Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 2:58 pm Post subject:
TS stuttering
I decided to install TS again after a long time, and as the subject suggests, the game is stuttering like i have never seen before. I did some testing and the game gets slow (similar to what happens when you have mass explosions or mass AI movement) whenever i got something building. The interesting, and puzzling part about this is that with buildings that cost more (war factories, refineries, tech centers) there isn't that big of a drop, but with buildings that are a cheap (turbines, walls, silos) the game slows to a crawl. This doesn't seem to happen with units, mostly atleast (i did get a few small drops with light infantries). I even got an IE once, although if it was related or not i can't tell. It did happen at the peak of the drop but it might've been a coincidence.
I'm playing an unmodded, freshly installed copy of the original TS (Firestorm not even installed) running off the disc, patched to 2.03. I also got the same thing with Firestorm installed, and retro installed. Every version has the same thing.
PC specs are:
Windows 7, 64bit.
AMD Phenom 9950 quad core
nVidia GeForce GTX 260
4GB of RAM
GA-MA770-UD3 motherboard
try the ddraw.dll from this topic
Place the dll in your TS folder, then start the game.
It deactivates hardware rendering for the game and in many cases (especially on fast PC's like yours) it speeds up drastically the game.
If you get a black screen with the ddraw.dll, you have to remove it again and live with the slowdown bug, as there is no alternative to fix this (except editing the gclock.shp). _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Just to explain further, this is the filename of the clock-animation (hence the name) that plays in front of the building/unit icon whenever you choose to build something. Unfortunatelly, like LKO mentioned, it has been discovered that the animation causes serious slowdown for some reason. _________________
Yea I know that phenomenon too. But under Windows XP. I solved that problem by replacing the DDRAW.DLL with another one, that's available somewhere here in the Forum. That DLL is usually used for fixing 'wave class' errors but it gave my TS a real performance boost to. The bad news is that you can't use that DLL under Windows 7. We've tried it here, but failed at bringing it to work.
Yeah, tried the .dll, and got the black screen. On the other hand i wouldn't mind if the clock thingy would have less frames, but since my knowledge of TS is very rusty, so where exactly could i do this.
Also as a note, the game was the same with dusk, which has small bars instead of the clock. I believe it doesn't matter what the buildtimer looks like but i just thought i'd point that out.
EDIT: I followed the thread on tibweb, and got the file which deactivates the darkening of the cameos, and it seemed to fix it
Thanks a lot
EDIT2: although with that file there is another problem, mods have multiple bugs (Retro's vehicles don't have sound, orca bombers bombs don't make a sound, radar doesn't have an SHP at all etc etc) QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Location: Star Kingdom of Manticore
Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 5:54 pm Post subject:
it's the length of the animation. the animation has to play in full, at a certain pace or slower. it's pretty ghetto. _________________ "Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there." -Adam Young QUICK_EDIT
EDIT2: although with that file there is another problem, mods have multiple bugs (Retro's vehicles don't have sound, orca bombers bombs don't make a sound, radar doesn't have an SHP at all etc etc)
This is probably happening because you downloaded the modified ecache02.mix with the fix, but this ecache02.mix does not contain the files that are necessary for the mods. QUICK_EDIT
I've got en intel core2duo P8600 2.4GHz with a GeForce 9650M GT and I've got terrible lag when playing TS.
I've got Vista so I cannot "manually" disable DirectDraw via dx diag (I think it is not possible, at any rate I don't know how to do it).
ddraw.dll cause black screen.
Replacing darken.shp and gclock2.shp by all black single frame shp has no effect. It doesn't slowdown every time I build something but when I build 3-4 component tower in a row it gets terribly slow and stay slow.
Doing Alt+tab and back with Alt+tab reset speed at normal.
reducing resolution (when resolution is 800x600 I see very few cameo in my side bar) has no noticeable effect.
I've tried to make my graphic card work in compatibility mode (without really knowing what I was doing) but with nosucces whatsoever.
I'm coming short of any idea to solve this problem.
I wanted to go back to moding but if I cannot play the game then I think I wont
If anyone has an idea on how to work this out then i'd be very glad to ear about it. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 19 May 2008 Location: Scotland, starting a Revolution Cameo: metricon. Posts:???
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:34 am Post subject:
Askhati RE WCE wrote:
Install XP.
Crash wrote:
I got the same problem with my new system in Windows XP.
you contradict your signature there Askhati.
