Andcarne, on Jun 17 2005, 11:15 PM, said:

The patch should be upcoming soon. (Hopefully, I know I keep saying this, but...)

Give it a try then.
View Post

Any word yet?

Thanks much!

We're still waiting on final word from Introversion.

Love the game, wish it could be played.

I made it to the "Collect 50 souls per minute" mission (I forget the name) and I'm down to a pathetic 4 FPS.

Granted, my system is not perfect:

1GHz iBook, 640 MB RAM.
All settings at lowest possible.

If my system is just not up to snuff, that's fine, but here are my probelms that I think could be handled.

1: The gesture system. Was this meant to be one of the added challenges of the game? I oiften have to enter a gesture 5-6 times before it's accepted. By then, dead squad. Not that easy to do with a touchpad, but I have to believe there are others who play on their laptops.

2: Sometimes I attempt to assume control of a cannon and the camera loses its mind. Beta testers should've caught this. I've seen camera complaints on the boards here.

3: Unregistered clicks. Go here. GO here. GO HERE!! #&*$^! Then, 7 clicks later my squad/engineer/whatever gets a click with a little "x" at last. That's just ridiculous. $30 ain't much, but any amount is too much for a game with as fundamental a problem as this.

4: It can't just be the hardware. Games that also play beautifully on this machine: EV Nova, Quake 2, Doom GL, Uplink. Clearly this is the most demanding game, but I can't even click or gesture. And it can;t be that I just suck at it. Despite these problems, I got to the soul collection level.

What can be done, ASW?

Still love your games, just frustrated,
Thumpmonk

This post has been edited by thumpmonk : 15 July 2005 - 11:13 AM

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

Love the game, wish it could be played.

I made it to the "Collect 50 souls per minute" mission (I forget the name) and I'm down to a pathetic 4 FPS.

Granted, my system is not perfect:

1GHz iBook, 640 MB RAM.
All settings at lowest possible.

I assume G4? And have you installed the patch? I am on a 1 Ghz PowerBook G4 with a gig of RAM, and Receiver seems to fine with the patch (version 1.2.2). Not 30 FPS, but certainly in the neighborhood of 10-12. The patch only came out yesterday, so it is understandable if you have not yet installed it. I would do that now.

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

If my system is just not up to snuff, that's fine, but here are my probelms that I think could be handled.

1: The gesture system. Was this meant to be one of the added challenges of the game? I oiften have to enter a gesture 5-6 times before it's accepted. By then, dead squad. Not that easy to do with a touchpad, but I have to believe there are others who play on their laptops.

Yeah, using the touchpad is tough. I tried it for a while, then went back to using a mouse. I would recommend getting a $15 Logitech or Microsoft mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel, and trying again (you will have to change a line of preferences.txt to read 'ControlMouseButtons = 2'). Not every game is playable on a laptop, and there is no reason that designers should be looking out for touchpads -- get a mouse, you will be happy.

Also, Introversion (IV, the writters of the game; ASW is only publishing it) are working on another patch (1.3) that will make the gesture system optional. You could head over to this page at IV, and apply to be in the new beta (though they are not really accepting Mac testers yet, they will in the near future).

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

2: Sometimes I attempt to assume control of a cannon and the camera loses its mind. Beta testers should've caught this. I've seen camera complaints on the boards here.

This is a known issue, and has been known since the beta. I am tired of the implication that we did not do our jobs because such-and-such a bug is still in the game. The problem seems to be related to low FPS, so, again, the patched game should help. Also, if you are still having trouble, you could try aiming cannons with the Debug Camera. Hit (F2) until the camera locks in place. Before you lock it, either make sure that you are looking in the generally direction of what you want to hit, or have a second mouse button. Rotate the camera using a right-click, move it with WASDQE. It won't bounce around.

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

3: Unregistered clicks. Go here. GO here. GO HERE!! #&*$^! Then, 7 clicks later my squad/engineer/whatever gets a click with a little "x" at last. That's just ridiculous. $30 ain't much, but any amount is too much for a game with as fundamental a problem as this.

