SupCom: Forged Alliance framerate issue

titaniumx3 · 13 Jan 2009 at 20:21

Hi,

When selecting a large numbers of units I find that my frame rate plummets, sometimes even as low as half the fps I get when units are not selected.

From experience with the orginal SupCom I knew it was because of the weapon range overlay that shows up for every unit. In the original SupCom it's not usually a problem because the range indicators (red circles) only show up when things like artillery and other fixed defences are selected, but with Forged Alliance it shows up for all units. You can disable this weapon range overlay (in the new overlay options menu) but it disables it for everything, i.e. even if you select an artillery piece the range circles no longer show up. I quite liked that feature in the original SC because I knew where I could fire my artillery, but now I can't ... that or I live with the huge fps drops when select large groups of units.

Any ideas? Can I disable overlays triggered by selection, only for units and not weapon emplacements (e.g. artillery)?

BTW, does anyone know why you get the huge fps drops when viewing weapon range overlays? Is it a normal thing? I have a HD4870 with C2Q @ 3.4ghz.

iviv · 13 Jan 2009 at 20:24

Dunno if it'll help, but make sure you're running the Core Maximizer.

Indy500 · 13 Jan 2009 at 22:02

Its a user interface issue. Try a custom UI mod - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30277

Also FA is quite the graphics hog, I'd suggest disabling AA\AF and turning shadows to medium or low.

Basically the engine is inefficient compared to Supreme Commander vanilla and apparently GPG don't have the spare resources to fix it. That said the community seems to be on the issue - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30562

titaniumx3 · 13 Jan 2009 at 22:08

sr4470 said:
Its a user interface issue. Try a custom UI mod - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30277

Also FA is quite the graphics hog, I'd suggest disabling AA\AF and turning shadows to medium or low.

Basically the engine is inefficient compared to Supreme Commander vanilla and apparently GPG don't have the spare resources to fix it. That said the community seems to be on the issue - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30562

Yeah tell me about, just when I get a decent enough computer to run SupCom acceptably, FA comes along and spoils all the fun.

I don't mind a bit of slow down due to the extra graphical features, but things like what I described in my first post are absurd; why the hell does a buch of circles cut the fps in half?

Indy500 · 13 Jan 2009 at 22:17

titaniumx3 said:
Yeah tell me about, just when I get a decent enough computer to run SupCom acceptably, FA comes along and spoils all the fun.

I don't mind a bit of slow down due to the extra graphical features, but things like what I described in my first post are absurd; why the hell does a buch of circles cut the fps in half?

There was a lengthy discussion about this in the GPG forum, but (gross oversimplification) it uses a lot of CPU time to calculate range circles when it shouldn't be.

Stonedofmoo · 14 Jan 2009 at 08:17

Just disable the circles so they only appear when you put your mouse over the unit. You can do that in game from the standard game menus. It's a well documented 'bug' of FA

titaniumx3 · 14 Jan 2009 at 11:15

^^ I just noticed that, seems like a reasonable compromise.

Anyway, I'm loving the real fire explosions with UEF units, reminds of TA again.

Tefal · 14 Jan 2009 at 11:20

I l9ove the new effect of the mavor, instead of the old plasma style thing, it's now a mini firey mushroom cloud

titaniumx3 · 14 Jan 2009 at 13:35

Yeah, the firing effects are generally better in FA, they seem to pack a bigger punch ... always thought most of the plasma weapons in vanilla SupCom looked and sounded too puny.

EvilOne · 14 Jan 2009 at 20:23

Its deffo the weapon range circle, not sure how much i can help. Mabe try find a mod that only has them for artillary.

Strife212 · 14 Jan 2009 at 20:28

On a different note, I hate the direction they took in balancing FA, its completely against what SupCom was about.

Indy500 · 14 Jan 2009 at 20:34

Strife212 said:
On a different note, I hate the direction they took in balancing FA, its completely against what SupCom was about.

They did that to stop "turtling" because a lot of people were vocal about it on the GPG forums and elsewhere. The competitive players seem to prefer fast-paced games on 10x10 maps. Usually the battle is over by 20 minutes, with no time for experimentals.

That said the T4s build faster\are more cost-effective now, although complaints about the new Aeon ones being unbalanced come to mind - the Paragon and Eye of Rhianne in particular.

Stelly · 15 Jan 2009 at 01:27

iviv said:
Dunno if it'll help, but make sure you're running the Core Maximizer.

Well I never... I think I will be using that

Stelly

Stelly · 15 Jan 2009 at 01:28

I so hope that they do bring out another SC

Stelly

ninja2000 · 15 Jan 2009 at 08:59

There was a recent announcement that SC2 is in the works, if you log into gpgnet it is one of the top articles. No further info yet though.

I am currently playing FA on a laptop with nvidia 9200 and the FPS is horrible. The thing that annoys me most is that if I set fidelity to low I get ok frames but there seems to be a gfx glitch as all the textures seem to glare. I wish they were still supporting it, FA is a great game let down by lack of patches.

Gashman · 15 Jan 2009 at 17:46

as said above get a third party UI and i must say turning off the tactical map helps FPS for me too, though AA seems to make absolutely zero difference to performance :confused:

my FPS are almost identical with AA to what they are without AA.

Indy500 · 15 Jan 2009 at 17:48

Gashman said:
as said above get a third party UI and i must say turning off the tactical map helps FPS for me too, though AA seems to make absolutely zero difference to performance my FPS are almost identical with AA to what they are without AA.

Strange, when I turned it off the FPS doubled...and that was with a Radeon HD4870 at 1280x1024.

Radiation · 15 Jan 2009 at 18:09

sr4470 said:
Its a user interface issue. Try a custom UI mod - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30277

Also FA is quite the graphics hog, I'd suggest disabling AA\AF and turning shadows to medium or low.

Basically the engine is inefficient compared to Supreme Commander vanilla and apparently GPG don't have the spare resources to fix it. That said the community seems to be on the issue - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=30562

Does that patch improve performance much?

I had to shelve the game because its just unplayable where as supcom is aright on medium settings with 4 players, i don't get why they bothered adding the perfect circles of visibility to the fog/shround or the range finders, was fine before and doesn't add much but a performance hit, but reckon the performance issues are all mostly down to poor coding.

Indy500 · 15 Jan 2009 at 21:56

Radiation said:
Does that patch improve performance much?

I had to shelve the game because its just unplayable where as supcom is aright on medium settings with 4 players, i don't get why they bothered adding the perfect circles of visibility to the fog/shround or the range finders, was fine before and doesn't add much but a performance hit, but reckon the performance issues are all mostly down to poor coding.

I'm not 100% sure, worth a try though. At the moment I can't test it as my current computer is too old to run FA.

HummuH1 · 16 Jan 2009 at 12:44

What I don't is why performance varies on systems so much. The only issue I've every had with Sup Com was with memory.

With FA, I can quite happily have games with 4 x AI's, reasonable eye candy, 2000 unit limit on 40 x 40 maps and have no game speed or FPS issues at all.

On the balance issue, get in about the community mods. Loads of units, building enhancements balance mods etc out there which improve the overall playability of the game.