Confirmation Minimum Specs Required Please

[Stelawrat]

I like this game so much & am able to play it perfectly in the low level areas.

However, as soon as I travel to Serbul, I begin to experience odd flashing windows when trying to complete transactions. The screen eventually freezes, game becomes non-responsive & I have to CAD out.

Could someone please confirm that the problem is most likely my laptop specs.

ASUS X553MA
Running Windows 10 Home
Processor - Intel Pentium CPU N3540 @ 2.16GHz 2.16 GHZ
RAM - 8.00 GB
System - 64-bit OS, x64-based processor

Thanks.

[Madmatx]

Although they don't specify that you need a graphics card to play the game, it's a bit rough with integrated graphics in my experience. I have a pretty decent laptop with integrated graphics and I had to change the settings pretty low to play with decent FPS on it. Even on my old PC with a GTX 465 that I use for movies in my bedroom I have to leave graphics settings at 0 or 1. On my gaming PC the game runs great at max settings though.

I would suggest lowering your settings to -2 (retro) and work your way up from there.

You can press and hold the alt button before hitting the play button in the launcher, continue to hold the alt button until the display options pop up.

Click here for the official troubleshooting guide for more details (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?136-Project-Gorgon-Support-Troubleshooting-Read-First!&p=815&viewfull=1#post815)

[Stelawrat]

Thank you for the suggestions Madmatx.

I had already followed those found in the guide that you link to, including reducing the graphics setting to 0:Bad, which helped but still crashed too often. So I tried reducing it by one more setting but without much effect & it was a bit hard on the eyes. :p I put them back to 0 & never tried the lower settings after that. I did this using the ingame settings menu though, but I imagine the result would be the same using your method.

I will give it another shot though. Thanks again.

[Crissa]

Hmm...

Well, I play the game on integrated graphics, an older Intel HD 5000. I don't have any flashing or misplaced graphics.

Although my chip is an i7, it's slower than your N.

[Citan]

Just based on the symptoms of UI windows flickering and dying, it sounds like you're running out of video memory. Your N3540 has 8gb of RAM, but only about 1.7gb (1792mb) of that RAM can be used as video memory. It's just a limitation of the chip set. (In contrast, many versions of the i7 that Crissa mentioned can use half of the computer's memory as video memory.)

If the crashing problems go away when you use the -1 or -2 graphics settings, that's almost certainly what's going on: it's running out of video memory. But if the flickering and crashing still happen, there's probably something else going on -- if you email the logs to me I can take a look! (There's steps for this in the wiki I believe. Finding the log is a little tricky, but once found, you just email it to eric@projectgorgon.com .)

The other variable here is screen resolution. The smaller the resolution, the less video memory is needed, so you might try making the resolution smaller. If you play in windowed mode, just make the window smaller. If you play full-screen, the Settings window has a list of resolutions your card supports. Two caveats: don't go below 1024x768 resolution, because some UI windows may be too small and blurry to be used! (I need to take those tiny resolutions out of the list.) And if your screen becomes unresponsive when you go into fullscreen mode, it means your computer doesn't actually support that resolution even though it said it did -- press alt+enter to switch out of fullscreen mode and try another. (In the worst case, you can restart the game with "Safe Mode" turned on in the launcher, which will make the game ignore your chosen resolution.)

Lastly, since video memory seems like your bottleneck, you can manually lower the texture resolution. Choose "0: Bad", then click "Show Advanced Options" and set the "Texture Memory Restriction" to 2. The result will be somewhere between the "-1" and the "0" quality levels, much better than -1 but noticeably worse than 0. That may or may not be something you can tolerate, but worth trying.

Edit to talk about min-spec: theoretically, that computer should meet the min-specs for the final game. But we still have many months of optimizations left, and the amount of memory used fluctuates with each update. So it's definitely possible that it's not going to be viable during beta. (Although "viable" means running on "0: Bad" settings... I expect you'd be fine on lower settings, if you can stomach it.)

[Madmatx]

If you play in windowed mode, just make the window smaller. If you play full-screen, the Settings window has a list of resolutions your card supports.

