flyby option?

I have seen here that many people experience excellent framerates in the shareware version of Darwinia, and then when they register, and get to later levels, the framerates are unplayable because these levels are more complex. Is there any way to do "flyby" framerate test of later levels in the shareware version, or is Ambrosia planning to implement this? I am considering buying Darwinia but am getting an average of 8-9 fps in the demo levels. This is fine for me if this were to be consistent throughout the game, but I am definitely not buying this report without knowing that later levels won't be unplayable for me.....for the record I'm running Panther (soon to be Tiger) on a Powerbook G4 867 with 640 megs ram and a 32mb geforce 4mx equivalent graphics card.

Wait for the patch which has been promised, and see what people are saying then.

At present, I suspect you'd have trouble with the Yard level----the ants especially.

I simply never understand why computer games have frame-rate problems for us, but not for PC users. Are we all using ancient computers like I think we are? I'm guessing this means I can't actually play with all graphical features pumped up even on my 1.2 Ghz iBook— when I eventually buy the game.

Blame the programmers and blame Apple's slow implementation of OpenGL.

The programmers claim that display lists don't work on OS X, which I'm certain is not the case.

Apple's GL is reportedly 20% faster on Tiger. A speedup of this magnitude means that the GL we're using is awfully slow.

SadMac, on Apr 23 2005, 02:36 PM, said:

Blame the programmers and blame Apple's slow implementation of OpenGL.

Indeed, this was most clearly seen with Doom 3, where you get absolutely abysmal performance on the newest Macs. And that was with a sizeable group of people dedicated to optimizing it.

Quote

The programmers claim that display lists don't work on OS X, which I'm certain is not the case.

The implementation of display lists they're using tends to cause Darwinia to crash or display strange graphics on some machines, so it's disabled by default. I can't recall the exact option to add to your prefs file, but I'll see if I can dig it up. (It might also have been disabled fully in the release build, but I know it was there in the betas)

I'm pretty sure they should work. I've written (rather primitive of course) things that display landscapes like Darwinia's. Obviously using display lists. They worked identically on my 10.1 machine (at the time), on classic with a Voodoo 3 and on Linux / Windows, etc.

If they don't work there's something up with Apple's OpenGL (which actually wouldn't surprise me now I think about it) or they're using funny non-standard features / hacking.

Well anyway I guess it doesn't matter now. They've switched to buffered vertex objects and the patch is on its way... so they say <_< I personally think it's a big conspiracy to make me try gaming on my Mac again only to be put off by the abysmal performance as usual.

This post has been edited by SadMac : 24 April 2005 - 12:44 PM

Apple's Games site ( www.apple.com/games ) says "For the ultimate gaming OS, look no further than Mac OS X". You'd have thought they'd make sure their OpenGL implementation was good (and standard), to encourage games developers to develop for Mac as well as PC, and users to Switch. Hmm...

That would be assuming rational behaviour from Apple. After many years of using Macs I can safely say there is no chance of ever seeing that.

If you are so against Macs why don't you go to the PC forums, SadMac?

Look people, I have a specific question, please keep the performance debates on another topic. All I'm saying is that no matter how good (or bad) performance supposedly is on the later levels, since it's a hotly debated issue, there should be a flyby option so people can test their systems. Period. If someone has something to add to that particular topic, please post here.

Who says I'm against Macs? I love Macs.

I just think that their gaming potential is sadly limited, but I do like to support it when it's available. I'm just upset cause I can't run Darwinia at a decent rate okay!