Half Life: 32 fps 1024X768X32

[derah]

Made it to Residue Processing with NO SHEARING. Using the r_speeds 1 and developer 1 commands in console get fps of 32-72 depending on the action. Blowup demo gives me 30 fps (timedemo command). Should I still be smiling or is tweaking in order? (Actually, I can't wipe the grin off my face. It is so wonderful to see the G400 Max run as it should.)

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ASUS P3BF 440BX MB,Intel PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM,Fujitsu 13 GB HD, Creative 48X CDROM, Matrox G400 Max Bios 1.5.22, IRQ10, (ver 5.41), SB Live MP3+, IRQ5(ver 4.06.711) sound card with Liveware3.0, DX7.0, Linksys 16bit ISA ethernet/cable internet, Viewsonic E790 19"




[This message has been edited by derah (edited 23 February 2000).]

[MadCat]

You can start by tuning off 32-bit color. As far as I know, Half-Life's engine will always render in 16-bit color, regardless of your desktop color depth (will check on this). And by setting the desktop depth to 32-bit, at best it may do nothing, or at worst it may cause the card to store textures as 32-bit, ect, taking up precious bandwidth and memory.

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This Signature Space FOR SALE / RENT

[nehalmistry]

Half-life will render in 32 bit colour depth.. i tried it with my g200... but the difference is SO little, that you might-as-well run in 16bit colour depth.

If you want to run in 32bit... very few textures will be different... but i confirm that there is a difference.

[nehalmistry]

1 more thing
TO PLAY IN 32BIT COLOUR... YOU MUST SET YOUR DESKTOP TO 32BIT COLOUR AND YOU MUST... I REPEAT MUST RESTART YOUR COMPUTER FOR IT TO WORK...

[DosFreak]

Uhhhh....yeah....riggghhhhtttt. I bet every time you write a letter in Word you reboot before you save to.

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C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
\RUN\DOS\RUN

[derah]

I can and have run HL in both 16 and 32 bit colour and don't see a difference. I'm now at Surface Tension level. Fire fight with the marines felt smooth. Hesitations for a brief moment when music kicks in but music seems to cue up in "safe" areas and is not "fatal".
Now if I can just take out that second tank.....hmmmmm

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ASUS P3BF 440BX MB,Intel PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM,Fujitsu 13 GB HD, Creative 48X CDROM, Matrox G400 Max Bios 1.5.22, IRQ10, (ver 5.41), SB Live MP3+, IRQ5(ver 4.06.711) sound card with Liveware3.0, DX7.0, Linksys 16bit ISA ethernet/cable internet, Viewsonic E790 19"

[MadCat]

A couple of comments:

First of all, just because your desktop says youre in 32-bit color doesnt mean your game is in 32-bit. Applications can render whatever they want...just take Quake3 for instance: you can change it to 32-bit in game, but unless you set the desktop depth to 32, you get dithered output. In the same way, your game could render in 16-bit when the desktop is set to 32, and the output will still be 16-bit. Im not saying for certain this is exactly what HL does, but HL is based off a highly modified Quake engine, and if you ever played Quake, you notice ZERO diference between a 16-bit and 32-bit.

Also, if youre doing a quality assessment in Halflife to determine if its rendering in 32-bit, may I suggest you bump down the res to 640x480 or 512x384? Higher resolutions tend to hide dithering because the patterns are much smaller. Also, make sure your gamma is turned up...low gamma also covers up texture detail. Yes, I know, nobody plays HL like this, but this is to prove a point. Walk right up against a wall. Notice that grainy mesh pattern? Thats GOOD dithering in action. You can hardly see it at 800x600 and above, but its there. HalfLife for the most part doesnt need 32-bit because their textures dont use a lot of different colors, which means their dithering patterns are very regular. What impresses me most is the very nice dithering on the light sources.

Oh yeah, derah, that slowdown you experienced is nothing to worry about. All the music in Halflife is CD Audio, so the delay is just the CD-ROM spinning up and accessing the track. Also, the tracks are cued to location, so you wont get any starting up right in the middle of firefights


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This Signature Space FOR SALE / RENT



[This message has been edited by MadCat (edited 25 February 2000).]

[derah]

Madcat: I play Half life in 16 bit colour.
I ran it at all resolutions and at 32 and 16 bit while trying to diagnose some nasty problems. Before December, terms like dithering, trilinear filtering etc were indecipherable.The MURC forums are a great source of information and I think that I am starting to grasp how these things relate.Thanks for the info.
PS. I got the tank


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ASUS P3BF 440BX MB,Intel PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM,Fujitsu 13 GB HD, Creative 48X CDROM, Matrox G400 Max Bios 1.5.22, IRQ10, (ver 5.41), SB Live MP3+, IRQ5(ver 4.06.711) sound card with Liveware3.0, DX7.0, Linksys 16bit ISA ethernet/cable internet, Viewsonic E790 19"