CPU utilization?
 

I'm playing on a Mac. I was using the tools to design a pretender, and I noticed my fan speed up off the charts. I checked the activity monitor, and I find dom3 is chewing up CPU like crazy. What can it possibly be doing? I'm designing, not running a turn. I'm not even clicking a lot.

-Jeff

Re: CPU utilization?
 

What background does the pretender creation screen have? If it's the sizzling stars, you've probably left it running for a while and the computer is calculating dozens or even a few hundred little stars. You can try disabling animated backgrounds and see if it removes the problem.

Also, it might be just something to do with the pretender creation screen. Map view, battles etc might actually take less CPU power.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I know the processing of a turn sucks up major amounts of CPU. For middle and late stage on super large games I even increase the process priority to above average.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I was on the screen where you pick your dominion/magic/physcial body/etc. Even doing nothing, just being on that screen, seemed to create a big load.

-Jeff

Re: CPU utilization?
 

Does that screen have the background battlefield?

I have an idea, but I'll have to check into it after I get back home tonight.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I'm running winxp currently, and an instance of the game may use up to 100% of my dual cores, even when it is doing nothing. For instance, it may be at 100% just on the menu screen - i minimize it, and it stays at 100, or goes to 50; i bring up the window and minimize it again, doing absolutely nothing else, and the cpu usage then perhaps goes down to 0 where it should be...

Re: CPU utilization?
 

It's a design feature. If Dominions uses up all of your processing power, you will be unable to run any other software concurrently, so you can keep your concentration on the game. http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/876/thumbsupmm7.gif

Re: CPU utilization?
 

Windows Xp and Slow is needless repetition.

Repeat after me:
"I will downgrade."

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I wish Dominions would use more CPU and RAM and make turns faster... I can have tons of things at background and it doesn't change anything.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

What macintosh do you have? What does it have for graphics? If you don't know, I can probably figure out just from the model...

There's one command line I'd like to try- I bet it accounts for that 40% cpu usage I see on the main menu with my crappy integrated 'graphics' laptop.

Trick is just remembering where those command switches are.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

Crappy laptop- specs will not be shared, simply below standards for Windows Vista. Intel Graphics (I was in a pinch, hey, needed something quick for internet) is not what a gamer considers a graphics card. Putting aside the graphics, its not even a card, I believe.

--noglext I usually run with because of my "Intel Graphics" needs somethings turned off to be compatible, but is otherwise irrelevant to macinintosh, I expect, especially if you have no clearly graphical problems running.

With just that switch, I see a constant 40-50% CPU utilization. Windowed mode, so I can see my use live.

Then I add --noanimback , to turn off animated backgrounds. I see a lot of 6-25% range, and at certain parts of the creation process, 40% cpu use. After which its back down to a simple 5%, consistently.

I suspect - though I don't know, that certain graphics tasks are offloading themselves to the cpu (for whatever reason, some quite valid, some not) and are what makes dom3 such a proc. hog during simple character creation.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I have an early MBP w/X1600 graphics card, 2G ram.

I suspect I know what the issue is - the main screen has a constantly scrolling background. The tools screen lies on top of it, but does not completely cover it. It's probably a lot of work figuring out the details of the scrolling, first calculating the little window positions so you don't overwrite the tools window.

-Jeff

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I expect it has to do with transparancies instead. That and the scrolling. It may be interesting to set GUI transparency to 100% and see where that leads

The answer is it doesn't make a difference. Poo.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

I'm not sure why the 'AI Thinking' takes so long for large maps when the AI has lots of commanders/mages even on powerful computers.
Let me say I don't mind the 2hour or longer waiting process, but examining the processes in the background I'd suggest offloading some of the turn processing work onto the RAM. The RAM hardly gets touched in comparison.

Re: CPU utilization?
 

Let me add something which I think is fishy: Whenever a fight is done in a province where it is winter (white ground), the animations take about twice as much time as normal (green ground or whatever). It doesn't have to be raining/snowing, which causes the battle replay to run slower, too, of course, it just has to be cold with the ground covered in white, doesn't even have to contain a lot of trees. Since that white ground is nothing else than green grass (from a programming perspective) to me, I wonder why it's slower.