Demo lags a lot for me

Started by mike456, October 31, 2016, 05:26:45 PM

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mike456

I downloaded the demo before deciding to purchase the full version.  I experienced serious lag while playing a mission.  Everything is overall slowed down and less responsive, and ship/particle movements are jerky.  I checked the system requirements, and I seem to have them at least: Win7, quad core 2.67GHz i7, 8GB RAM.  My graphics card is nothing special (Nvidia NVS 3100M), but I've never had any issues with any of the Creeper World games, even on the giant maps with tons of units. 

Has anyone else seen these issues with the Demo version, or does anyone have any idea if the full version by chance does not have these lag issues?  I would like to buy the full version, but not if it plays like this.  Thanks!

Sorrontis

Can you please try to reinstall the game. If it still doesn't work, provide Virgil with the log file. I'm not sure where it would be for the demo though.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

knucracker

Also, tell us which missions you have tried.  If you are playing the first few story missions and experience slowdown, then something is off somewhere.

mike456

Thanks for your replies.  I tried reinstalling... no help.

I have actually played all of the missions in the Demo.  I didn't notice any lag until mission #3.  I just tried it again now, and it takes 6sec of real time for 1sec of game time to elapse on 1X speed.  There is no lag at the beginning of the mission.  It seems to be correlated with the number of particles in the map.

Sorrontis

#4
Hi Mike456.

Are you running anything else in the background? Watching movies or high computational work? Java & Flash and Firefox can take a lot away from your computer's resources.

(Windows Update is notorious for slowing your computer down - svhost can easily take up 25% of your CPU and a lot of physical memory. There's way to fix these things.)


EDIT: Sorry if this sounds condescending and you know all this already; I'm just trying to cover all the bases.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

MizInIA

Not sure if this helps but I see similar results when i put it on a PCoIP virtual desktop at work. the Disk I/O is high but the CPU and Memory stay normal. I assume it is because there isn't a real video card.

Karsten75

I am frankly surprised that the game runs at all. The NVS 3100M is not a gaming card. It's old, slow and has low memory.

knucracker

The best you can do is to go into the graphics settings and uncheck lighting, trails, and explosions.  Then head over to the ADV tab in the settings and mute the music.  Come back to the graphics and run in a low resolution.  Like 1024x768 in full screen (regardless of your monitor's native resolution).  Shutdown everything else on your system that might work the CPU or memory, and then play.  That will be as good as you will be able to get on your equipment.

Tigershawk

I have an intel i3 (2.4Ghz) with no graphics card (except the integrated intel HD 4000), and I get better performance than that. You might try checking the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and see if anything else is pounding your CPU.

I also have an i7 laptop with Nvidia 1000M graphics, and it does even better than my above machine. Does your i7 have integrated graphics? I'd have to fiddle with it on my laptop, so I can't instruct you in detail, but you might try running on Intel integrated graphics, rather than the external graphics card.  If it gets better, it might indicate that your card or card driver is having an issue.

Oh...wait a minute. My i7 laptop is such a power hog, that it requires being plugged in to run the processor in turbo mode.  If your laptop is like mine, you might get better performance plugging it in.