Transcendence lagging epically on vista

[Aury]

Ok, yes, I know it's vista, and that's probably why its working so terribly...

Anyways, the thing is that since my 6.75yr old laptop with xp died, I've been playing transcendence on the go with my 1yr old vista laptop... now, besides the fact that the new laptop has vista, its in pretty much every way superior (so let's just say it has far superior hardware; dual core ~2.4Ghz (vs. single at 1.4Ghz), 4GB DDR2 RAM (vs. 512 (or maybe 256) MB DDR ram), nvidea non-integrated video (vs. intel integrated... it's still just a few steps ahead though, as its only a low-end card)... etc. etc. etc.

So in short, it SHOULD otherwise not have any lagging problems, right? Well wrong.

The menu screen on transcendence looks fine, and so does in-game for the first 10-30 seconds, but soon a cycle of lagging starts, in which the game goes normal speed, then hangs at about every 30th tick, and then it resumes normal speed... When using autopilot, the cycle indeed does speed up in relation to the game-play speed increase, so it IS tied to the tick rate.
At first this lag isn't too bad, but it quickly makes piloting almost impossible by about 5 minutes, at which point the laggin will plateua.

[Yugi]

You could try running it in various compatibility settings, and/or with the direct3D switch (I haven't been around for a while so that may not exist any more )

Or you could upgrade to Windows 7

Other than that I dunno. Except update graphics drivers but I'm doubtful that would have any effect.

[Aury]

I actually do plan on upgrading to windows 7 (just havn't actually gotten around to installing it)

Problem is, that it's not a real solution, as not everyone is going to want to upgrade.

[Psycholis]

i run both xp and windows 7 and i notice the performance is a little bit less in 7 than in xp. i know my hardware is fast enough because it's a gaming computer, but just thought i'd make that note. i'll try and be more quantitative with fraps later on to see if there really is a difference because i know a lot of people still use xp.

[Aury]

In that case I'm not at all surprised that vista would still run it slower, but this is simply unbearable! (unplayable!)

[digdug]

01/30/2010 11:01:06 Start logging session
01/30/2010 11:01:06 Transcendence 1.0 RC6
01/30/2010 11:01:06 DIRECT X
01/30/2010 11:01:06 Screen: 1280 x 800 (16-bit color)
01/30/2010 11:01:06 Pixels: 5-6-5
01/30/2010 11:01:06 Video Memory: 1326579712
01/30/2010 11:01:06 Back buffers: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:06 SECONDARY SURFACE
01/30/2010 11:01:06 SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwHeight: 800
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwWidth: 1280
01/30/2010 11:01:06 lPitch: 5120
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwBackBufferCount: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwMipMapCount: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwRefreshRate: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwAlphaBitDepth: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:06 DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN
01/30/2010 11:01:06 DDSCAPS_VIDEOMEMORY
01/30/2010 11:01:06 PIXEL FORMAT
01/30/2010 11:01:06 DDPF_RGB
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwRGBBitCount: 32
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwRBitMask: ff0000
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwGBitMask: ff00
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwBBitMask: ff
01/30/2010 11:01:06 dwRGBAlphaBitMask: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:07 Small typeface: Tahoma
01/30/2010 11:01:07 Medium typeface: Lucida Sans
01/30/2010 11:01:07 Large typeface: Convection
01/30/2010 11:01:07 Console typeface: Lucida Console
01/30/2010 11:01:20 Frames: 30 Paint: 0 Blt: 2 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:34 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:44 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:01:54 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:04 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:14 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:24 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:34 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:44 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:02:54 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:03:03 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0
01/30/2010 11:03:13 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 0 Update: 0

I'm running the game under Vista SP2 on a Acer Aspire 5920G that mounts a T8300 2.4Ghz processor with no problems at all, as you can see from my debug.log in Eridani.
I remember that under Vista Transcendence runs by default in directx mode as said by George here:
http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... ight=vista

[george moromisato]

Wolfy could you try running with /debugVideo so that I can see the graphics stats? Upload the relevant pieces of Debug.log.

Also, could you try running with /nodx and see if that makes a difference. If it does, try running with /exclusive (take out /nodx) and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

[Aury]

I need to reset that computer first (It's temporarily dead for now...) so it'll be a while before I can get to it >.<

[PKodon]

Wolfy,

Is it possible that the reason it's doing this slowdown has anything to do with your Vista computer being dual-core?

