Display & Other Problems
 

I've got a display problem with my Dom2. I upgraded my OS to WinXP from Win98, and it seems like Dom2 does not use the system refresh rate of 84 Hz or 85 Hz, but instead seems to be using just 60 hz, which is a bloody pain on the eyes.

Additionally, the game has slowed to completely unplayable. Scrolling does not work except in fits and starts and after long delays. Exiting from any menu or window only happens after a 5 second delay. I've no idea what's wrong, does anybody else?

System specs are Celeron 500, Matrox G400 on WinXP Pro, 256 MB of memory.

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

dominion seems to need lots of resources .
i have win xp too but fortunately a quite new pc .


if i play though sp and go to the point of insane wishing / battles etc. with hordes of units i have to wait 5-10 minutes for a new turn being generated .
furthermore i have the ati graphics card problem in battles .

when i run dominions twice , e.g. for sp testing and for taking my turns in mp it gets unplayable even on my only 3/4 year old pc .



since windows xp needs more resources , mainly RaM i guess your pc is now slightly too slow .



2 ideas : first try running dominions in windows 98 compability mode .
if this doesn't help :
install windows 98 again too .
each time you want to play dominions you boot then with windows 98 and for everything else you boot with win xp .


i was not able to find anywhere the system requirements of dominions 2 .
johan or kristoffer could you please post them for edi ?


i guess mainly your RaM and your processor are a bit too slow for windows xp AND dominions 2 .

edi what kind of RAM do you have ? i guess a very slow one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Ah, thanks, I suspected it was something like that. Crap. Typical Windows XP.

Well, not to worry, I'll be sorted in a couple of weeks. I'm going to get myself Mandrake Linux 10 Powerpack Edition (the store was out of them, they get more in a week or two) so I'll just install that on the 10 GB of unpartitioned space I've got and install Dom2 on Linux. Having an OS capable of taking advantage of both Celeron 500 processors (I've got a double processor board and a spare Cel500) should also help.

SDRAM, 100 MHz bus speed. My system is four years old, so it tends to have problems running newer games.

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

As I said somewhere else before: I am running Dom2 on an old 600Mhz machine with an old GeForce2MX pretty fine & fast. The problem usually lies within the bad OpenGL Drivers under windows (since windows promotes DirectX instead). Use third-party drivers. This helped me to get it finally going on my newer 2GHz/ATI machine.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

From what I saw at work, 256 megs is on the low side for WinXP; at least, Windows 2000 bogged down with only 256 megs, and Microsoft tends to always demand more resources and memory with each new Version.

It's also quite possible that you need to grab and reinstall the newest video drivers for your card under XP.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Their is also a HUGE difference between upgrading an older OS to XP and formatting the drive for a fresh XP install.

XP can actually run very well on older computers if you take the time to remove unnecessary services and disable all the fancy UI elements.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Upgraded, as in wiped the old OS completely clean and installed a fresh XP from scratch. I am not a total idiot, after all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Anyways, it seems to have been the native XP drivers that were the problem. Installing the new ones from Matrox fixed most of the offending issues. Scrolling is now almost smooth and almost as fast as under Win98, and the refresh problem has been halved, i.e. it only hurts the eyes half as much as before the new drivers, so it's tolerable.

Thanks, guys!

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

I normally play in a window: while this requires a little more from your video card (as some older cards cannot do graphics acceleration except in fullscreen mode), it eliminates refresh rate suffering, and also makes it easy to switch to other applications for keeping notes, checking unit stats, etc.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Do you have some links to get some 3rd-party OpenGL drivers ? I'm still unhappy with a 2.4GHz rig w/Radeon 9600 having comparable perfs with Dom than my previous 500Mhz/GF2 ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

I usually use the Omega drivers. They are available for NVidia and ATI at www.omegadrivers.net

The refresh rate under OpenGL is a windows / driver problem and has nothing to do with Dom2 itself.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

That site has been giving me "connection refused" errors for several weeks. Has anyone else had troubles getting to it? [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img]

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

for refresh rate in XP that is purely microsoft "intentional stupidity". you need a 3rd party refresh rate fix. I use refresh force, but there are others.

as to radeon performance w/ Dom II, well, it is pretty funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I don't know what the explanation is. I would expect some strange thing in the engine that Dominions used. For a long time nVidia was so dominant, a lot of devs only bothered using nvidia cards to develop on. This was, of course, actively encouraged by nvidia reps, who also pushed their own nvidia-specific OGL extensions. Its possible that this happened during the creation of the original graphics engine upon which Dom II is based .

