Choppy, Stuttering Gameplay

[paulrgod]

Hi All,

I personally dont play the game anymore but my account is still active, im posting on behalf of my mother who does still play - Mellinda

She plays on a laptop, specs are :-

Pentium 4 3.0 ghz
1024mb ram
ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 with 128 mb on board
80gb hard disc, with over 60gb free

She has been playing the game for about 8 months on this laptop no problems at all, the laptop plays the game with no problems, all settings maxed out at resolution 1280 x 768 (widescreen), the game played smooth as silk, i also played the game on this laptop several times when i was an active player.

About 2 months ago, the game has started stuttering and playing horribly, about 4 - 10 fps (if that) all the time, this has seriously affected my mothers enjoyment of the game and it has become unplayable.

I have scanned the laptop for viruses & spyware - it is totally clean, checked virtual memory settings are fine. Defragged the Hard drive, run memtest etc there are no problems with the laptop, no hardware changes or configuration settings of the laptop altered at all since the game played well, all drivers are the same etc.

I first thought that perhaps the graphics card was damaged but i have ruled this out as i can play guild wars, farcry, doom 3 etc perfectly on the laptop at full settings.

The only thing i can think of is some sort of change has been made in the game engine during the 'spring clean' which may have created some sort of incompatibility with my mothers laptop.

Any ideas to help her to be able to play the game again?

Many Thanks

Atomos - Retired March '05

[ajsuk]

All I can think of so far is overheating as that is what laptops do.
Are you playing with it on a different surface maybe? Maybe try playing on a hard/cool surface like a kitchen worktop or something.

Just an Idea for now. hum..

[paulrgod]

Thanks, but the laptop is always played on the kitchen table and will play other games fine.

[michielb]

I assume the laptop runs Win xp if so is automatic update on, could be a security patch that has an adverse effect on performance...

If not wat has changed, new drivers, game patch etc...

[danadita]

I started out great with my new laptop as well but after a couple of patches it would hang up so bad I couldn't play it either. Finally went to no clouds or shadows and "low" setting on all the graphics (which sucks big time) and now it does play decently but since the visuals are so poor I don't play the game on it as much as I used to.

... oh thpthp ... I hate to admit this. (give me a moment)

I went out and got another computer to play ryzom on. It has an OS, SoR and Norton's on it. That's it. Kinda pizzled over that but I have to admit my enjoyment of the game has been maximized.

Oh gosh ... that's .... sad, ain't it.

Laptop:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Magnell
System Model 258KA000
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 10 AuthenticAMD ~798 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 080011, 9/6/2004
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 308.70 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 1.22 GB

The machine where SoR runs very well is:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Magnell
System Model System Product Name
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 47 Stepping 0 AuthenticAMD ~2412 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1011, 6/2/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 744.35 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.90 GB

[jcguid]

I wouldn't run Ryzom with less than 1GB Ram. That might be the problem on the first system you listed. What kind of video card and how much ram does the video card have?

I play on a laptop that has an ATI Radeon Xpress 200M w/128MB RAM. It also has a Athlon 64 3200+. For Ryzom to run fairly smooth on it, I had to upgrade the system ram from 512MB up to 1GB. I also turned off the micro-vegatation and turned the audio channels down to 16(I think). Just a couple of suggestions.

The two weakest links in most laptops are the video card (most have bargin cards to keep cost down) and hard disk drives (typically laptops HDDs spin at slower rates than does a desktop computer..this saves power and is quieter). Unless you bought a $3k or more laptop it will not run as well as a desktop will.

If you have a decent video chip (either Nvidia or ATI..everything else is economy chipsets and won't play games well..if at all) with a fair amount of RAM, then just try tweaking the settings a bit until things run better. Memory is the cheapest/easiest thing you can do to speed up a slow computer.

I started out great with my new laptop as well but after a couple of patches it would hang up so bad I couldn't play it either. Finally went to no clouds or shadows and "low" setting on all the graphics (which sucks big time) and now it does play decently but since the visuals are so poor I don't play the game on it as much as I used to.

... oh thpthp ... I hate to admit this. (give me a moment)

I went out and got another computer to play ryzom on. It has an OS, SoR and Norton's on it. That's it. Kinda pizzled over that but I have to admit my enjoyment of the game has been maximized.

Oh gosh ... that's .... sad, ain't it.

