Hardware requirement?

[FutoiSaru]

Hey guys,

First off, Terasology looks fantastic. I downloaded the latest build and had a play with it for quite a while, the world generation is impressive. I've had a good read through the forums/wiki and I love the direction you plan to take with the game, I always thought that as great as Minecraft is, it lacked depth to the game (like that of DF) and had the potential to be much more (made worse by new versions of the game breaking everything the community had made) and I think this open source project could be immense. I would LOVE to contribute to this project, however my Java knowledge isn't substantial enough to be of use to you guys yet although you have definitely motivated me to improve as I have plenty of time of my hands.

Whilst I was in the game I noticed I wasn't getting very good FPS (around 15-20ish) and it surprised me a little as my laptop isn't amazing, but it's decent.

Specs are:

i7 2670 @ 2.20ghz
6gb RAM
nVidia GeForce 525 GT 1gb
Windows 7 64bit

Is this the expected FPS of this machine? I understand that optimizing code, etc, comes later in development, I was just curious what kind of hardware you are aiming for this game to be using?

 

[Cervator]

Hi FutoiSaru, and welcome!

You caught the right idea - optimization is on-going, but the key part will indeed come later, though maybe more in the ability to easily adjust the world & graphic features from in-game moreso than huge performance improvements from where we're at today.

I'd certainly like to see Terasology run on mediocre hardware, and we could probably make that happen on a "low" setting that skips some of the more intense graphical effects and advanced world features. Then if you've got the horsepower crank it up to include everything and a high-end computer might still be kept somewhat busy (like MC for instance still does, always pegging one of my cores to max)

Currently you can tweak some of the config, but it might be a little tricky - we need some solid UI work at some point

With the latest build you don't get any blackish artifacts in the game? That's great if so, as the latest round of changes related to water seem to be triggering issues on some video cards, like mine. Here's for hoping we can squash the remaining issues soon and keep the beautiful water

Thanks for the kind words, and I look forward to seeing you gear up, we need more people appreciative of the depth of DF to help make it happen!

 

[FutoiSaru]

Thanks Cervator!

I was just curious as I generally can run any game I throw at this lappy, but I'll have a mess with the config if I can find it I did find it interesting that changing the view distance seems to make very little difference to the fps.

I don't recall seeing any black artifacts or any other graphical issues ingame, but it's my first time seeing the game so here's a couple of screenies so you can see for yourself.




I don't know how much time it takes to learn Java to a usable level, but I'll certainly be following these forums and contribute where I can until then.

 

[Cervator]

I can't see those from work, but here's the thread describing the issue (also with screenshots) so if you're not seeing anything obviously wrong you're probably okay

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=140&p=825#p825

On Java - probably not terribly much to begin with small stuff. If you can survive the http://wiki.movingblocks.net/Main/DevSetup intro and get a working development environment then as little as just reading the code, improving comments, making logging better, fixing typos, etc, is a great way to learn on your feet!

 

[begla]

Glad you like the game (and its good looks)!

Tweaking the settings can increase the average FPS significantly, as I pointed out earlier. Mind playing with the config file a bit and posting your results? First steps would be to disabled moving grass/water and then disabling all those post-processing effects.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=140&start=10#p835

 

[FutoiSaru]

I'd be happy to!.... Except I can't seem to find a locate the config file, care to point me in the right direction?

 

[Cervator]

That's probably my fault, as I moved it into the source tree as a quick hack when fixing the applet - pretty sure now it would work outside the jar too, but thus the "quick" part of the hack...

The config file at /groovy/config/Default.groovy currently is just a placeholder until we get the actual config out there again. Which ideally takes a quick bit of bifurcating the internal config into an external copy with override rights

It can be modifed anyway by doing one of two things:

1) Make the DevSetup work and simply run from source. The internal config file at org.terasology.logic.manager.DefaultConfig should then be easily accessible and changes made to it will take effect immediately on the next execution
2) Hmm, on second thought not sure #2 would work without essentially needing #1 to be able to recompile that DefaultConfig file in-place inside the jar. I keep forgetting the Groovy definition/config files do get compiled into the artifact, as I think we would be able to make it work uncompiled - but that hasn't happened yet

Sorry

 

[FutoiSaru]

It's all good, I planned to do the DevSetup anyway, just made me do it a little quicker

After messing with the settings I did a quick test with my setup, results were:-

All effects on - 18fps average
Turning off moving grass/water - 22fps average
Turning off post processing effects - 25fps average
Turning off both - 63fps average


EDIT:

After further messing, I discovered that for some odd reason it was refusing to use my main graphics card which is very unusual(this laptop has intergrated graphics as well as dedicated). After forcing it to use my main card I found I was experiencing the same problem the people in the thread you linked. Black artifacts invaded lol. Also thought I'd note that I get the black graphics problem with all the effects off as well. FPS, however, increased dramatically, I'm now at 50fps+ with all effects on.

 

[Cervator]

Interesting! Did that scenario include begla's very latest changes? 3-4 hours ago some stuff got pushed that fixed all the black artifacts for me

 

[FutoiSaru]

My bad, pulled the changes and it's fixed now