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Kid, try the command before you start guessing around. It shows you the FPS, the number of polygons, tne number of vertices and the number of polys/sec.
Login screen: 62 FPS 142 polys, 286 verts, 8500 polys/sec (first and last number fluctuate, just in case someone wants to be a smartass by telling me 62*142 does not equal 8500).
Login screen: 62 FPS 142 polys, 286 verts, 8500 polys/sec (first and last number fluctuate, just in case someone wants to be a smartass by telling me 62*142 does not equal 8500).
Nighty, /toggleframerate doesn't indicate how many polygons are being rendered at that given moment. It only indicates how many frames per second you're getting. Frames per second is simply an indicator of how fast your computer can render an image, with each frame being a full rendition of the scene. The higher the number, the smoother the game becomes.
Nighty: I believe you are basically correct. For example, when you are docked in a station, you will hear all the 'correct' sounds from events happening nearby.
I'm wondering...
What exactly does the game do from the moment you start it up to the moment you close it? I been monitoring it, and it eats 100% CPU on both my Linux workstation, dual celeron 400 (100% of one CPU that is, since vendetta is not multithreaded), and also on my Windows laptop, PIV 2GHz. Not only when flying around, but also when docked, and even before I log in, in the screen with the 4 buttons (play, options, quit and something else). Basicaly from the moment I start the application untill I close it.
I can understand that rendering a 3D environment can be taxing on your system resources, but displaying a screen with 4 buttons?
I get the impression that the game is _always_ rendering some 3D content in the background, but that it just puts an opaque overlay over whatever it renders when you're not flying. I occasionaly see flashes of rendered asteroids etc... during the sector-hop screens. But maybe that's just a driver bug or something, not sure. It would explain the excessive CPU usage though.
So, devs. Can you shed any light on this? I'm curious. I like to keep vendetta running in one X server on my linux box while doing some work in another, so I can immediately react when I'm needed ingame. But I lose a whole CPU to this, while the game is doing nothing at all. Even in Windows, when in windowed mode, docked, vendetta screen minimised it eats 100% CPU, making the laptop sluggish to work on. During this time it's just "displaying" (remember: minimised) the purchase screen of the station I'm docked in and sometimes the ingame chatter.
What exactly does the game do from the moment you start it up to the moment you close it? I been monitoring it, and it eats 100% CPU on both my Linux workstation, dual celeron 400 (100% of one CPU that is, since vendetta is not multithreaded), and also on my Windows laptop, PIV 2GHz. Not only when flying around, but also when docked, and even before I log in, in the screen with the 4 buttons (play, options, quit and something else). Basicaly from the moment I start the application untill I close it.
I can understand that rendering a 3D environment can be taxing on your system resources, but displaying a screen with 4 buttons?
I get the impression that the game is _always_ rendering some 3D content in the background, but that it just puts an opaque overlay over whatever it renders when you're not flying. I occasionaly see flashes of rendered asteroids etc... during the sector-hop screens. But maybe that's just a driver bug or something, not sure. It would explain the excessive CPU usage though.
So, devs. Can you shed any light on this? I'm curious. I like to keep vendetta running in one X server on my linux box while doing some work in another, so I can immediately react when I'm needed ingame. But I lose a whole CPU to this, while the game is doing nothing at all. Even in Windows, when in windowed mode, docked, vendetta screen minimised it eats 100% CPU, making the laptop sluggish to work on. During this time it's just "displaying" (remember: minimised) the purchase screen of the station I'm docked in and sometimes the ingame chatter.
I get about 85% CPU on my P4 1700... I can run it as low as 33% CPU (with priorities and stuff), but not any less.
In windows, try making vendetta fullscreen and then minimizing it. (press the Windows key to do it)
Vendetta should then take very little cpu.
This trick only works in DirectX mode if it works at all.
Vendetta should then take very little cpu.
This trick only works in DirectX mode if it works at all.
While this isn't directed towards Nighty or anyone within the thread, I thought I'd do a bit of ranting on the topic of CPU usage and games.
I always get a good laugh when someone complains about a game that isn't running at 5% or 10%. I mean c'mon people, this isn't pong or tetris. Granted Vendetta is not the most demanding game available, it still utilizes a lot of CPU-demanding calculations such as on-the-fly 3D rendering, texture mapping, lighting, physics, network packet distribution, etc. And *gasp* believe it or not that's gonna take a good chunk out of your CPU to get those things running properly.
