Redux: Debug-Area...

[daigaku]

Hi to everyone,

here are some good news. As some might know already, I´m playing M:TW/VI and, since only a short time, redux on a rather outdated rig. Solved battles for over ten years with a total of beyond 400-500 men by autocalc ´cos of poor performance of my graphics. Now, playing redux, got fed up with loosing only ´cos of mere numbers, knowing that 20 Norse Bodyguards can slaughter about 500 never-mind-what when put into forest ;-))
Specs of my "stone age machine":
PIII/850 with slotket on Abit BH6 (BX-Chipset), Nvidia GeForce2 TI with 64MB RAM, 512MB System RAM, and two 40GB HDDs running Win98SE, Gameplay with 1280x1024 Strat/Battlemap res, smoke, fauna, pyro...
AND I FOUND A WORKING SOLUTION FOR PLAYING M:TW ON SUCH A MACHINE, EVEN BATTLES WITH (till now max. tried) ABOUT 4500 MEN!! NO LAG!!!

In BIOS, set "AGP APERTURE SIZE" to smallest amount possible (in my case 4MB) or, if an option, disable.
In game, "OPTIONS/PERFORMANCE" set "AGP MEMORY" to "0".

It seems to me, the rather slow system memory is the bottleneck for performance. Since I´ve done that, I can play my battles like on my newer machine(Core2Duo 2,66, 2GB RAM, ATI RadeonHD4650 1GB), but without the "usual" CTD....

So for all desperate about hardware incompatibility with newer machines this could be interesting.

greetings,

a happy daigaku

@ Axalon: Will install 1.1 to another partition to get those girls, girls, girls I so appreciated with the other install on the newer machine...and of course will keep reporting!

greetings daigaku

[Trapped in Samsara]

In BIOS, set "AGP APERTURE SIZE" to smallest amount possible (in my case 4MB) or, if an option, disable.
In game, "OPTIONS/PERFORMANCE" set "AGP MEMORY" to "0".

Hi Daigaku

I am very interested in this finding of yours and intend trying it out soon. Thanks.

In my current campaign I am unable to complete a battle (me 3K troops, AI 6K troops) which is critical to my empire's survival. Autocalc results in a heavy defeat to me. But I know that I can win this engagement with approximately 1K of casualties, and inflict 2 to 3K losses on the AI.

FYI, I installed 2 x1GB of PC3200 RAM (previously 2 x 512KB) yesterday evening just to see if this would solve the problem. It did not. The battle crashed (yet again) after about 1.25 hours, with Windows reporting, 'the graphics driver is corrupt... can only continue if using software rendering... for hardware rendering restart computer', or something like that.

I had thought about dropping the resolution to 640 x 480, on the reasoning that giving the GFX card less pixels to process might circumvent the issue. But I'll give your finding a go first.

Thanks again.

One other thing I was mulling over was renaming the 'deadpagecoords' text file, and replacing it with an empty 'dummy' file of the same name. I'm under the impression this would deny the game the means to display corpses during the battle. Again, I am assuming this would reduce the strain on the GfX card.

Axalon
Thanks for letting us use this thread for this discussion.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[daigaku]

Hi, Trapped in Samsara,

okay, with this amount of men I didn´t try yet, being untrained beyond some 200 men on my side;-)

about the "deadpagecoords", sorry, got no idea what exactly it´s doing. If you find out it works with this amount of men on the screen, please report!

btw, scaling down solution didn´t work for me as well, iirc. And won´t be fun to look at for hours of fighting, would it?

Of course I´ll have to try longer battles with more men to verify really that this thing works, but till now had no problems. Maybe, with more time/men using more RAM, my current way may lead to a crash, too,´cos of RAM lack.

Sure I´ll report further,

greetings daigaku

[Axalon]

Hi guys....

..just experienced something strange: Had set (my old machine) the "AGP aperture size" down to 4MB, in the game put the "AGP memory" to 0 and had a battle (about 2000 men) - and didn´t get choppy!

…I assume that you lowered your sound-settings (in options) to “medium” as well?

What/which in your opinion is the most optimal OS for MTW?

Windows 2000 (pro), no contest… Zero anomalies, very good performance, reliable in general and the best drivers in my experience. For RXB1003, W7 (64bit) can be very good as well. Only small-time anomalies and potentially extremely fast on the V.1.1-engine (if the hardware and drivers are right).

Thanks for letting us use this thread for this discussion.

No problem, as long as it is also relevant for Redux and given general topic. However, as you may already know, I do enforce topicality. This in great contrast to many other places on these boards (personally, I never was a big fan of the lax attitude towards topicality that is usually rampant for the ORG - it just screw things up and it makes it harder to find actual relevant information because of it). Anyways, I’ll leave you guys to it…


- A
-----------------
Other then that "Samsy"/Victor, you should try RXB1003, it is not very MTW-"ish" but you might like it all the same. It certainly looks sexier, and I think it is more fun too. :)

[daigaku]

Hi, Axalon,


"…I assume that you lowered your sound-settings (in options) to “medium” as well?"

No theme for me, always play "mute", so this front never made any problem (sorry about the to-me-wasted work you had there).

Will download the 1003 now. If I understood well, there still will be no "girls, girls, girls" for VI ?

greetings daigaku

[Axalon]

Greetings right back at you Daigaku,

No theme for me, always play "mute", so this front never made any problem (sorry about the to-me-wasted work you had there).

Alright, open sound settings in options and set the quality to medium (or even low) anyways. Just do it and see what happens in battles. Humour me...

If I understood well, there still will be no "girls, girls, girls" for VI ?

This is an already known bug in both Redux and the V.2.01-engine, Dai.... Always check the provided "ReadMe's" before asking here...


- A
-----------------
Other then that, have you seen what I wrote for you in post:77?

[daigaku]

Greetings right back at you Daigaku,

-----------------
Other then that, have you seen what I wrote for you in post:77?

Hi Axalon,

had to read quite a bit around in the realms of redux to fully understand what honour you gave to me, a mere newbie in this forum.

THANKS for being able to contribute a tiny bit to your tremendous work. I´m in "Bringschuld" now (no idea at all to translate).

am working with the "possible recruition" list of the Norse right now. Being sort of slow player I´m not sure if one campaign is enough to get the whole map "cartographed", but till Khazar conquered all the east now and wrote down everything. Heading for Iberia now (those Aragonese own 3/4 of Europe at the moment - no Germans, no french, no Italians) and have a look what be recruited there....

greetings from Markgräflerland, daigaku