Topic: SFC3 Frame rate problems - help

[Reven]

I have recently dusted off SFC3 and started playing it again on a new computer.  The old one I used to play on didn't have enough horsepower, and in single-player conquest, the delays while it calculated opponent movements made it unplayable after a while for me.

My new system should have more than enough horsepower.  I have a dual Athlon MP2000+ with a Radeon 9000 512MB of ram running XP professional.  My problem is that in battles, I am getting some significant jerkiness.  Often pauses on the order of five seconds.

The things that seem to trigger pauses are:

• Transporters.  Especially if I use "transport one marine" several times in a row.  If I do it just once, I'll have about a 25% chance of causeing a pause of a few seconds.  If I do it three or more times, it will always cause a pause.
  
• Pulse phasers - especially if 4 or more are fired at once.
  
• Many weapons from different sources hitting the same target

This is just a partial list - there are many factors that seem to go together to reduce the frame rate.  I am not talking reducing it from 30 fps to 15fps - I am talking going from 30fps to one or two seconds per frame or more.  In complex battles where there are more than 10 ships, I can be guaranteed that it will be almost unplayable due to the frequent pauses.

I have tried several remedies.  One person mentioned that he had this problem and it was fixed by running in Windows 95 compatibility mode.  I had to use the MS Application Compatibility Toolkit to do this, because the stock Win95 mode wouldn't work with SFC3 on my machine, but this did not fix teh problem.  I have tried running in 16 bit mode, turning down my audio acceleration, turning down my 3D graphics quality... everything I can think of.  Since it is a dual system, I also tried pegging the process to a single processor in case it was a multi-thread bug, but this doesn't work.

If there are any other tips you have for me, I would appreciate it.  Even with just a Radeon 9000, I am thinking that I should have more than enough horsepower for this game.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.  

[Pestalence]

Try dowmgrading you graphics drivers to the catalist 3.7, 3.6, 2.6, or the 2.3. try the latest driver first, the 3.7, then work back from there with the list I provided...

also, find the SFC3.exe and right click on the file, select properties, then in the new window, click on the Comaptibility tab, check in this section and make sure that Visual Themes is disabled...

this seems to be the problem only on ATI Vid cards... I don't know if any other vid cards have this problem or not... I run Geforce FX 5600 on my machine and have not encountered this slow down problem...

Hope that these suggestions help.

[Reven]

Thank-you kindly for the reply and the tips.  I have tried disabling visual themes and that does not seem to help.  I will try the older drivers and see if they help.  I will update this thread for posterity as well.

Your take on this is that it's a graphics card and/or driver issue, and not related to SMP?

I would be interested to know if anyone else has the same difficulties I do.

[Edit] There doesn't seem to be a Catalyst 2.6 driver.  Goes from 2.5 to 3.0.  I'll assume you mean 2.5.

[Reven]

I have tried all the versions back to 2.3.  Version 2.3 is the best, but the problem is still there.  If no ship uses transporters, then 2.3 is the best driver version, with the least pauses.  If transporters are used, then 2.3 is the worst with the worst pauses - it pauses every time a transporter is used.

I have noticed also that if a lot of weapons are fired, there will sometimes be a pause, but only if internal damage is taken by the ship being shot at.  If the shots miss or hit the shields, then there is never a pause.  Which makes sense in light of the transporters, because unless you give a capture order, transporters are only used by the AI to do strikes against ships' systems.  It seems to me that it is a bug in the game when internal damage calculations are being performed that is the most likely culprit.  Perhaps it is throwing off the 3D engine timing.  My system  may be more vulnerable to timing issues being an SMP workstation.

Sigh... it's one of those cases where I'd pay money to get access to the source code to debug it myself.  Perhaps this could be a new business model for game companies.... sell access to the source code (with an NDA of course).  

[Esipes3821]

Your system should be fine with this game...I build and sell systems often and being this is mainly the only series of games that I play ive tested it on several differnet configurations.....the disable virtual themes tab was a fix I discovered for radeon 9500  and above graphics cards on Intel chipset mobo...my case the intel 850e...game would crash on loading....Personally cat 3.4 work the best for me on radeon 9500 or above..not sure they are best for 8500 cores....but seem to work fine.....Ive played the game on a 7500 ..actually even a 128 pro and it didnt play that bad....The only problem I do have with the game is when alot of heavy plasma is used and misses..causes laggy frames..even if the plasma is very small dots in the far distance..will notice it when turning the ship...even bought the 5900 ultra...hoping totally differnt drivers and hardware would help..it didnt...actually seemed worse.....all I have found out about that bug is that..its more cpu related...no matter what graphics card I used..being 9700 pro or 5900 ultra...It was thier.....but when using a 1600 plus athlon with 9700 pro..it was much worse than 3200+ that I normally use....But your graphics card should be fine...I dont know what kinda sound card you have...but might wanna disable it and eliminate that as a possibility...with onboard sound I do have some small jerkiness when weapons are fired and such...as with the audigy I have none....I really do hope taldren fixes that plasma bug in the next patch tho...It gets rather annoying...especially when peeps online think they are gettin game lag when its actually caused by all the heavy plasma floating about...remember I played this game on a 128 pro and it wasnt that bad at all..so i wouldnt go investing in a new graphics card right away....I would check the sound card possibility...and make sure your AA and Smoothvision is set to Application Preference under direct 3d tab of your display drivers....hope this helps...GL  

[Reven]

I have recently dusted off SFC3 and started playing it again on a new computer.  The old one I used to play on didn't have enough horsepower, and in single-player conquest, the delays while it calculated opponent movements made it unplayable after a while for me.