Are you saying that if you play in windowed mode that if you maximize the window the resolution setting doesn't apply, it only makes a difference in full screen? Or am I just misintupritating you saying that making your window smaller is easier?

[Crissa]

Are you saying that if you play in windowed mode that if you maximize the window the resolution setting doesn't apply, it only makes a difference in full screen? Or am I just misintupritating you saying that making your window smaller is easier?
Yes, changing the window size should just straight up change the resolution. Tho you can do it in the change-resolutions mode, and I haven't had much trouble playing in a small window. (Tho it does get hard to read stuff sometimes)

[Madmatx]

I guess you're right. I just lowered my resolution and in windowed mode with a maximized screen everything still looked sharp but in full screen the text got blurry.

[Stelawrat]

Madmatx,
Thank you for your trick re: making the display options pop up before entering the game. Very neat & useful. :)

Citan,
"Just based on the symptoms of UI windows flickering and dying, it sounds like you're running out of video memory. Your N3540 has 8gb of RAM, but only about 1.7gb (1792mb) of that RAM can be used as video memory. It's just a limitation of the chip set. (In contrast, many versions of the i7 that Crissa
mentioned can use half of the computer's memory as video memory.)"

You're right on the money there Citan. I'm not tech savvy at all, but because I was having problems, I kept task manager running for easy access to end the game. The memory column was always near the max! in the upper 80's even 90's.

I posted because I was worried that I might damage this comp if I continued to play, pushing the system this way.

That & also I wondered, was really curious about, how it was that I can play at 1:0 on the island, in all of the environments, without any problems. Play there isn't affected by number of mobs, players, actual time of day. It's just beautiful.

Re: the chip set, if it's a built in limitation, then I guess the RAM can't be reallocated?

Re: screen resolution, I prefer to play games in windowed mode. When I checked the options, I understood the game would default to windowed unless that option was disabled. The game launched in what I thought was full screen & I didn't see a way to change that, so thought the option wasn't implemented yet.

Native resolution is 1366 x 768. After reading this thread last night, changed in game to 1024 x 768. Then I manually resized the window... :/ Did I mention I'm not tech savvy? :)

Re: texture resolution, I haven't tried your suggestion yet Citan, but will do today.

With the changes I've made so far, although reduction in game appearance is significant, it's still really playable & enjoyable for me. Your game is that compelling, that I'd be more than willing to play it anyway.

Thanks so much for all of this, including the offer to review the logs, in desperation I may take you up on that. :P

[Crissa]

I guess you're right. I just lowered my resolution and in windowed mode with a maximized screen everything still looked sharp but in full screen the text got blurry.
Yeah, I think the game forgets to match the text. Because it'll be inconsistent which windows are blurry. Since this happens in the second UI (albeit less often), it may be a Unity problem. Generally, if you reset the resolution settings (hit save) it will clear up if it's gotten blurry. I guess it just forgets to finish them all or something?

Anyhow, yay that Stelawrat got back into the game ^-^

[Citan]

I posted because I was worried that I might damage this comp if I continued to play, pushing the system this way.


Theoretically it should be fine. Practically speaking, though, many laptop designs can overheat because they're not ventilated well enough for the GPU to run at max power for prolonged lengths of time. It really depends on the quality of the laptop build, but my generic suggestions here are:

- Figure out where the ventilation is on your laptop and make sure that it's not covered. (For some of our test laptops, that's easy because the vent is always exposed. For others, they need to be propped up on something because the vents are on the bottom.)
- If your laptop becomes physically too hot to touch, you're definitely in danger of damaging the laptop. (Not to mention your lap!)

Oh, and to clarify, running at 100% memory usage is nothing to worry about. The thing that's a little scary is if the CPU column on the Task Manager is permanently running at 100% -- that's when things can get overheated.



That & also I wondered, was really curious about, how it was that I can play at 1:0 on the island, in all of the environments, without any problems. Play there isn't affected by number of mobs, players, actual time of day. It's just beautiful.


That's a complicated question to answer, but the short version is: Serbule is huge. :) It's surprisingly huge, actually -- 36 newbie islands could fit into the same landmass that Serbule uses. And it's more graphically complex: it has fancier sky and terrain systems, and more points of interest (such as buildings, giant hands, weird statuary, etc.).