If you're too busy dealing with AIM, KaZaa, Internet Explorer, IRC, an MP3 player, or whatever, what business do you have running the game anyway? It bothers me to no end when I see people complaining about lag when they're running AIM in the background, or when they complain about low FPS in windowed mode. Holy crap, talk about being spoiled! At the very most all you ever need is an MP3 player, but even then the devs were kind enough to add some form of ogg file support structure for all your music needs.
And this isn't just for Vendetta either. No matter how much any modern game becomes optimized, you'll never have such a low CPU footprint. Really now, what's the big problem here? If you're tryng to use a game as a chat client, end the game and use IRC or AIM instead. That's why they're there! If you're truly dedicated to playing the game you shouldn't have all that crap running in the background to begin with. Who cares if a game is running at 90% or 100% CPU if you're getting a steady 50 some FPS with great graphics. Boo-frickin' hoo!
And one feature that I've always loved about Vendetta is the online "Active Players" listing. It takes maybe five seconds tops to get online in Vendetta. If you ever need to "scramble" to defend your nation, all you need to do is have your browser pointed to this webpage to check for online activity. Is running Vendetta 24/7 really all that much important to you if the difference between the two methods is a five-second delay? You've gotta be frickin' kiddin' me.
But hey, don't let me stop you. If you've got the fastest CPU in the world and a trillion terrabytes of RAM installed, by all means have fun jugging between ninety different programs while trying to play a game at the same time. I'll have comfort knowing I can still kick your ass on my lowly old computer running one game at a time with maximum CPU usage, thankyouverymuch.
=)
I always get a good laugh when someone complains about a game that isn't running at 5% or 10%. I mean c'mon people, this isn't pong or tetris. Granted Vendetta is not the most demanding game available, it still utilizes a lot of CPU-demanding calculations such as on-the-fly 3D rendering, texture mapping, lighting, physics, network packet distribution, etc. And *gasp* believe it or not that's gonna take a good chunk out of your CPU to get those things running properly.
If you're too busy dealing with AIM, KaZaa, Internet Explorer, IRC, an MP3 player, or whatever, what business do you have running the game anyway? It bothers me to no end when I see people complaining about lag when they're running AIM in the background, or when they complain about low FPS in windowed mode. Holy crap, talk about being spoiled! At the very most all you ever need is an MP3 player, but even then the devs were kind enough to add some form of ogg file support structure for all your music needs.
And this isn't just for Vendetta either. No matter how much any modern game becomes optimized, you'll never have such a low CPU footprint. Really now, what's the big problem here? If you're tryng to use a game as a chat client, end the game and use IRC or AIM instead. That's why they're there! If you're truly dedicated to playing the game you shouldn't have all that crap running in the background to begin with. Who cares if a game is running at 90% or 100% CPU if you're getting a steady 50 some FPS with great graphics. Boo-frickin' hoo!
And one feature that I've always loved about Vendetta is the online "Active Players" listing. It takes maybe five seconds tops to get online in Vendetta. If you ever need to "scramble" to defend your nation, all you need to do is have your browser pointed to this webpage to check for online activity. Is running Vendetta 24/7 really all that much important to you if the difference between the two methods is a five-second delay? You've gotta be frickin' kiddin' me.
But hey, don't let me stop you. If you've got the fastest CPU in the world and a trillion terrabytes of RAM installed, by all means have fun jugging between ninety different programs while trying to play a game at the same time. I'll have comfort knowing I can still kick your ass on my lowly old computer running one game at a time with maximum CPU usage, thankyouverymuch.
=)
Khral, I know you like to rant a lot, but next time try to read what others say before indulging in your favourite hobby.
I am _not_ complaining that the game eats lots of resources while I'm flying, that I consider perfectly normal. But I'm wondering why a game has to keep a CPU occupied to the max while displaying the first ingame screen with 4 buttons labeled "play", "info", "options" and "quit", or while docked. Yes, I can understand that it eats a little more CPU while docked because there's still some calculations to make, but while docked it's realy nothing more than a chat client with some background sounds. And what the game thinks it needs to be calculating while in the login screen is realy beyond me.
Other than that, I can say the game runs light enough to run a million gazilion background processes while playing, even on my humble Celeron 400.
ps: I should've known there were gonna be probably at least some uninformed guess replies and some whiners, maybe I should have specificaly stated I'm not interrested in others opinions on my lifestyle; I was asking the devs what eats so much CPU while the game is doing nothing. I was not asking "Khral, flame me".
