Brad's Beta 5 issues

from Stardock Forums
Okay, I'm playing on my ThinkPad T20 (600MHZ) system on Windows XP.

Please let me know if you guys are seeing this. This is with the latest update (Saturday update).

I don't recall which cut scenes are available to beta testers, obviosly I have them all but I want to describe the things i"m seeing here.

Doors are still somewhat choppy. The intro cut scenes are very smooth however.

The meanwhile cut scenes (colony landing and the like) are CHOPPY. Yet the robot animation is perfectly smooth.

This is an odd issue because the robot animation is smooth yet the colon landing and such is choppy. We'll need to check to see if they are binked at the same settings or something.

Performance of the game itself is pretty good, even at the end game phase.

This makes me think that the issue with the door animation isn't CPU/OS bound as much as a problem with the way it was binked. I.e. a little door opening is choppy but a full screen cut scene is smooth?

Is this what you are experiencing as well?
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
That's exactly what I've seen at home with a 733/ATI 7200 Radeon/384MB.

The animation on the left of the start screen was also smooth. Don't have any of the intro files at home to see.

Remember with the FS ones, it's switching resolutions now. Still, the robot was happy.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Okay I just put in code that actually suspends all the background threads and it was still somewhat choppy.

I think it's a problem with the file itself or the way it's called or something. It's not the multithreadedness.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Okay I think it may be solved now. I lovered the FPS to 20 and that seemed to do it.

I wonder if other parts of teh game that are choppy are designed for 20fps instead of 30.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Yup thats exactly what I see too. Most other animations are smooth as silk but the opening doors thing is 1 frame per minute (or so ;) )

Myros
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
The way I figure it, if I can play it on a laptop with one of those evil ancient S3 video cards, then anyoe can play it!

Working on the mini scenes now.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Okay, is there anyone with a >1Ghz machine that finds the mini cut scenes to be choppy?
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
The animations seems fine to me.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
The GNN robot has always seemed smooth as silk on my 1Ghz machine.

The opening doors of the intro has always been choppy, both sound and picture, even though the scene of the ship approaching the star base has been very smooth.

The blank screens we have for the "first" events (colony, star base, etc.) have had choppy sound.

As far as I have seen, all of the rest of the animation has been smooth.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a 1.2 gig hz pentium III - laptop.

most cut scenes are smooth - however, the doors are a bit - just a little choppy.

Jerry
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
2.1 ghz P4 runs fine, even though my ships move somewhat choppyly in the game. Funny thing is that the other ships run smoothly after I hit the turn button.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Frogboy said:

"The way I figure it, if I can play it on a laptop with one of those evil ancient S3 video cards, then anyoe can play it!"

Ah. Brings back alot of memories. I actually had one of those (long ago and far away). Loved it. (Then) ;)


Elrikk

Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
On my new machine an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ with 512 megs of RAM, everything is running smoothly. On my old machine (AMD K2 450 MHz) with 384 megs, only the Robot ran smoothly. But that was B4Z so things might have been different if I hadn't bought a new PC.

Asmodean
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
My machine is about the bottom end that you'll see out here now....K6III+ 450Mhz, 256Mb RAM. The GNN robot has always been smooth as glass and the movies were fine before beta 4z when they, all of a sudden, developed the clunky syndrome where the sound comes in bursts and the motion is a bit jerky. It's the sound, more than the motion that really breaks the illusion of smoothness, I think, though the doors definitely open in stages....

Played two games so far and had one crash to desktop apparently when the space monster fired on my sensor drone. The only other thing I notice is that all the pictures of social improvements are gone, replaced with a little computer graphic of a wireframe sphere and some inscrutable writing....

Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
'Doors are still somewhat choppy. The intro cut scenes are very smooth however.

The meanwhile cut scenes (colony landing and the like) are CHOPPY. Yet the robot animation is perfectly smooth.'

This is exactly what I'm seeing here. The animations are all smooth except the 'first' animations and the intro doors, and an external Bink player plays the 'first' animations fine.

'My machine is about the bottom end that you'll see out here now....K6III+ 450Mhz, 256Mb RAM.'

P-200 MMX 80 MB RAM. (Hopefully I'll have a Celron 300 running again soon, but that's still not much of an improvement.)
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
I just downloaded 5A and I see some change in this problem (choppy sound and animation).

1). Immediately after downloading I started GalCiv and the doors seemed to move smoothly but there was no sound. Then when the doors finished moving I got the "Dreaded Blue Screen of Death" and had to reboot.

2). After rebooting I started GalCiv and the doors (opening an sound) is still choppy, but now it seems to be in bigger chuncks. The sound and movement seems to be twice as long as before between pauses. I checked to see if there was any evidence of the animation file being updated but file "Menu_Open.bik" (is that the correct file) still has a date of 01/27/03, so the change is confusing.

I am sending the debug.err file to Cari and Brad via e-mail.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
With 5A I still can't view the mini cutscenes and the intro is still VERY choppy (doors opening and the spacestation animation) and now the background music also cuts out, which was never a problem in beta 5...
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah. The cut scenes are choppy on my desktop pc. They were fine on my Gateway PIV laptop (which is a slower and less capable machine than my desktop...)

The newsrobot movie is perfect though with no chops or sound blanks, but the movies are as such. Additionally, the ships selected area, next to all the options such as government, and alien affairs, is choppy when moving too. :(

You'll be happy to know that the intro screen is fine though.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
All video is fine on my machine, but the music hiccups almost anytime you're not at the main window. It's particularly noticeable when selecting a new tech.

End transmission.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
I am now running 5B and have seen further improvements in the "opening doors".

1). The sound of the doors gave two short bursts at first, then continued smoothly. I kinda missed whether the doors jittered at the start (to match what the sound did) since I missed the first second or two, but the rest of it was smooth.

2). On the first time I started the game after downloading 5B the game froze after the doors opened, with no text in the menu. I had to reboot.

3). I forgot to preserve the debug.err file, but I saw another thread where someone else had the hang, so I hope you can find it from there.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
I forgot to include system stuff:

Windows ME on a 1Ghz AMD with GeForce2.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Jack,
That sounds like exactly the behavior I witnessed last night. I was able to terminate the GalCiv task but I had to reboot in order to fully set things right.

I did snag the debug.err entry. Check the thread entitled: "5B CTD and wierdness on restart".

Windows 2000, 833 MHz P3, GeForce4.