I've read that some programs have problems on dual-core machines because they are written to run on a single-core, and you have to adjust some settings in the OS to let it know to run the program exclusively on one core.

Sorry I don't know any specifics, since I have a single-core machine running XP, but it's something you might wish to look into.

Digdug,

Curious, how did you get the information you posted?

PK

[digdug]

/debug /debugvideo

[Bobby]

It runs fine on my dual core xp machine.

[Aury]

Transcendence is multi threading, and it works like a charm on my quad-core xp, my dual core xp's, and my single core xp's.

[(name here)]

I'm having the same problem on 7, but only somtimes. 64bit windows 7, which might be the issue.

[Prophet]

My hardware specs:
Lenovo laptop
CPU: 1.66Ghz Dual core
128 mb integrated video
1 gig ram
Windows XP Pro SP3

I normally run Transcendence with /debug /window swtiches.

02/09/2010 18:37:31 Start logging session
02/09/2010 18:37:31 Transcendence 1.0 RC6
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DIRECT X
02/09/2010 18:37:32 Screen: 1280 x 768 (16-bit color)
02/09/2010 18:37:32 Pixels: 5-6-5
02/09/2010 18:37:32 Video Memory: 123826176
02/09/2010 18:37:32 Back buffers: 2
02/09/2010 18:37:32 SECONDARY SURFACE
02/09/2010 18:37:32 SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwHeight: 768
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwWidth: 1280
02/09/2010 18:37:32 lPitch: 4096
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwBackBufferCount: 0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwMipMapCount: 0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwRefreshRate: 0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwAlphaBitDepth: 0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DDSCAPS_BACKBUFFER
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DDSCAPS_COMPLEX
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DDSCAPS_FLIP
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DDSCAPS_VIDEOMEMORY
02/09/2010 18:37:32 PIXEL FORMAT
02/09/2010 18:37:32 DDPF_RGB
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwRGBBitCount: 16
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwRBitMask: f800
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwGBitMask: 7e0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwBBitMask: 1f
02/09/2010 18:37:32 dwRGBAlphaBitMask: 0
02/09/2010 18:37:32 Small typeface: Tahoma
02/09/2010 18:37:33 Medium typeface: Lucida Sans
02/09/2010 18:37:33 Large typeface: Convection
02/09/2010 18:37:33 Console typeface: Lucida Console
02/09/2010 18:37:34 Using external Transcendence.xml
02/09/2010 18:37:34 Using external resource files


/debug /window /debugvideo
02/09/2010 18:26:13 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 12 Update: 0

/debug /debugvideo
02/09/2010 18:36:14 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 12 Update: 2
02/09/2010 18:36:24 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 13 Update: 2

/debug /window /debugvideo /nodx
02/09/2010 18:28:54 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 13 Update: 0

/debug /debugvideo /dx
02/09/2010 18:37:50 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 1 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:38:00 Frames: 30 Paint: 4 Blt: 0 Update: 3
02/09/2010 18:38:12 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 1 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:38:22 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 2 Update: 0
02/09/2010 18:38:32 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 1 Update: 1

/debug /window /debugvideo /dx
02/09/2010 18:33:39 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 1 Update: 2
02/09/2010 18:33:49 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 2 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:33:59 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 2 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:34:09 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 2 Update: 0

/debug /window /debugvideo /exclusive
02/09/2010 18:30:28 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 11 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:30:41 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 8 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:30:51 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 7 Update: 1

/debug /debugvideo /exclusive
02/09/2010 18:46:08 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 12 Update: 1
02/09/2010 18:46:18 Frames: 30 Paint: 3 Blt: 13 Update: 0
02/09/2010 18:46:28 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 9 Update: 0
02/09/2010 18:46:37 Frames: 30 Paint: 2 Blt: 8 Update: 1


For each of these session I was in Eridani and destoyed one centauri station so they are all effectively handling the same situation on each run.

[Aury]

I got my windows 7 netbook, and transcendence runs beautifully on it! (My 11.6in screen is quite nice for playing transcendence on, nothing getting cut off...)

All the hardware stats on this netbook are inferior (and by a good margin!) to the stats of the vista laptop... so something is clearly going on!