I am _not_ complaining that the game eats lots of resources while I'm flying, that I consider perfectly normal. But I'm wondering why a game has to keep a CPU occupied to the max while displaying the first ingame screen with 4 buttons labeled "play", "info", "options" and "quit", or while docked. Yes, I can understand that it eats a little more CPU while docked because there's still some calculations to make, but while docked it's realy nothing more than a chat client with some background sounds. And what the game thinks it needs to be calculating while in the login screen is realy beyond me.
Other than that, I can say the game runs light enough to run a million gazilion background processes while playing, even on my humble Celeron 400.
ps: I should've known there were gonna be probably at least some uninformed guess replies and some whiners, maybe I should have specificaly stated I'm not interrested in others opinions on my lifestyle; I was asking the devs what eats so much CPU while the game is doing nothing. I was not asking "Khral, flame me".
Nighty, read my first sentence again. Thank you.
Oh wow, my computer can render a non changing screen 130 times a second!
Sorry, i think i'd prefer it to render that at 20 fps so folding can work, you know in case i leave it running by accident.
Sorry, i think i'd prefer it to render that at 20 fps so folding can work, you know in case i leave it running by accident.
sorry khral, there's no fps difference in window and fullscreen modes (at least for me, exactly the same).
Why do we want low CPU consumption? well for the bots :)
but then guild can just provide us with a text version with anonymous logins so we can't get cap money and team chat stuff :)
Why do we want low CPU consumption? well for the bots :)
but then guild can just provide us with a text version with anonymous logins so we can't get cap money and team chat stuff :)
Let me just clarify again that my post wasn't directed at anyone in the thread. A rant does not necessarily have to be directed towards someone with intent of starting a flamewar. I just wanted to post something before we got the usual whiners who'd start making unrealistic demands.
And yes, Blaster, there is an FPS hit with windowed mode versus fullscreen mode. You essentially have background tasks and the game simulaneously while being constantly updated. This takes up far more resources than fullscreen mode, which only has to worry about updating the status of the game itself. There's no need to be cocky about it if you found some way to narrow the FPS gap. It was simply an example for those who had unrealistic demands for the game.
And yes, I agree that Vendetta shouldn't constantly be forced to render a still image or menu repeatedly when it's idle. My guess is that the game constantly updates your network status--checking to make sure you're still online, or whether your inventory has been changed, or whether someone transferred money to you etc.. You also have to keep in mind that the game is constantly being rendered by your graphics card. Regardless of whether you're in a menu or not, DirectX or OpenGL are constantly running at all times.
Would you rather have long loading screens or progress bars while switching in and out of stations? I know I wouldn't. And that's exactly what would happen if you wanted to constantly turn the rendered on and off to get that low CPU usage... all for the sake of idle menus. A shortcut to preventing those long loading times is to have the entire game be constantly rendered by its 3D engine, including menus. That way you don't have to reload all those models and textures right as soon as you get out of the station.
And yes, Blaster, there is an FPS hit with windowed mode versus fullscreen mode. You essentially have background tasks and the game simulaneously while being constantly updated. This takes up far more resources than fullscreen mode, which only has to worry about updating the status of the game itself. There's no need to be cocky about it if you found some way to narrow the FPS gap. It was simply an example for those who had unrealistic demands for the game.
And yes, I agree that Vendetta shouldn't constantly be forced to render a still image or menu repeatedly when it's idle. My guess is that the game constantly updates your network status--checking to make sure you're still online, or whether your inventory has been changed, or whether someone transferred money to you etc.. You also have to keep in mind that the game is constantly being rendered by your graphics card. Regardless of whether you're in a menu or not, DirectX or OpenGL are constantly running at all times.
Would you rather have long loading screens or progress bars while switching in and out of stations? I know I wouldn't. And that's exactly what would happen if you wanted to constantly turn the rendered on and off to get that low CPU usage... all for the sake of idle menus. A shortcut to preventing those long loading times is to have the entire game be constantly rendered by its 3D engine, including menus. That way you don't have to reload all those models and textures right as soon as you get out of the station.
Khral, I know it wasn't directed at me, but you were ranting about people complaining about high CPU usage in games. It's perfectly normal for a game to keep my CPU tied up during actual gameplay; it's not normal for a game to keep my CPU tied up while displaying a static screen such as the one you get while docked. And it's certainly not normal for a game to hog the complete CPU so it can display a login screen.