Laptop:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Magnell
System Model 258KA000
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 10 AuthenticAMD ~798 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 080011, 9/6/2004
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 308.70 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 1.22 GB

The machine where SoR runs very well is:
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Magnell
System Model System Product Name
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 47 Stepping 0 AuthenticAMD ~2412 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-SLI DELUXE ACPI BIOS Revision 1011, 6/2/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 744.35 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.90 GB

[danadita]

I wouldn't run Ryzom with less than 1GB Ram. That might be the problem on the first system you listed. What kind of video card and how much ram does the video card have?

The laptop has a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 AGP video card with 129MB and the desktop has a nVidia G-Force 6800 GT with 256MB. What is frustrating is that the laptop ran great for quite a while and then after a patch a couple of months ago it got too slow and hung up too often for me to be able to enjoy playing.

I run SE personal for spybots just about everyday, diskclean once a week and defrag after every patch. My laptop sits on a chillpad as well. I don't have AIM or anything like that installed on it nor do I have email software. I play SoR now and then, browse a little but mostly use it for linking to a friend's TS server. Oh and update the guild website with info from ingame.

[paulrgod]

The laptop has a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 AGP video card with 129MB and the desktop has a nVidia G-Force 6800 GT with 256MB. What is frustrating is that the laptop ran great for quite a while and then after a patch a couple of months ago it got too slow and hung up too often for me to be able to enjoy playing.

I run SE personal for spybots just about everyday, diskclean once a week and defrag after every patch. My laptop sits on a chillpad as well. I don't have AIM or anything like that installed on it nor do I have email software. I play SoR now and then, browse a little but mostly use it for linking to a friend's TS server. Oh and update the guild website with info from ingame.

Thats the exact problem were having at the moment, it does seem a recent patch has ballsed something up in the game.

Used to play the game fine and then all of a sudden stuttering gameplay, as i said in my OP there is nothing wrong with the laptop as other games (requiring much higher specs than ryzom) play fine such as doom 3, farcry, ffxi and Guild Wars.

It cant be problems with the service pack 2 / security updates as i have 2 more desktop computers with the same windows installation all with auto updates on and same virus/spyware software installed, both other computers play the game fine with full settings and one of them is a lower spec than the laptop.

Any chance of a Nevrax Person to offer some wisdom?

Cheers

[michielb]

One of the many "blessing" M$ bestowed on us is the windows registry, it records all your user settings, the programs you installed, the hardware configuration, etc. Ideally the registry keys for installed software are removed fr the registry when you uninstall said sofware, sadly this rarely happens...

In most cases the registry fills up over time due to incomplete installs where some (or all) of the reg keys of programms you uninstalled are left behind in the registry. At some point the registry becomes so huge it will slow down windows.

This could be the case on your laptops, if so there are two possible solutions:
1. format C: and do a clean install of windows
2. get a registry cleaner and clean up your reg

Option two is not recomended if you don't know what your doing as doing it wrong will force you to use option 1


An other thing that could have happened is that you're running low on diskspace due to the uninstall info the many windows patches left on your system (hidden in the windows folder unless you selected the option to show hidden and system files...)
The system restore function in XP also takes up a massive amount of disk space unless you changed the default settings or turned it off...

Pagefiles (your virtual memory) has a habbit of becoming fragmented and a defrag or your disk won't solve that as the file is always in use...
To "defragment" your pagefile you could get third party software but there is an easier solution...

Turn off the virual memory (My Computer ->properties -> Advanced -> Perfomance -> Advanced -> Virtual memory -> no paging file) then restart and delete the file pagefile.sys (make sure you show hidden files) reboot, turn on the virtual memory again reboot one more time and voila your pagefile is defragmented....

Hmmmm more windows goodness...

The indexing service is known to slow things down. Depending of the number of files you have on your computer the index can take up quite a bit of disk space, also the indexing in the background uses system resources you might want to use elsewhere.
The indexing service does not belong on a gaming rig (although a laptop is hardly that...)

[rushin]

i've been having some performance issues also recently, not sure if it was last patch or one before when it started. But now get bad freezes. worst case is in pr where can be unable to move for 3-4 seconds which is not good for my health. doesnt happen by the tp but when when i have moved away a little.. very odd. there isnt a 'please wait' box just everything freezes and stutters for a bit.

have a high end desktop setup and from time i got new gfx card (256MB 6800 ultra) to recently everything has been very smooth.

(and hi! atomos)