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Dominions II was not developed with any special graphics card in mind and does not use any non-standard OpenGL commands. So I would blame ATI for not producing decent OpenGL drivers. But I guess they don't care much whether Dominions runs well or not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif .

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

oh sorry johan. I had heard that the basic graphics engine used in Dom II was taken over from somewhere else, and so thought that the original engine (if such there is) might have used those extensions.

while its true ATI hasn't put out the best OGL drivers, its almost comical how poorly the radeons do w/ dominions.

luckily, not being able to run high quality doesn't seem to have affected it's allure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img]

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

I've heard people complain about how Dom2 performs poorly on Radeon machines, but I have a laptop with a Radeon Mobility 9600 and it runs very well with fairly high graphics settings. I've ran Omega drivers since first buying the machine though. Just thought I'd point that out.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

A few months ago I upgraded from a GF4 4400 to an ASUS Radeon 9600XT and I've seen a very nice performance improvement in every game I play -- except Dom 2. Probably because the only OpenGL game I play is Dom. And cruising the ATI website will quickly show that ATI hasn't given a damn about OpenGL performance -- until the frenzied outcries of Doom 3 players well nigh forced them to do something. (Likely for fear of finally losing the PR battle against nVidia.) Thus the beta 4.9 Catalyst drivers, which ostensibly fix Doom 3's OpenGL performance. As a general rule, I don't install beta drivers, so someone else will have to say whether the 4.9 drivers improve anything, or not. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Hammer.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/WinLogo.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon13.gif[/img] http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon45.gif[/img]

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Btw. Omega website is back up. They're based on 4.8 catalysts, so most likely no improvement yet.

Yes, ATI is slower under OpenGL. But still. I don't get why a GeForce from Last generation or earlier gets FPS in the 60 range, while an X800Pro gets less than 15 on the same setting...

Let's just wait for "proper" 4.9 drivers...

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Not for me. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Envy.gif[/img] I still cannot get a response from that site. Do you know of any alternate site that has up-to-date Omega drivers? All the alt sites I've found have files no newer than based upon 4.5. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

May take some time until all Internet Routers have updated their routing tables (from the omegadrives site):

SITE NEWS(08/31/04)
Again, for those who tried to access my site between Sunday and Wednesday, sorry for the downtime, there was a hosting issue again that prevented the site from working, the issue was NEVER fixed by GlobalServers.com, so I changed to a new hosting company.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Thanks for the info! Explains my inability to access the site. Hard to do if it's down, and also hard to do without DNS data. I'll just try again in a few hours (tomorrow morning).

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Are these 3rd party refresh rate fixes graphics card independent, and where can I get them?

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/ for refresh force.

there are others. some drivers even include options to force the refresh rates; as well some general multi-purpose apps like Rivatuner also do.

basically, in order to "protect the customer's monitor", microsoft forces all direct3D games to run at 75hz, which isn't so bad at least. However, due to the obviously extremely dangerous nature of the competing OpenGL API, microsoft forces OGL games to run at 60hz...

yup. why is no one surprised?

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Given the nature of Dom2, it isn't a high priority for most players either. But I wouldn't place ALL the blame on ATI. Sure, their OpenGL sucks. Nevertheless, I get better FPS on other OpenGL games like Il2 Sturmovik and Doom 3. (and I'm speaking full details at max. res here). So there definately are ways to produce a decent OpenGL result even on ATI cards. But then, those games had a larger budget than Dom2 I guess. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Don't take this as a criticism, no one plays Dom2 for the flashy graphics and stunning action. Although the battles are very entertaining to watch. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

yeah win xp needs at least 128 mb ram i think .
but fortunately your patches fixed it somehow already and your linuxupgrade will fix it totally http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Thanks, Archaolept, that did the final trick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Boron, yes, I expect that it will. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Though my XP is actually running smoother and with better performance than the Win98, must be more efficient use of resources.