Again, a known issue with low FPS. If you have a mouse, and have changed the ControlMouseButtons setting, you can click and hold for a bit so that it will register clicks. Also, once again, make sure that the patch is installed. I have not had this problem at framerates of greater than 5 or 6, which, while not ideal, is playable.

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

4: It can't just be the hardware. Games that also play beautifully on this machine: EV Nova, Quake 2, Doom GL, Uplink. Clearly this is the most demanding game, but I can't even click or gesture. And it can;t be that I just suck at it. Despite these problems, I got to the soul collection level.

Part of the problem seems to be Apple's implementation of OpenGL. Darwinia runs perfectly well on inferior Windows boxes (i.e. boxes with lower specs), but stutters to a halt on Macs. There are also some problems with the rendering code (I do not think that there is much poloygon culling going on, though I could be wrong), and the AI is very processor intensive on the Mac version for some reason. I don't really know what to say. Much as I love the game, the Macintosh version is flawed in many ways, though IV is working to fix the problems.

thumpmonk, on Jul 15 2005, 04:12 PM, said:

What can be done, ASW?

Again, ASW only published the game. Anything that gets reported as a problem here is passed on to Introversion, as they created and ported the game. If you would like to address IV more directly, post on their forums at http://forums.introv....co.uk/darwinia .

xander

This post has been edited by darwinian : 15 July 2005 - 02:03 PM

As darwinian mentioned, make sure to give the 1.2.2 patch a try. If that doesn't fix everything, hold out a bit longer for the 1.3 patch which is in the works.

The patch is out?!?!

Run for the hills then! The world is ending!

If you say so...

That I do.

Andcarne, on Jul 15 2005, 12:09 PM, said:

As darwinian mentioned, make sure to give the 1.2.2 patch a try. If that doesn't fix everything, hold out a bit longer for the 1.3 patch which is in the works.
View Post

I complained earlier, but I have to say the 1.2.2 patch helps me out in a big way. I'm having fun with Darwinia again! Thanks!

I made it all the way to the last level without problem. As soon as I entered the last level everything went to hell. It is nearly impossible to move around or get any of the controls to respond, even though it says frame rates as high as 69FPS. I am running Darwinia 1.2.2.

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4152
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-A13602-121

Something is reall screwed up.

Galamander Press

Hi there,

I'm on a Powerbook 15" G4 1.5Ghz, 770ram
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 64Mb AGP

Yard: All settings lowest, no other apps running, high CPU, 1 screen 800x600: 7fps
Pattern Buffer (start scene, no Darwinians in any color): All settings medium / high: 22

I get the feeling it's all the flying souls that slow things down, when I turn just to see a valley with virusses it's better. When I zoom in on a mountain / water in the yard, framerate jumps up to twenties.

Please fix; I keep out of the garden till I get doable speeds... thanks!

Sander.

This post has been edited by Zandman : 24 August 2005 - 10:57 AM

My performance was good until I hit the Temple. My frame-rate is still listed as 25-30, but it seems like 2-3. I had a couple of dips in Pattern Buffer when the reds got too numerous, but my CPU is being whaled on in the Temple. I've played with extremes of all the graphics settings, so this problem seems to be CPU-related.

This is a bummer, as I'm almost finished with the game, but it's gone unplayable on me.

My specs:

PowerMac G5 Dual-2GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon X800 (R420)
MacOS 10.4.2

EDIT: I think it's a population problem. It just dawned on me that this didn't happen until after I left the game running unattended for a few hours. It looks like the red Darwinian population has not been limited by anything, so there are a huge number of them. Their pathfinding algorithms may be eating my system alive, just working out their little wanderings. I don't suppose there's any way to cut their population, short of starting the game over?

