MythIV The Wind Age Multiplayer HD DEMO has been released!

[Melekor]

We're talking about people who don't _need_ a new computer, just a new processor, so the cost of the system (which they already paid for) isnt being factored in.

Anyways, for the purposes they would use it for, the 53 dollar processor is much faster than they're used to, and for very little money. Nobody is suggesting they go out and buy an entirely new system.

Besides, I wouldn't pay 200 dollars for a CPU unless I had money to burn, and most people these days don't. I was appealing to the average joe, not MoneyBags McGee. Just enlightening people who may have the misconception that you have to spend in excess of 150$ for a CPU that meets their needs.

The cost of the system doesn't magically go away if you're upgrading. Yes, you've already spent it, but it's still there, and buying a cheapo cpu means you aren't leveraging your initial investment as well as you could have.

(Of course, if buying a more expensive CPU would also require a new motherboard, that would have to be taken into account.)

I'd just like to throw in that for Mac users Leopard actually uses a helper thread for OpenGL (not always though, I've yet to find anything that describes the process properly), so running Myth with OpenGL rendering you may get that extra thread which makes it play a little bit nicer on multi-core machines as well.

I'm not sure making Myth support multi-threading better would help that much with hi-res content, as the main issue is loading the textures into VRAM and keeping the ones you need in there at all times. Unless a lot of swapping in and out of memory is occurring then the processor shouldn't matter that much.

The multithreaded OpenGL driver needs to be explicitly enabled by a system call, and can actually decrease performance if you have too many state query calls which kill parallelism.

source: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/ ... n2085.html

[Autumn Demon]

I'd get rid of inventories: they make things too complicated. I don't see them having any future in multiplayer.

You can still get a number of attacks with just T special.

1.) control click
2.) t click
3.) t click yourself

and Shift + T maybe?

[Jon God]

I'd get rid of inventories: they make things too complicated. I don't see them having any future in multiplayer.

You can still get a number of attacks with just T special.

1.) control click
2.) t click
3.) t click yourself

and Shift + T maybe?

*wink wink* Depends on the gameplay style, Deadfall for example wouldn't be nearly as good without inventories.

[Pyro]

Deadfall uses inventories differently. In Deadfall, you use it once and that is all. So it isn't the same.

[vinylrake]

Just a helpful tip (repeated from Myth developers (Myrd? I am too lazy to see who posted it)

If you are having trouble running MIV:TWA (aka TWindA), BE SURE TO SET YOUR TEX.CACHE to EXACTLY ONE HALF THE AMOUNT OF VRAM ON YOUR VIDEO CARD. (and turn off your detailed textures)

I can't emphasize this enough - in a test, playing 640x480 windowed mode on my 2009 Mac Mini even with detail textures turned off, but with a random high Tex.cache setting my frame rates were only in the 30s-60s until I moved the camera or moved troops - both of which caused frame rates to drop to 4-12 FPS) - or an explosion hit - which created a several second long freeze followed by 1 frame every second or two. BUT when I set the cache to 128MB (for my 256MB VRAM gfx card) my non moving FPS shot up to over 200 FPS and even with explosions it didn't drop below 30 FPS (give or take). So that at least is a playable FPS rate.

Not sure if I can find some sweet spot > 640x480 that's still playable FPS-wise, but I was amazed at the difference and thought a real life example of the importance of setting the tex.cache correctly might help others.

[oogaBooga]

Zeph I love you. You beat me to making a comparison shot!

In my defense im frapping some good netgame footage:)

And as far as inventory is concerned, Autumn Demon, in a lot of maps you can take off the Color Guards/Magicians/Warlock Arch-mages by lowering the difficulty.

The specialization and versatility of units with inventory are readily apparent. Just play mazz or DoD and imagine it without inventory at all. Things like balin style are good for piercing through a repel field just enough to hit the ground next to a unit hiding inside, and Oleg style is good for throwing over trees and other obstacles.

[oogaBooga]

Oh and yes, VR has a very good point. Experiment with the texture cache size settigns - ive heard from some people that setting it to 50% of your card's size helps, and from others i've heard 75%. Experiment and check the framerate to find the sweet spot.

To look at your current FPS, hold shift and press the delete key (not backspace) and it will appear in the corner.

[GodzFire]

In my defense im frapping some good netgame footage:)

[Renwood]

Myrd could you chime in on this texture cache allocation deal?

I hear some people say they set it to 1/2 of the total ram on the video card. I Myself since you included this great new feature have been using the fact that i have DDR (Doubble Data Rate) ram as most other video cards do, and setting my texture cache to 512 since i have 256 DDR Vram.

In tests this seemed the best for me, but clearly its on a case per case baisis.

What does the creator of this feature reccomend?

O and BTW upgrading your computers to play this demo faster should allways include a video card with 256 Vram or better.

Adding a new CPU or more system ram will still be bottlenecked if the Video ram isnt over 256.

I.E. dont buy and new CPU and system RAM and expect that to help you get greatly better FPS and smoother gameplay by themselves. Its these larger High Def textures that all the units and scenery and effects are made up of that gets handeled by the video card thats the biggest factor.

Also Make sure you dont have ANY app running in the background if you get lower FPS.

that means nothing, no itunes, no antivirus stuff NOTHING but the bare minimum should be running and Myth itself IF you get low FPS.

Lower your screen res as well to 1024X768. Mabye 800X600 allthough at that low res the units wont look too high def.

other tricks to get the best FPS with this demo were included with the MythIV TWA HD Demo Release announcement on our webpage at:
http://www.myth4thewindage.com

-Renwood

[Zeph]

http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/s ... TAyNTQzNjA

[Renwood]

Yes it would seem an imac isnt reccomended for this HD demo.

[vinylrake]

Since your comment about iMacs would also rule out playing TWindA with MacBooks and MacMinis, I am sure when you suggest that a brand new 2009 Mac with a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 4GB memory and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics isn't suitable for your plugin that you are joking, right?

You can't seriously be suggesting that the only Macs that can get decent FPS with your 'HD' plugin are brand new 2009 Mac Pros and 2009 MacBook Pros.

Right? Tell me you are joking.

Please?

[ozone]

Yes it would seem an imac isnt reccomended for this HD demo.

HUH?

talk about blowing smoke up a horses ass and expecting anything but a kick to the head.

ugh

wtf is this BS? SO I SHOULD DELETE YOUR DEMO? I HAVE AN IMAC?

[Sonixboom]

*melts into a puddle of joy*

[Renwood]

VR, i dont know whats up with the mac side slowdown.
WIth the specs they have they SHOULD be on par with the PC's.

Sounds like these macs dont like large in size and high numbers of textures going to the video card. Can somebody do some photoshop tests to see how thier mac with the slowdown problem handles rotating really large images like 6651X8292 in size? Thats a good benchmark test of how it handles large image textures.

BTW i think my friend has one of these new imacs and i could go over to his house to do some tests myself later. He also has newer PCs as well, so i can do side by side testin. Im really busy though and he is as well so i dont know when i would be able to do this.

Somebody call apple!