My new system should have more than enough horsepower.  I have a dual Athlon MP2000+ with a Radeon 9000 512MB of ram running XP professional.  My problem is that in battles, I am getting some significant jerkiness.  Often pauses on the order of five seconds.

The things that seem to trigger pauses are:

• Transporters.  Especially if I use "transport one marine" several times in a row.  If I do it just once, I'll have about a 25% chance of causeing a pause of a few seconds.  If I do it three or more times, it will always cause a pause.
  
• Pulse phasers - especially if 4 or more are fired at once.
  
• Many weapons from different sources hitting the same target

This is just a partial list - there are many factors that seem to go together to reduce the frame rate.  I am not talking reducing it from 30 fps to 15fps - I am talking going from 30fps to one or two seconds per frame or more.  In complex battles where there are more than 10 ships, I can be guaranteed that it will be almost unplayable due to the frequent pauses.

I have tried several remedies.  One person mentioned that he had this problem and it was fixed by running in Windows 95 compatibility mode.  I had to use the MS Application Compatibility Toolkit to do this, because the stock Win95 mode wouldn't work with SFC3 on my machine, but this did not fix teh problem.  I have tried running in 16 bit mode, turning down my audio acceleration, turning down my 3D graphics quality... everything I can think of.  Since it is a dual system, I also tried pegging the process to a single processor in case it was a multi-thread bug, but this doesn't work.

If there are any other tips you have for me, I would appreciate it.  Even with just a Radeon 9000, I am thinking that I should have more than enough horsepower for this game.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.  

[Pestalence]

Try dowmgrading you graphics drivers to the catalist 3.7, 3.6, 2.6, or the 2.3. try the latest driver first, the 3.7, then work back from there with the list I provided...

also, find the SFC3.exe and right click on the file, select properties, then in the new window, click on the Comaptibility tab, check in this section and make sure that Visual Themes is disabled...

this seems to be the problem only on ATI Vid cards... I don't know if any other vid cards have this problem or not... I run Geforce FX 5600 on my machine and have not encountered this slow down problem...

Hope that these suggestions help.

[Reven]

Thank-you kindly for the reply and the tips.  I have tried disabling visual themes and that does not seem to help.  I will try the older drivers and see if they help.  I will update this thread for posterity as well.

Your take on this is that it's a graphics card and/or driver issue, and not related to SMP?

I would be interested to know if anyone else has the same difficulties I do.

[Edit] There doesn't seem to be a Catalyst 2.6 driver.  Goes from 2.5 to 3.0.  I'll assume you mean 2.5.

[Reven]

I have tried all the versions back to 2.3.  Version 2.3 is the best, but the problem is still there.  If no ship uses transporters, then 2.3 is the best driver version, with the least pauses.  If transporters are used, then 2.3 is the worst with the worst pauses - it pauses every time a transporter is used.

I have noticed also that if a lot of weapons are fired, there will sometimes be a pause, but only if internal damage is taken by the ship being shot at.  If the shots miss or hit the shields, then there is never a pause.  Which makes sense in light of the transporters, because unless you give a capture order, transporters are only used by the AI to do strikes against ships' systems.  It seems to me that it is a bug in the game when internal damage calculations are being performed that is the most likely culprit.  Perhaps it is throwing off the 3D engine timing.  My system  may be more vulnerable to timing issues being an SMP workstation.

Sigh... it's one of those cases where I'd pay money to get access to the source code to debug it myself.  Perhaps this could be a new business model for game companies.... sell access to the source code (with an NDA of course).  

[Esipes3821]

Your system should be fine with this game...I build and sell systems often and being this is mainly the only series of games that I play ive tested it on several differnet configurations.....the disable virtual themes tab was a fix I discovered for radeon 9500  and above graphics cards on Intel chipset mobo...my case the intel 850e...game would crash on loading....Personally cat 3.4 work the best for me on radeon 9500 or above..not sure they are best for 8500 cores....but seem to work fine.....Ive played the game on a 7500 ..actually even a 128 pro and it didnt play that bad....The only problem I do have with the game is when alot of heavy plasma is used and misses..causes laggy frames..even if the plasma is very small dots in the far distance..will notice it when turning the ship...even bought the 5900 ultra...hoping totally differnt drivers and hardware would help..it didnt...actually seemed worse.....all I have found out about that bug is that..its more cpu related...no matter what graphics card I used..being 9700 pro or 5900 ultra...It was thier.....but when using a 1600 plus athlon with 9700 pro..it was much worse than 3200+ that I normally use....But your graphics card should be fine...I dont know what kinda sound card you have...but might wanna disable it and eliminate that as a possibility...with onboard sound I do have some small jerkiness when weapons are fired and such...as with the audigy I have none....I really do hope taldren fixes that plasma bug in the next patch tho...It gets rather annoying...especially when peeps online think they are gettin game lag when its actually caused by all the heavy plasma floating about...remember I played this game on a 128 pro and it wasnt that bad at all..so i wouldnt go investing in a new graphics card right away....I would check the sound card possibility...and make sure your AA and Smoothvision is set to Application Preference under direct 3d tab of your display drivers....hope this helps...GL