@ bonzy_buddy Is tiberian sun running as an admin or in compatibility mode? on my new computer with slightly lower specs all i got was a black screen when it was launch until i ran it as admin/in compatibility mode (i would recomend trying it, it may have no affect however it does fix a lot of problems. _________________ Creator of TS:BoB and some other things that might be good when finnished. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:40 am Post subject:
bonzy_buddy wrote:
I've got en intel core2duo P8600 2.4GHz with a GeForce 9650M GT and I've got terrible lag when playing TS.
I've got Vista so I cannot "manually" disable DirectDraw via dx diag (I think it is not possible, at any rate I don't know how to do it).
ddraw.dll cause black screen.
Replacing darken.shp and gclock2.shp by all black single frame shp has no effect. It doesn't slowdown every time I build something but when I build 3-4 component tower in a row it gets terribly slow and stay slow.
Doing Alt+tab and back with Alt+tab reset speed at normal.
reducing resolution (when resolution is 800x600 I see very few cameo in my side bar) has no noticeable effect.
I've tried to make my graphic card work in compatibility mode (without really knowing what I was doing) but with nosucces whatsoever.
I'm coming short of any idea to solve this problem.
I wanted to go back to moding but if I cannot play the game then I think I wont
If anyone has an idea on how to work this out then i'd be very glad to ear about it.
My solution: get used to it. I guess the engine is getting too old for new pc's to handle QUICK_EDIT
@ Revolutionary:
Damnit man, I meant adapt to the retro-ness of XP compared to Vista and 7...
Sheet, at the current rate of global warming, we'll all end up with gills again sometime - and that's still adapting, even if it means re-visiting an older mutation. Besides, who the hell needs ears anyway - gills were much cooler!
...and no, I'm not a HP Lovecraft fan, and I know nothing about Deep Ones or any shadows over Innsmouth. Not at all.
Cthulhu ftaghn!
*runs into the sea* _________________ Adapt or die QUICK_EDIT
Actually, I considered bringing up a copy of XP in VirtualBox and just running TS from there... That way I'd have it running windowed kinda... Anyway, I thought that was slightly overkill and didn't try it. QUICK_EDIT
oddly enough i've encountered something interresting.
i bought a notebook for me, an older model so when i was going to shool for 2 weeks into another city i've of course installed tiberian sun.
the weird thing about it is, i have absolutely NO lag, not on the gates, not even on the stealth gen's, nothing, nada niente, it runs so fine i've never seen it like that, without ddraw.dll.
my laptop is somewhat a ripped standart, Fujitsu siemens with "intel" drivers for an onboard graphics card and of course a mid aged 1 core system.
i don't know why but i found that rather interresting
Fujitsu Siemens E8010 Centrino 1,6GHz 1024MB 40GB 15" _________________ Hydraw Art on Facebook QUICK_EDIT
I, too, have noticed that older, single core, onboard graphics systems handle C&C better than ones with higher end specifications. My old Windows 98SE box played Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert like a champ but my current machine stutters on video. The integration must help with something. I used to think it was XP vs 98 but it isn't.
I'll test that theory when I can since my current motherboard is dated enough to have a built in video chipset. QUICK_EDIT
wasn't it already confirmed that the usage of modern directX logics causes the lag, where the old software rendering which is mainly done on the CPU works much faster?
I can confirm too, that on my 2 old PC's (single core laptop and single core desktop) the game works much more fluent than on my 2 new PC's (dual core and quad core desktop) _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:04 am Post subject:
I alywas said it was something with new technology. Now it makes sense: I have seen other games that work bad on Dual/Quad core systems. Shame QUICK_EDIT
Isn't news to me neither. I had myself a problem, but with new drivers. After I installed them, I kept getting waveclasserrors and strange lags, though after I reinstalled the old one, the lag an wce are gone _________________
Think of me as Nordos, 'cause Banshee wouldn't rename me QUICK_EDIT
onboard graphics cards work better with C&C because it has no separate video memory and steals from the main ram , so copying images from "system memory" surfaces to "video memory" ones is really copying inside the same ram stick /sticks, which is faster than copying it to a real gpu memory
Message I got from DCoder when I logged on. There you have it. QUICK_EDIT
yes...thats true, wait i have a singlecore...what i mean t is to fix the program for dual/quad core computer without beeing forced to have onboard graphics xP _________________ Hydraw Art on Facebook QUICK_EDIT
Im wondering, could you set the affinity in Task Manager for TS? I mean you CAN make a game only use 1 core. _________________ Red Alert Reloaded QUICK_EDIT
Tried it with RA2. Made absolutely no difference. It's not multiple cores that's the problem. It's a dedicated GPU. Onboard shares the same RAM as the CPU, dedicated does not. Hence the slow down. QUICK_EDIT
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