-tastic... probably has a lot of dead and unoptimised code that u could start a-fixin').

Anyway, I just wanted to say:

Please fix the ship sizes, they don't seem to be in correct proportions, according to canon anyway. You'll see what I mean if you put a B-Wing next to an X-Wing, or a TIE next to the ol' YT.

Thanks if you read this!

s.b.

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suupaabaka wrote:
Hi SOE! Thanks for making a great game (although you do have to clean up the engine, its chug-tastic... probably has a lot of dead and unoptimised code that u could start a-fixin').

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Nah, I think the devs are just competent, but it seems they remove features from the game, or add stuff that makes other stuff redundant, and just leave heaps of old code intertwined. Like, they add, but never remove or optimise.

Well, I'm not sure, and I'm not presuming to tell them how to do their jobs

BUT

It is clear that the engine couldnt be as good as it can be. Fixing it up can do a lot of good. People like to games that run smoothly. It can also pave the way for possible graphical upgrades in the future. Etc etc...

Well, I'm not a programmer or anything, but I'll take a stab at this.

The first problem SWG has in this regard, is that the characters are so customizable...everyone wants to have near-unlimited character customization, and here is the price that must be paid to have it. Your machine has to render each person individually each second, instead of only having to render from a library of 10-20 different looks, plus colors...I don't feel like being specific, but I have a *pretty sweet* gaming rig, and my framerate drops into the teens when I enter populated areas.

The second problem comes from the buildings and structures themselves. I remember reading once some time back that part of the problem is that the game engine renders all buildings as solid objects, even if you cannot go inside them. Rendering a building as a solid object, as opposed to an empty shell, means a lot more work for your machine.

To be honest, SWG has been (and still is) the game that flexes my machine the most. This game is so complicated compared to any other MMO, I am surprised it works at all.

Domingo

I apologize, I think I read your post a bit incorrectly. Space became a lot chuggier when they increased the asteroid count by like a factor of 10, or 100, shortly before ROTW went live. The only thing I know that you can really do is turn your Nebula Density down...which will give you a 5-10 fps better framerate. Strangely enough, the only place I seem to have some problems are near the landing stations, and if I turn quickly in Dathomir system, with the planet itself coming into view. Out in space though, I run at a smooth 30 fps...until the ISD start firing, heh.

Message Edited by RedOnedi on 07-21-2005 06:39 AM

Nono, you were quite correct, I did mean the game engine in general. You have shed some light on the matter, and I thank you for that.

But there is still the question of why performance suddenly dropped around the board after the combat upgrade. To me, it doesn't make much sense because as I understand it, all the CU did was to revamp the combat and add a few different animations.

Another point of interest perhaps, is why my friend's computer, which is vastly superior to mine, runs the game very badly (no matter how he tries to tweak his software/hardware settings) and why my other friend's computer, which is inferior to mine, runs the game better than mine does.

It's something that I've been thinking about frequently during my short time in SWG, and I can't figure out why it works in this way. And it's very frustrating. Although I've found a "sweet spot" of sorts in my game's settings, it still performs quite dismally. I hold out in the hope that they manage to fix whatever caused this drop in performance.

Indeed, you are correct...my performance changed post CU as well. I could not understand it at first myself, but then I hit the Options button (at the login screen), and noticed that my video card no longer had a name...I re-installed my video drivers, restarted, hit the Options button again, and saw that my card was once again named (correctly too, heh). My performace went back up to where it should be. Give this a try...not just re-installing drivers and/or directx, but looking at the Options screen at the login, and making sure SWG recognizes your card as it is. It is also in these options that the true, behind the scenes game performace options are located...the ones in the game itself are mostly for *tweaking*, so to speak.

Give this a try, and see what happens

Domingo

This is one of my pet peeves too. I've heard it before, and I'll probably hear it again, but im not going to keep my fingers crossed. Im no programmer, but having spoken to someone who has, it sounds like it would be a pain in the rear to scale the ships to appropriate sizes.

My BIG gripe, and one that I'm told would be EQUALLY problematic, is to change the way texture and paint kits work. If you read through the EU, there are TONS of examples of custom paint schemes, some of them even relevant to SWG... CorSec, for example, has x-wings marked in green and gold, I believe. A friend suggested that paint kits similar to what ground vehicles have will **never** be added, not because its difficult to code, but because then everyone would be flying around in jet-black ships to "camo" themselves against the backdrop of space (an idea, also, right out of the EU).

I'm not gonna bother talking about the other "wish list" items... we all know what they are, but I think these two, proper scale and "customization" options, are easy, highly visible, and WILL SHUT US UP WHILE WE WAIT FOR ALL THE OTHER STUFF ON EVERYONE'S LIST!!!!

The reason computers act differently when running SWG is determined by so many factors it isn't silly.

Your friend with the "better" rig, might have a slower Hard Drive or motherboard or even slow RAM, he might have a mess of background applications running, he might need to defragment his hard drive or he might need to update all of his drivers. It is also possible that he is attempting to run the game at a higher resolution with more extraneous graphics items running then someone else is.

Your friend with the "slower" rig, might have the fastest motherboard, Hard Drive or RAM in his PC. He might have next to nothing running in the background, he might be religious about defragging his hard drive. He might also be running all the latest drivers, he might be running the game at a lower resolution with fewer background items running. It could also be that this friend has more RAM then the guy with the "faster/better" rig.

Take me for example, I run an AMD 2100+ processor that is reaching 3 or 4 years old now, it might be slightly older then that though. I have 1GB of RAM and a nice Graphics Card, I also run a fairly speedy Hard Drive and I have a real good control over my computer system. I have very few background applications running and I run SWG with mid to low settings in regards to graphics. When I zone, I do so in a little less then 10 seconds. Another friend, with a faster rig, does so in about 30 to 60 seconds, depending upon what's in the area. My zoning does creep up slightly when there are large numbers of toons in an area, but that's not very often.

Another reason I might zone faster is that I typically ALT-TAB to the desktop, pull up Task Manager and then often set the SWG Executable, which typically grows to a little over 400MB on my machine, to a Above Nomal to High Priority.

If I want, I can make any of my Hutt ships all black as it is...I just wish the Black Sun freelance ships had worthwhile texture skins, something similar to what the rebels have would be fantastic.

On this note...I was really, really looking forward to having an all-black Milennium Falcon, but I was not surprised in the least to see that not much of the ship is paintable

I would really like to know what texture skin that guy that flys around Kashyyyk station has on his YT, because I have never seen it on any other screenshot of the texture skins available for the YT.

Domingo