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

I use the Omega-Drivers that have been pointed to by others already. Runs pretty well with ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

I installed the newest (4.8-based) Omega ATI drivers Last night and it did nada for improving Dom 2 framerates on my (128mb video RAM) 9600XT versus ATI's own drivers. I get ~30fps at "normal" detail level. No offense to the IW guys, but I suspect the "problem" (for lack of a better word) is in their engine and not in the Open GL drivers, because the Omega drivers did improve performance for Doom 3. OTOH, Dom 3 also plays well on my 600MHz Celeron laptop (8mb video RAM). Overall, a game that plays well on antique (anything 2+ years old) hardware does have something good to be said about it. It would just be a nice bonus if it would actually take advantage of all the fancy horsepower my (3.5GHz) desktop has. Still, I bought Dom for it's strategic depth, not it's graphics, so I'm not complaining. heh

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

30 fps? And what exactly is the problem, if one may ask? My setup (32 MB Matrox G400 on a 500 Celeron with 256 MB SDRAM) barely manages 10 fps on low detail after the installation of new drivers and applying Refresh Force. Granted, the system is 4 years old, but I'd be bloody ecstatic to have 30+ fps...

Edi

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

You wouldn't be, if the same system managed 35+ fps in Doom3. (8xAF, 2xAA, 1280x1024, High Detail).

Like I said. FPS aren't crucial in Dom2, so nobody actually complains about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Edi, from your perspective, I can readily see why you'd be delighted to get 30fps. One of my old PCs gathering dust downstairs (from 2 upgrade cycles and 7 years ago) has a 350MHz CPU, 512mb SDRAM, and the same video card. My IBM laptop (600MHz Celeron w/8mb video ram circa 5 years ago) isn't any better. I don't expect these machines to purr (much less roar). I'm quite happy that they run the game at all without choking and spitting up hairballs.

However, my recently-rebuilt desktop now sports a 3.5GHz-equivalent AMD CPU, 1Gb RAM, and a 128Mb ATI 9600XT video card. It's really sad to see 3D games that use pixel shading, light maps, textures, etc. (IOW, all the latest graphic bells and whistles) outperform a 2D sprite-based game that doesn't do all those per-pixel calcs. Given the game's 2D nature (foreground, not background, which is 3D), and my system's capabilities, I should be getting well over 100fps. 30fps is tolerable on the eyes, so I leave the detail at "normal" (I get about 10fps at the highest setting).

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining much less advocating that IW do something drastic (and foolish) like maintain a parallel code base for the game using DirectX. All I'm saying is that the game's performance, graphically, is lacking. A simple statement of fact. Graphics aren't important enough in this game for the devs to take time away from other tweaks they could (and should) do, just so they can eke out a few more fps from their engine. But I would not be surprised if there's some rather inefficient code lurking somewhere that's causing the lackluster performance.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Hehe, the devs did say that they were learning how to program as they went along making the game. Bloated code is to be expected.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Perhaps they were using Microsoft code as examples when they were learning? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

{One should never pass up a chance to take a free cheap shot at M$}

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Unlikely, it runs fine on 4 (or maybe 5) years old GF2MX. On another hand, most people avoid ATI on Linux (OpenGL) due to amazingly poor performance. We should count ourselves lucky that Dom2 runs on ATI at all. Some other games can't run in OpenGL on ATI at all.

Also, I remember reading that when there're many relatively simple objects (like 5000-6000 units on the battlefield), ATI is not that good (presumably they mostly optimizie for first person shooters). This would also explain, why Dom2 is so slow on ATI.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Sigh. Half-Life 2 had better be worth it, as the coupon for a free copy was the only reason I got the ATI card over the nVidia.

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Radeon 9800Pro for 280 CAD looks really attractive. If they only fixed drivers... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

Doom 3 is a popluar benchmark, so ATI optimizes their drivers especially for it in order to score well. If Dominions was a popular benchmark as well, I bet your driver upgrade would have made wonders for the framerate. Hmmm... we should get a hardware reviewer to play Dominions and make it the next major graphics benchmark http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Display & Other Problems
 

IIRC, all those ATi Users (me at work included http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) get either 8, 15.x or 32 fps .. so it looks to me as if some strange sync thing is going on.
This would be either a SDL or a Dom2 issue .. did you ever contact the SDL developers about this?