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Pocus
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Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:37 am
Location: Lyon (France)

Speed issues / Comment accélérer BoA?

Thu Dec 21, 2006 1:53 pm

Some explanations and tips on how to speed up BoA:

A bit of explainations first: The BoA map is huge, with 876 regions drawn by hand. On computers with 512 mb RAM or lower, they dont fit all in memory, so BoA use a caching technique: it means that only a part of all regions are in memory at a given time.

This means that when you first scroll on a new area, or if you unzoom the map, your video and general RAM get a massive amount of bitmaps. This is the cause for the occasional lag (cursor lag or scrolling lag) you can get at these times.

Some tips now:

System tab be sure to have these options checked:

Textures init ON
Allow High Mem ON (if at least 1 gig of RAM)
Region pre-caching ON

Defragment the hard drive where BoA is running. Can significatively increase the performance.

If this is not sufficient, when you arrive in the game, scroll a bit around the starting area, without dezooming, so that the regions are loaded.

Playing with a Filter ON ask for more CPU power.

BoA by default uses your desktop resolution. If the game run too slowly launche AGEsettings in the birth of america game folder, switch to something lower, like 1204x768.

Switch to hardware cursor with the same utility.

What will do the most good would be to have 1 gb of RAM, memory stick are rather cheap these days (no obligation though, the tips above should be sufficient!).

Thats been said, even a low-end computer should be able to scroll smoothly on regions previously accessed. If you have still a lag, then check if your video driver is up to date, a old driver can significatively hampers the game speed.

Testing application
Download:
http://www.ageod.com/download_patches/AGETesting.exe

Execute the file, it will creates 2 test application. You should have roughly the same speed with both. An average computer should get at least 250 FPS. If you have less than 150, then something is amiss with DirectX.

Prerequisites

DirectX 9

Windows XP/2000

To play with sounds, BoA need a sound card which is DirectMusic compliant (some rare on-board chipsets dont support DirectMusic). Check your DxDiag if you are unsure.

Your Windows must have the font DPI set to 96 (this is the default option).


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Avec ses 876 régions dessinées à la main, la carte de BoA est très lourde et, pour les PC avec moins de 512 Mo de RAM, le PC gère cela par une technique de cache. Cette obligation de charger en permanence en mémoire vive les régions provoque donc ponctuellement des ralentissements lorsqu’on change de région ou d’échelle de zoom.

Vous pouvez améliorer cette situation de plusieurs façons :

Mettez à jour le driver de votre carte graphique
Assurez vous que les options Système suivantes soient sélectionnées
- Init. des textures
- Pré-cache des régions (seulement si vous avez 512 Mo ou plus de RAM)
- Util. Mémoire haute
Défragmenter le disque où BoA est installé (améliore le temps d’accès de façon significative)
Au début du jeu, scroller un peu autour de votre point de départ (sans dézoomer) de façon à charger les régions.
Gardez en tête que l'usage des filtres sur la carte prend plus de mémoire

Et si vraiment vous voulez jouer avec plus de confort, pourquoi ne pas investir tout simplement dans quelques barrettes de RAM ? ;o)
Image


Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."

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