This post has been edited by drockwell : 24 August 2005 - 01:12 PM

drockwell, on Aug 24 2005, 06:02 PM, said:

EDIT: I think it's a population problem. It just dawned on me that this didn't happen until after I left the game running unattended for a few hours. It looks like the red Darwinian population has not been limited by anything, so there are a huge number of them. Their pathfinding algorithms may be eating my system alive, just working out their little wanderings. I don't suppose there's any way to cut their population, short of starting the game over?
View Post

Indeed. One of the SpawnPoint is not within a SpawnPopulationLock, thus it will produce an infinite number of red DGs. This is a known issue, and has been much discussed on IV's boards. IV has yet to comment.

xander

I have exactly the same issue on my top-end-ish PC - it's not just the Mac ver. What I did was set up a battle cannon in a convenient place on a red DG island so that all the red DGs would run at it. Then I aligned one my my battle cannons at its base and fired for about 20 minutes. Oh my what destruction!

iBook G4- 1.42 Ghz, 512 meg of RAM. All graphics settings on highest EXCEPT FOR the sky. Sky=medium.
~50 FPS, very fast, no trouble drawing/playing at all.

Defaults (all graphics medium)
~65 FPS, no noticable jerkiness at all.

These are about the same on Garden and Containment. I have never gotten past those, as I have logged <4 hours of time on this game.

I played Darwinia this weekend and it really captivated me. It was so radically different from any other games I've played recently. I love the retro artwork and the sci-fi mysticism of the storyline.

I had a /small/ role in writing one of the other games in the running for this year's Independent Games Festival. (I won't tell you which one, because it would be rude of me to plug my game on a competitor's site.) So I downloaded Darwinia to scope out the competition and see what the fuss was about. So far as I can tell, all of the fuss is deserved. Best of all, the system requirements are a meager "G3 processor, 128MB RAM, and OS X 10.2" so my G4 system made short work of the demo.

The registration fee was flying out of my hands when I saw this forum. It appears--and I do not mean this maliciously--that the demo levels are poor representations of the real complexity of this game. Seems as if everyone, even G3 iMacs, can play the demo. But when I read about G5 systems stumbling down to 5 fps, I get nervous.

I loved the demo. The game is inspiring. $30 is a reasonable fee. But I'm hoping for a bit of candor, here. Will this game be playable? Has the update fixed the framerates? I realize the goal of "playable" is a bit vague.

My specs:

OS X 10.2.8
PowerMac G4 "Sawtooth" tower upgraded to dual 450 MHz G4's.
1MB L2 (yes, level 2) cache per G4
768MB RAM
ATi Radeon AGP card with 32MB VRAM, latest Jaguar-compatible drivers. Quartz enabled.

I'll probably be upgrading to OS X Tiger soon, which may help or hurt the gameplay.

Any advice?

ArtieM, on Jan 9 2006, 05:00 PM, said:

--==<snip>==--View Post

I would suggest upgrading to Tiger first. On a G4 laptop, I found the last three levels to be unplayable under 10.3 (less than 1 FPS). After I upgraded to 10.4. those levels were much better (c. 6-9 FPS). There is a new patch in the works, which increases performance a bit, as well. Honestly, you shouldn't have too much trouble running the game, but the last couple of levels may be a bit chunky. I don't know how well Darwinia does with dual procs -- some Windows folk have had to force it to run on only a single proc. Perhaps someone else may have words of wisdom, but from my experience, I would say that your system is right around the edge of what will make Darwinia playable, unless Darwinia can take advantage of both processors. My vote would be for trying it and, if it doesn't work, writing off the $30 as an investment in a playable game when the next generation of machines comes out...

xander

My $0.02, I guess. I just registered Darwinia after playing (and loving) the demo, blah blah...

System:
Powerbook G4
1GHz processor
768MB RAM
GeForce FX Go5200 32MB display
Mac OSX 10.4.4
Darwinia 1.2.2

Frame Rates:
everything before Yard - Acceptable
Yard - 10 with a medium zoom (< 10 zoomed out and looking off in the distance; ~20 close-up at a few virii)

I can post more specific frame rates if it would be helpful, but it seems like the issue is well-documented.

sooo...any more patches on the way?

erik

miniwombat, on Jan 28 2006, 07:47 PM, said:

sooo...any more patches on the way? View Post

1.4 is on its way. It should be here any day now... my understanding is that they are working on some kind of MacIntel problem. That is all I know.

xander

I play 1.4 now, and it is awesome.

(yay beta)