No kiddin. Khral: ever tried doing a /toggleframerate ingame? What's it say when you're in the main menu? Right: it's rendering 140 polygons. Don't know how many while docked, and not gonna check either. I'll leave this as an exercise to the reader.
Anyway, my question is anwered. Time to declare this thread dead.
Anyway, my question is anwered. Time to declare this thread dead.
Nighty, there's a tradeoff involved with this. If you want low CPU usage in menus, you'll need to turn off 3D rendering. What this means is you'll see an annoying progress bar and long load times for every time you dock and undock from stations. The reason behind that is all those models and textures will need to be reloaded as the renderer fires up again. One way to fix that is to have the entire game be constantly rendered with the 3D engine, which conveniently caches all the models and textures you come across in the game, thus eliminating the need for all the progress bars. Unfortunately high CPU consumption will always be a result of 3D hardware rendering. There's no escaping it. Surely the Vendetta engine will constantly be optimized for performance, but there's no way to get the best of both worlds.
w00t - hear'o hear Arolte...
People... try to imagine the count of MIPS that your computer have at hand to work with - and try to realize that wonders won't happen...
On Linux (and MacOSX i could imagine) there is a way of getting an idea of how well ones computer does the job, in the fine count of BogoMIPS. BogoMIPS is one way to find how many Millions of Instructions Per Second it processes:
My old 533 MHz Celeron (running at 850 MHz) have a count of 1697.38 BogoMIPS (read from the file '/proc/cpuinfo').
Just try to imagine how many things it can do - and especially can't do...
People... try to imagine the count of MIPS that your computer have at hand to work with - and try to realize that wonders won't happen...
On Linux (and MacOSX i could imagine) there is a way of getting an idea of how well ones computer does the job, in the fine count of BogoMIPS. BogoMIPS is one way to find how many Millions of Instructions Per Second it processes:
My old 533 MHz Celeron (running at 850 MHz) have a count of 1697.38 BogoMIPS (read from the file '/proc/cpuinfo').
Just try to imagine how many things it can do - and especially can't do...
Khral, it's just the wallpaper in the background, ahh, the joy of multiple desktops.
But Nighty, 62 x 142 doesn't equal 8500... hehe!
/me ducks quickly
Really? I haven't played in a while so you're probably right.
But hey, remember back when we could toggle wireframe mode? The funny thing about that was how even text was rendered as polygons. That's why you couldn't read chat or parts of your HUD with it turned on. I wouldn't be surprised if the in-game menus were mesh too--that would explain the poly count. Anyway, it's still highly doubtful that we'll ever see low CPU consumption for menus due to the nature of games like these. And it's not just a Vendetta specific coding obstacle either.
If you want an in-game chat client for those scripted bots, you're pretty much at the mercy of the devs to have 'em release a program that's specifically made for that. It could perhaps be a stripped down version of the guide/admin monitoring program. I'd be against it though, seeing how it would be easily abused if given to the wrong hands. Besides, it'll only further delay the development of the game.
I think everything is fine as it is now with the bots. If you've got an old computer lying around that can just barely get Vendetta running, why not use that to keep the bots up and running? The fact that you have to do a lot of coding to get it translated into IRC or whatever also helps deter the potential number of abusers away, in that only a chosen few have the knowledge to accomplish such a feat.
/me ducks quickly
Really? I haven't played in a while so you're probably right.
But hey, remember back when we could toggle wireframe mode? The funny thing about that was how even text was rendered as polygons. That's why you couldn't read chat or parts of your HUD with it turned on. I wouldn't be surprised if the in-game menus were mesh too--that would explain the poly count. Anyway, it's still highly doubtful that we'll ever see low CPU consumption for menus due to the nature of games like these. And it's not just a Vendetta specific coding obstacle either.
If you want an in-game chat client for those scripted bots, you're pretty much at the mercy of the devs to have 'em release a program that's specifically made for that. It could perhaps be a stripped down version of the guide/admin monitoring program. I'd be against it though, seeing how it would be easily abused if given to the wrong hands. Besides, it'll only further delay the development of the game.
I think everything is fine as it is now with the bots. If you've got an old computer lying around that can just barely get Vendetta running, why not use that to keep the bots up and running? The fact that you have to do a lot of coding to get it translated into IRC or whatever also helps deter the potential number of abusers away, in that only a chosen few have the knowledge to accomplish such a feat.
Like I said... cocky.
::rolleyes::
::rolleyes::
/me hands a1k0n a tazer.