Graal 4 Video lagg?
 

Is it just me or am I seeing Graal4 (win32 application) lagging when I run around? There really isnt any reason this one simple game should have ANY reason to even come close to lagging on my PC. I can play much heavier games then graal without lagg. You people got some funny things going on you know that?

Man.

You complain about some of the most idiotic things in the world when you don't have it your way. Go to Burger King.

Other than that, why won't you post a bug like the way it is wished to be stated in this forum?
Sticky: PLEASE READ FIRST: How to report a bug (by Skyld)

I was thinking more so about the food problems on GK after they did that last update, but it was beside the point. Graal V4 should not lagg under any specific condition on a normal day. Perhaps Malinko should be so kind to explain why he has to be so rude.

Maybe Malinko failed again at his Seppuku attempt again and is grumpy at that!

:) On the other hand... What exactly causes this to lag? Anything you do in particular? Computer Specs? Perhaps mentioning what other problems are on while running Graal could solve the problem.

Post your ****ing specs.

Well fine if you must know, didn't want some of you getting jealous though..

Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 244 (1.8 GHZ 64bit CPU)
MSI K8T Master2-FAR mainboard (small serverboard)
512 MB Ram (this should be irrelivant at this point)
GeForce 5700LE 256MB Video card (AGP8X)
Audigy 2Zs soundcard (7.1 capable soundcard)
SATA WD Raptor (36GB harddrive @10kRPM)
SATA WD Caviar drive 250GB
32Xdvdburner

Now is there any other specs you want to know? This system is overkill for graal.

Run it at 16-bit color on desktop and see if it does anything. Your directx up to date? Your video drivers?

Video lag is most of the time a problem of the graphics card driver. The preinstalled drivers are often very bad, also sometimes driver versions have problem with certain games since they are only tested for the most well known applications, then you will need to update it too (ATI and Nvidia are releasing new drivers all few weeks). You are running a 32bit Windows now?

I am running with the newer drivers that work for all my other applications and games, and in 32 bit windows as your graal4 will not function at all on 64bit. As for the video card, it should be able to support graal in 32bit colour anyways. I've set high requirements in other games with actual 3D.

What graphics card do you have again?
I cannot imagine that Graal makes problems when other recent games run fine, although Graal is not really a light-weight program like you might think (it's using mixed GDI, 2D and a lot of 3D functionality) and has dynamic content, while most other games have static content (graphics and scripts which are not updated all the time).

nVidia GeForce 5700LE 256MBram AGP8X (this card is installed in an 8X/Pro agp card slot)

My friend gave me some RAM recently so I currently have 1.25GB of ram, no program laggs, but graal insists on flickering when I move.

Taskmgr.exe (taskmanager comes with windowsXP Home) says Graal is using 30-50% of the CPU which isnt a problem but still seems to be alot for a single game like Graal. Interesting, it jumps to 90% when I move.

World of Warcraft
Ventrilo
Winamp - Playing a video

12% computer usage?

Graal runs me about 60-70.

Get fraps, check the framerate and post it here.

You said other games work fine. Do you play those in fullscreen or in windowed mode? Is Graal the same speed in fullscreen? If you have the good graphics card driver then there shouldn't be a problem, Graal works smooth on 7 years old hardware with the good driver. There can be problems with programs like ICQ, AIM or E-mule when they access the GDI ressources irregulary, then other windowed programs can be slow.
What do you call flickering ?
Eventually also post your graal4console.log. Are you using bitmap fonts (graal options)?

If your antialiasing settings are on, try turning them off. I've never had any positive results when having that on for Graal. Vertical Sync will keep Graal from showing the "tearing" artifact, but at the expense of a bit more lag and less responsive controls. Graal being capped at 20 fps, I think it's worth the occasional tearing for less CPU usage.

Also, check if your RAM matches. That could be your bottleneck right there, no matter how much RAM you have. I've had a friend with unmatching 1 GB DDR RAM run slower than a single 128 SDR RAM. I do doubt that this problem causer, though.

Some LCD monitors perform noticably worse in higher refresh rates. If you have an LCD monitor, try putting it to the native resolution and refresh rate. Using NVidia's rotate feature sure doesn't help either.

Recently I've found out (at least for my machine) that using older NVidia drivers actually runs Graal a bit faster. When using 91.33 drivers, in full screen of 1600 x 1200, I would get a 3 second freeze while going between levels. When on 66.81, I get around a 1.5 second freeze on the same size. This isn't limited to just going between levels, as moving the "camera" far away (loading lots of tiles I guess) will give the exact same result. This all generally happens when the tileset changes or loads, so I guess it would be the tiles slowing everything down in this case? Seeing you have an NVidia card, do you have this problem too? Strange that I don't/didn't get this problem in Windows Vista and Linux with the latest drivers; I use XP Professional.

Drawing tiles means creating/updating textures in video memory, should be quite fast though in normal circumstances.

An option for tile caching sounds like it'd benefit people with more modern cards; otherwise maybe an option to limit tile loading to only how big your screen is. It seems like Graal loads levels (or at least parts of levels) that aren't even on your screen. Isn't that kind of unnecessary loading? When you're on a GMAP with 4 levels around you at all times, that could be 250+ updating tiles that you can't see because they aren't on the screen.

Yeah im usually at 64% usage when using graal and when im not on graal it goes down to about 10%, any other game only takes up 5-10% but graal takes about 50%

Listen, I remember Graal4.exe running at 5% CPU useage, this is in windowed mode, and for the records fullscreen does the same thing.

I do not know why its eating up over 50% of my Opteron's power, there is literally no reason at all that it should come even close to 20% really. I play World of Warcraft before with 2-3 windows up and running at the same time with very minimal lagg (I never noticed lagg really).

Now if you think you can sit there and say my PC is lagging on graal, theres either another problem that I do not know about, or that last graal4.exe update messed up something it shouldnt have.

** My screen litereally flickers huge black ugly lines when I move on the outside levels on GK. There is also alot of video lagg (screen jerking) that is in effect when I move. This seems to kill the quality of GK much more then I could have imagined.

** NVIDIA settings state that the application controls anti aliasing, anistopic filtering and the vertical sync. This is set so because programs like "the sims" and other games such as battlefield and first person shooters require to control those settings in game.

You can still try to (temporary) set those options manually in the nvidia panel and check if it's helping?
Graal should not take a lot of CPU power. Does it always take a lot of cpu power or only when you move? Have you tried to disable sounds?

Eeh.. mine runs from 00 - 07.. is that good :o?

Antialiasing on/off has no effect (On is application controled)
Anisotropic filtering also no effect on or off
Verticle sync application controled or off makes no difference either


Tried Various screen timing methods, no affect on problem either.

Anymore ideas??

Wish someone could atleast explain to me why Graal4 has been running poorly enough to cause lagg and other bits and pieces of the program to run incorrectly (editor).

See attached, screencapture when I was actaully moving, watching the Graal4 process spike the CPU useage.

Still having a ton of video problems, and with your last update I had to completely uninstall and then delete the entire directory where graal 4 was installed. And now it just reset all my setting to the default ones.

Dude, if this keeps up, I'd rather be playing on V2, atleast that was stable.