gerry wrote on 2023-04-29, 07:59:that's a good example, any game where the number of units needing path finding and other calculation can increase to large numbe […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2023-04-27, 18:44:
Here's an example - Dungeon Keeper 2 came out in 1999 - system requirements say 166mhz pentium 1 and 2mb video card with 300mhz pentium 2 and 8mb video card recommended. If you run the game on the recommended system, it will not be a pleasant experience, except for maybe the first 2-3 missions.
that's a good example, any game where the number of units needing path finding and other calculation can increase to large numbers, can run on low specs but needs higher specs to not get bogged down
with this game and age of empires 2 and other sim/rts types i found that more was better, but once into p4 / athlon xp they tended to run well
some enthusiasts really push these games though and benefit from still greater cpu power
I think DKII chugs in part because of the graphics. The game looks very very good for 1999, and if you crank the resolution and details up it looks even better. I noticed particles and particle effects have a serious impact on performance, and so do reflections, alpha blending and transparency. The game lags on the recommended system in maps with lots of water and it also lags in heavily scripted missions with lots of units moving about. Pathfinding also plays a role like you said, especially since DKII uses a rather complicated AI system for creatures - but I also have a feeling DKII relies on the CPU to calculate some graphical or graphics related effects, making things worse. Overall it's not a very well optimized game.
Another good example is Homeworld. It recommends a 350MHz pentium 2, 64MB of ram and a Voodoo 2 (not specifically, but what other card uses a 12MB framebuffer?) - thing is, as soon as you get to the Gardens of Kadeshi mission, the game chugs horribly even on said 350mhz pentium.... It also benefits greatly from 256mb of ram, especially in multiplayer, and from video cards with a large framebuffer (32MB) despite the game having a rather simple texture pool. The slowdowns experienced are due to the game engine actually calculating projectile and unit paths in real time as no weapon in the game uses hit-scan. Projectiles are individual entities with their own paths and collisions. As such, the game can sometimes chug even on a 1GHz pentium III. I found the best setup for singleplayer Homeworld 1 is a Riva TNT2 Pro, 128Mb of ram and a 1.4GHz P3 tualatin or Athlon XP 1500+ and for multiplayer any 2GHz (or 2000+) CPU will do well, and another 128MB of ram for 256 total. For high-res graphics and big battles I found the game plays best on a Geforce 2 PRO/GTS.
You're right about AOE2 - the pathfinding does slow down the game by a lot. Same story with Red alert 2 - witch is in contrast to Tiberian Sun that will run well on a 600mhz pentium 3 (and as such runs great on my 1.2GHz VIA C3 rig). Red Alert 2 seems to run best on a 2GHz pentium 4, and if you're playing large maps and especially multiplayer, those requirements grow exponentially. I recently found a modded map pack for red alert 2, that changes the campaign by doubling the size of the campaign maps and modifying scripting to adapt the AI to those changes. A great mod, but it chugs even on my IBM thinkcentre (2.5GHz p4 northwood). Out of frustration since mission 6 was running pretty slow, I installed it on my i7 950 XP rig and on that machine it plays perfectly.
So yeah, overkill retro rigs have legitimate uses, with win98se and windows XP overkill rigs being (in my opinion) the most justified and useful - but I don't see how win95 would benefit from this, especially considering it's limitations when it comes to compatible hardware are even more severe compared to windows 98 (memory, CPU speed, no WDM driver support).
