Awful framerate in Hammerclan

I've just reached the Hammerclan and my framerate drops terribly.
Normally it's around 25-30 (with medium settings), now it's 5 average with a max of 9 fps.

I've tried anything in the options menu but the difference between everything on maximum settings or everything on minimum settings is only 1-2 fps. It nevers get above 10 fps.

Anybody knows what causes this? Is it that big mine that is occupied by orcs that causes this tremendous loss in performance?

My system specs:
AMD Athlon 2600+
1.5 GB Ram
GeForce 7800 GS (NVidia drivers 91.47)

Originally Posted by Sem
GeForce 7800 GS (NVidia drivers 91.47)

I know nothing about computers but I can suggest you to update your nvidia driver to ver 93.71.
It's better than nothing…

I think your CPU is struggling for breath. You can try lowering "Max frames to render ahead" in "Advanced Direct3D settings". It should transfer some burden from CPU to your graphics card, which is more than capable of handling itself. Of course changing this setting has no universal effect for all games, so you have to try it to see what happens.

I noticed something similar also, I think it's due to the number of Hammer Clan AI running around.
It seemed worst up around Invar's hut area, could be the mine but don't think Orc's or any AI spawns till just before you actually come to it.
The tick/lag/studder (whatever the offical name) many of us experience is actually the AI spawing in the sector you are entering, so I am guessing this is due to some optimisation which needs to be done.

Do you notice it more during night, day, clear skies or fog?
I am currently making another run through the game with the newest patch and have found that setting back the time to keep it daylight and clear skies works great .
It's a little tricky as setting the time will set the current weather conditions in the new time and for the first time I have actually been able to see everything very clearly, well since I don't use any of the Bloom or HDR which fogs/blurs the distance.

I actually enjoy Nordmar and Varant now that I can see in those areas.

im sure some people in san francisco would like the option to remove the fog too. without it though it would lack a lot of the beauty and mystery and in the case of nordmar--challenge in gameplay. i mean they already removed a third of the beasts since the first time i played it pre patch 1.08. and sandstroms in the desert? gee why did they put that there
turn down your settings and enjoy nature (courtesy of pirahna bytes) at work!

I'd say it's the CPU. It's simply not strong enough to deal with everything going on there at the same time. It should be able to handle most places in the game, but heavily crowded areas will lag quite a bit.

If your correct and the so called Fog and Sandstorm are there only part time as when a clear day is not present.
Not to mention the Bloom and HDR are intended to blur the distance which these effects seem to use, so I am not sure where you get this idea Fog and Sandstorms are intended as difficulty modifiers.

Also the idea of removing monsters is about reducing the amount of EXP, since so many complianed about be able to reach such a high level in the game (iirc), not sure what that has to do with Bloom and HDR.

Plus you clearly must not be intrested in looking at the visual beuaty of the Geo-Arcitecture, which PB are masters of lanscape and it's breath taking to me.

Gothic 3 is not HDR capable.

i felt like going to the trouble i would look up the developer post that said they removed the monsters specifically in nordmar because of difficulty…but i don't they 'thinned' the packs so where once there were say five sabertooths now there are three.
bloom doesn't blur anything it glosses it. i think you are talking about the depth of field function which to me does nothing but depribe you of nice views and take up more graphic power. the sandstorm is much more rare in varant than the fog is in nordmar. coupled with snow sometimes the view in nordmar was atrocious. and while that is annoying at times it still doesn't change the fact that is realistic for high altitude icy slopes, gorges, and cliffs. and it most certainly does make it more difficult. don't you think more people would climb mount everest if they could do it in shorts and not worry about freezing to death?

"Gothic 3 is not HDR capable."
Ahh, right must be DoF as curious mentioned.
They work on the same princpal, correct?

"..but i don'"
Heh, not necessary I will take your word on it until I hear differently.

"bloom doesn't blur anything it glosses it."
Well the gloss was blury too me or maybe blinding is a better word.

"the fact that is realistic"
Right you are but I am talking about having fun in a game, except for the fact that I marvel at the realistic Geo-structure designs of PB.
I rarely use weather effects and only rarely enjoy night cycles in games unless they are story or quest specific.

Another reason is the realism you describe isn't as real when you realise that the AI is not subjected to the same realism as you the player, so it's not realism at all and meaningless to me (at least) once I know this.

Seems like I shouldn't even try go to HammerClan with my 6800GS ;].

Originally Posted by Acleacius
Ahh, right must be DoF as curious mentioned.
They work on the same princpal, correct?

No. Depth of Field only blurs the image beyond a certain point. It is an abbreviation Piranha Bytes uses. High Dynamic Range rendering tries to emulate human vision through various techniques (check out the encyclopedia for more detail), and it is an industry standard. Bloom is an over glow effect and it is included in HDRR, but is also present in earlier games on its own.

Well, ok. Still strange that it only happens their. In any other clan or city the framerate drops a little to like 10-15 but not that much.

Originally Posted by Acleacius
It seemed worst up around Invar's hut area

Where is he? I can't find him anywhere in the Hammerclan, nor any other smelter. There's only one normal smith called Stejnar.
There should be four right? Ingvar, Larson, Pedar and Kalan but I can't find any of them.

hwfanatic
"No. Depth of Field only blurs the image beyond a certain point."
That's what I recalled.

"(check out the encyclopedia for more detail"
You mean Wikiopedea? Ok sounds good.

I really meant they both use Per-Pixel Lighting Shaders most often iir they use these effects to create Blur or Overbright effects at varius distances.
PB just seemed to use a couple of techniques of the many you mentioned used in the HDR and I proabably unfairly lump them together, since I am not a big fan of many of the techniques.

Sem
At that point where you go right to get to Stejnar, there is a path forward to the camp leader and if you look closely on the left you will see a smal rise/path that leads to two huts, he is in the last of these.

Honestly when I orgianlly read this post I missed your system specs.
Since your card is very powerful and if it's not a bug in drivers, it could just be unoptimised area locations by PB at this point and as mentioned also about yoru CPU, though I really don't know the AMD conversions to know you processor.

Iirc it's something along the lines of if PB hasn't optimised this area to prevent spawn radius from penetrating the surface or if you adjusted your Enity Draw Distance in your ini.
I.e. if you extended the distance where you see Objects and NPCs, might spawn on a 360 type radius allowing the y axis to spawn below you causing the Orcs to appear beneth you.

Originally Posted by Acleasius
Iirc it's something along the lines of if PB hasn't optimised this area to prevent spawn radius from penetrating the surface or if you adjusted your Enity Draw Distance in your ini.
I.e. if you extended the distance where you see Objects and NPCs, might spawn on a 360 type radius allowing the y axis to spawn below you causing the Orcs to appear beneth you.

That's worth a shot. I did some tweaking to the .ini at the beginning, so maybe that's the case. I'll try it out.

Well I tested with the Enity Draw Distance, it's indeed a sphere.
In my case I had increased it to Enity.ROI = 6000 and my framerate was 5 average.
I've now reset it to the default value of 4000, the amount of objects "popping up" has significantly increased, but my framerate in the Hammerclan is now 15 average with 10 and 20 as minimum and maximum.

Thanks for the suggestions.

PS:
Ingvar is bugged. I went to see him with the marvin-mode and ended up some where way below the game map. I think he was missing his smithy, because he was just walking around there.

Good to know you got a little imporovement.

Haha, maybe thats Invar's secret, he makes his swords in the pits of hell.