Transcendence System Computer Requirements

[DigaRW]

I want to know minimum and recommended system requirements for playing Transcendence. Please give me that info, I need that for my walkthrough.

[gunship256]

Requirements: Microsoft Windows 8, 7, Vista, or XP SP3. 1024×600 minimum resolution; 1280×800 recommended. Compatible with WINE.

http://transcendence.kronosaur.com/guid ... QuickStart

I assume Windows 10 is also OK.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

A few cosmetic features like planetary shadows will get disabled by default if the game thinks that it may have performance issues on your system. You can force it to run your preferred graphics quality by altering the "graphicsQuality" option in the settings.xml file (open it in wordpad or notepad).

From George:

maximum: This turns on all visual effects.

standard: This will turn off the most processor-intensive effects without degrading the visual quality too much. This setting is recommended for any machine with less than four processor cores.

minimum: For all those netbooks out there, which Transcendence supports, this setting turns off all optional visual effects (leaving only those required to play the game).

auto: The default setting is auto, which does a quick performance test at launch time and sets the graphics level to one of the three settings above.

I have not seen performance issues on my old Core 2 Duo system after overriding the auto option to "maximum".

I ran earlier versions on Transcendence on a Pentium III machine many years ago.

[DigaRW]

Thank you very much.

[TheLoneWolf]

Hmmm. Looks like Transcendence is not optimized for the native resolutions:
640x480 (old as hell. But an honourable mention nonetheless)
800x600
1024x768 (old pc standard)
1280x1024 (lappy)
1366x768 (standard lappy)
1280x720 (HD. Not pc standard)
1920x1080 (standard pc resolution now days. Full HD)
2560x1440 (future of this sweet game. Transcen3D)

[TheLoneWolf]

So here is minimum as per my observation:
A dual core processor with atleast 1.2ghz of clock.
256mb of ddr3 ram
64mb gpu
windows xp sp3
=> 30-48fps on HD.

Recommended.
Intel Pentium G3258 or amd with the same specs.
512mb ram.
128mb gpu
windows 7
=> 60fps+ on max trans resolution.

[Astraltor]

How do you get more than 30 fps? the faq says transcendence is 30fps locked?

[TheLoneWolf]

What? Hahaha i didnt know! Why is it locked so?
And was it locked before v1.5? And it would be pretty easy to remove the lock once you find the right xml file. Just change the value from 30 to whatever you like. I have also modified the system requirements as per the three graphics tiers George has provided. The transcendence system requirements are pretty low. And have had a significant jump with stars of the pilgrim hd and all those shadow effects. Will post em if George gives me a go. I think everyone can run Transcendence, if i can in a 2002-2004 pc!

[Atarlost]

There'd be no point. The simulation is locked to 30 fps for gameplay purposes.

[TheLoneWolf]

But why? One speculation of mine is that transcendence gives the same result with 60fps as it gives with 30fps.
Other is that it is just a regular frame cap lock. We get them all the time @ 30fps. Latest example is The Witcher III.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 I think part of the reason is that the game paints one frame per tick. This would explain why the game runs slower in some certain circumstances (as opposed to skipping frames, which the game doesn’t do). Running the game at 60 fps under this assumption, and further assuming the hardware could keep up with all of the necessary calculations on each tick, would essentially be like trying to play the game in fast forward. On the other hand, if the game is capped at thirty ticks per second, it might not even be possible to run at a higher framerate given a 1:1 frame-to-tick ratio.

DISCLAIMER: I’m going to offer a salt shaker to go along with this idea since I have no idea what the source code for the engine looks like and wouldn’t be able to read it even if I did. This is all speculation from someone who is readily admitting that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

[TheLoneWolf]

Yup. Could be. But why do we see frame drops in powerful pcs? Do any of you have a powerful pc and have witnessed frame drops?

[pixelfck]

There is no point in speculating. The game has been written to paint 1 frame per tick. The whole game has been programmed around this concept.

There is no setting in the XML file to get the game to show more frames per second (in other words, there is no setting that enables you to speed up time). The game does not drop frames, instead it faithfully shows you every frame. Even if this means you experience slowdown. This is a good thing: without the slowdown, you could find yourself game over, without even having seen the cause of your dead (although this could make for the somewhat funny epitaph: 'he never knew what hit him', it wouldn't be a fun game experience).

Most high-end game engines (typically 3d-enginges) keep track of time separate from the frame rate. As a result, you can experience the game events unfolding, even if your computer can't keep up. Frame drop is a term related (but not identical) to this: the game engine now and then skips a frame to make sure the frames shown are kept in sync with the in-game time.

If the calculations required to show a frame take more time than the in-game time progression, the difference between elapsed time and frames shown can become so large that the player effectively gets a stop-motion video experience, rather than the expected fluid animations. In (massive) multi-player games, this lag results in unhappy players.

To prevent unhappy players, one of the MMO-industries leading companies (CCP-games, the corporation behind EVE-Online) patented a 'very special' system which they named 'Time Dilation': deliberately slowing down the in-game time as to make sure the computer doing the calculations can keep up with in-game time. In other words, if the computations required to show the minimum required number of frames is larger than the in-game time progression, in-game time is slowed down.

Funnily enough, this is (near) exactly the same as happens in Trancendence's frame-locked engine: if there is too much going on for your computer to keep up, the game slows down.

~Pixelfck

[TheLoneWolf]

Thanks Pixelfck! It was all based on my slight misunderstanding that Transcendence works higher than 30fps. So the maximum fps achieveable is 30fps, right? Then ok! Ill modify my sys req to this number. The thing is most games (like Dead Rising and The Witcher 3) have frame caps which lock the game at 30fps. Now the game can be run over that number to achieve more smoothness. I have seen games work at 144fps and never seen the you-dont-know-what-hit-you scenario. 30fps essentially means that the on screen scene changes 30 times per second. This means that we are able to witness minor changes that happen over 3.33~ milliseconds in continuos animation. 60fps would mean that we are able to witness changes occuring over 1.66~ milliseconds. This would make the scene playing on the screen look smoother.
Frameskip is the pause-go-pause-go scenario we sometime witness.
Cheers!

[Ferdinand]

There are some very simple reasons why it is unneccesary to go over 30 fps.
The first and main reason is that normal human vision cannot distinguish a perceptual difference whenever the framerate is above 25 fps. This is why for example the framerate in movies is about 24 fps.
However framerates above 25 fps appear to be smoother to look at. But this is mainly when looking at interlaced pictures. This is the main reason why television (which uses interlaced standards) nowadays use 50 fps or more.
However computer monitors do not use interlaced pictures but full frames. Until recently many consumer grade monitors either LCD or TFT monitors could not go above 30 fps. This was limited by their hardware however some had a pseudo 60 Hz capabilty. It was not until fairly recent that consumer grade monitors were capable of full 60 fps, which is still standard today. This is also limited by their hardware.

High framerates in games are therefore nothing more than a measurement of capability for calculation within the game engine. You can never ever see the difference between 200fps and 30fps simply because your eyes are not capable of doing that.

I have done many testing on different types of displays for over 10 years, having a job in a laboratory specialized in testing all aspects of display devices. Testing was done by objective measurement with different types of laboratory equipment, but also visual testing by people of pictures (static and moving). Never ever has anyone in those tests seen any perceptual quality difference in any sequence of frames with framerates above 30 fps. Anything from about 30 fps or above is seen as fluent motion in non interlaced moving pictures.