Physics Slow-Down

[Lifeinsteps]

The forums seem pretty devoid of information on this topic.

When I play Overgrowth Alpha 166, I get around 200 FPS regardless of what I'm doing. There can be 20 bots running around and it only drops to about 150 FPS.

But as soon as someone throws a punch, or the first ragdoll shows up, the game drops to an unplayable 10 FPS, even with all the graphical setting turned all the way down.

I can't understand for the life of me what the problem is.

Specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
AMD Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GPU
AMD FX-4100 Quad Core 3.6 GHz CPU
4 GB DDR3 RAM

Is it just because I don't have an nVidia card? I have a friend who literally has almost the exact same specs but with an nVidia card of roughly the same caliber, however his system plays the game with not even a jitter.

[akazi]

the game isnt optimized yet, on mine my frame rate its usually 30 , so wow that yours can go to 200

[Ragdollmaster]

Hi, if you wouldn't mind linking your forum account to your preorder account and then asking about this in the Secret Preorder Forum, since one of its functions is dealing with Overgrowth support, I think you'll get support more readily- many of the members are wary of helping potential pirates who don't have the "Preorderer" badge, y'see

[Lifeinsteps]

Well, technically I did pirate the game. My neighbor bought it and I had him give me the files so I could try it on my computer.

I plan on buying it if will work correctly on my computer, you know? I loved Lugaru so much, and Overgrowth just seems so fantastic, but I don't want to spend $30 on a game I can't play. I had heard of other people with AMD cards getting slow down on the physics in the game and so I was wary that this might happen to me as well, so I thought I may as well give it a try since someone so close had the alpha files.

I realize that it's not optimized yet, and I also realize that the creator said it will have options to turn down settings to make it run better. My problem is that no matter how much I turn down all the settings or turn the texture reducer up, I still get record breaking lag whenever there's a ragdoll on the screen.

[Endoperez]

Physics calculations are a strain on the CPU, not the graphics card.

[Korban3]

^
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[Lifeinsteps]

Well, I figured as much, but that doesn't explain the issue. His CPU is worse than mine, and I went budget on my GPU, not my CPU...

I mean I can't imagine a couple ragdolls requiring more than 3.6 GHz quad-core...

[Jacktheawesome]

It's kind of funny what works and doesn't work on different computers. My computer can't go past 10 FPS with more than 3 characters (including player character) at once. However, ragdolls don't slow it down a bit, at least compared to how it was already running.

[Endoperez]

I mean I can't imagine a couple ragdolls requiring more than 3.6 GHz quad-core...

I've made a program that used 100% of my CPU to draw text on screen... It's not the ragdolls, but the fact that it's unoptimized.

[SalamiPizza]

got the same problem.
when i'm running overgrowth my cpu wan't get over 30% of use
i think its simply not optimized yet

[Lifeinsteps]

Well, I really hope that it gets worked out.

I hate pirating anything but sometimes it's the only way to tell whether your computer can run a game before you decide to invest money in buying it.

Overgrowth looks fantastic, and even if I end up not being able to enjoy it, I hope lots of people can, because it's a very one-of-a-kind creation.

[Korban3]

Well, if you preorder and can't run it well, you can wait for some optimization later or just email [email protected] for a refund. They'll be happy to give you one, if you regret your purchase.

[BitterAlmond]

It's your quad-core: I have a similar processor (but a GHz slower; you've got some processor there!) and it dies as soon as it tries to do the physics in the game. Probably around 5FPS. Slow-mo fixes it, but I'm not going to just play the game in slow-mo.

[Lifeinsteps]

It's your quad-core: I have a similar processor (but a GHz slower; you've got some processor there!) and it dies as soon as it tries to do the physics in the game. Probably around 5FPS. Slow-mo fixes it, but I'm not going to just play the game in slow-mo.

Thanks! I actually just built this computer a few months ago. Prior to, the most powerful processor I've ever had in a computer was a 1.8 GHz single core. My friends always asked me how I survived, haha.

Anyway, yeah, I may just have to put my faith in Wolfire and place a preorder. I can't do it for awhile because I'm stripped for cash at the moment.

But I won't pirate any more alphas, and I've already gotten rid of this one. I just wanted to see how it would run, and apparently that turned out to be not all that great on here. I wonder if they'll be able to fix it for our CPUs. I hope so!

[Endoperez]

That's nice to hear!

Last time David optimized, the game became several times faster. However, you should be aware that the optimization is likely to only happen near the end of the development... and there's still lots of ground to cover before that.