Right now, because the area isn't very optimized, your computer needs to render a lot more of Serbule than is actually visible on your screen. But even when we finish optimizing it, it'll still need a lot more resources. There's large open fields where you can see for a lot farther than you can on the island.

In contrast, we've worked hard to keep the newbie island graphically simple because that's where we teleport people to if there are problems. It will get more complex eventually when we add the fancier sky/weather system, but it'll always be less intense than the huge outdoor areas like Serbule.


Re: the chip set, if it's a built in limitation, then I guess the RAM can't be reallocated?

No, it can't be reallocated, but the Unity graphics engine works around the limitation by using more of your regular memory. Basically it swaps textures from regular memory into and out of your video memory continuously. This slows down your framerate because copying that stuff around isn't instantaneous. It also uses a lot more memory overall because it basically has "spare copies" of lots of textures loaded in regular memory, ready to shove into your video memory whenever they're needed.

All that said, it should theoretically be doable -- 8gb is a lot of memory, even when it has to swap stuff in and out like that. But the game is far from optimized, and Serbule is where most players hang out, which means you need to have lots of different armors loaded at once. So it's definitely possible that you're using all available RAM and still need more. Hopefully as we optimize things, it'll be less of a problem.



Are you saying that if you play in windowed mode that if you maximize the window the resolution setting doesn't apply, it only makes a difference in full screen? Or am I just misintupritating you saying that making your window smaller is easier?


I should make that clearer in the Settings window, I think. Yes, the list of resolutions in the game is only used in full-screen mode. In windowed mode, the game's resolution is... however big the window is! So if you maximize the window, the game is effectively running at your desktop resolution. (Minus some pixels for the window borders and start menu and whatever else you have on.)

So if you're running in windowed mode and you want to reduce memory usage, you can either make the window smaller, or change your desktop resolution.

To change your desktop resolution: In Windows 10 if you right-click the desktop itself and choose "Display Settings", you'll see a very similar drop-down list of resolutions. Changing the resolution there will change your whole desktop, which will in turn change the game's resolution when running in windowed mode.

[Stelawrat]

Short follow-up

Re: Citan, your suggestion about the Texture Memory Restriction, I'm happy to report that I think that has made a significant difference. I played for around 2 hours in Serbule only, with almost no problems at all & even better, no freeze ups at all. Some window flickering still when comparing equipment or trading with NPCs, but the windows now contain text, visuals etc. & if left for a few seconds, the flickering slows to a stop & I'm able to complete the transaction.

Equally impressive, the graphics have definitely improved compared to what they were by just lowering the graphics settings, more than acceptable for me.

Most importantly, both the CPU & Memory numbers stayed below 50 the whole time, so I think it's a real key.

Re: overheating, because I've had that problem with other laptops in the past, I bought a $3 Tech1 laptop holder at Dollarama. It's adjustable with 7 angles
from 10 to 16 degrees & sits on a non-skid base that rotates 360 degrees. Totally effective, it's my best Dollarama purchase ever! :)

Re: the CPU, yes its numbers were up there as well, a close second to the memory. :(

"That's a complicated question to answer,"
Thank you for the answer though, it makes sense.

Crissa, I'm happy to be back in game too & thanks, your post earlier is what made the penny drop that I could just manually resize the window. :)

[Stelawrat]

Lastly, since video memory seems like your bottleneck, you can manually lower the texture resolution. Choose "0: Bad", then click "Show Advanced Options" and set the "Texture Memory Restriction" to 2. The result will be somewhere between the "-1" and the "0" quality levels, much better than -1 but noticeably worse than 0. That may or may not be something you can tolerate, but worth trying.

Screenshots taken with a new test char after making these adjustments, which I think are pretty nice all things considered. Hopefully thay give you an idea of the detail, draw distance, colour palette, day / night environment, GUI & NPC text clarity & particle effects.
http://i.imgur.com/KZSCh3X.png (https://imgur.com/KZSCh3X)
http://i.imgur.com/xyppJPH.png (https://imgur.com/xyppJPH)
http://i.imgur.com/U5D3tm6.png (https://imgur.com/U5D3tm6)