Constant Random Crashing

[Lestradae]

725M of Ram, ... on the Mac with only 525M

Just technical curiosity here (I`m totally clueless regarding this) but do you mean that your system and Mac`s have an upper limit at 725 MB?

Wouldn`t sound very practical to me ...

[LittleBear]

Narh. Thats just what I and McLane happen to have. My machine is 5 years old though and can only take certain cards. I think 1 G is probabley the maxium I can fit. Adding memory to an old machine though is generally worthwhile. I orginally had 256 (what it came with!) and for £30 brought it up to 700M. I don't think its a limit on the Mac or PC (as such), it just what slots you have in your particular board and the maxium memory you can put in each slot.

[another_commander]

Comparing performance is not only a matter of FPS absolute numbers. To me, it does not mean much that one user gets 100 fps and one other gets 60, if we are not comparing on the exact same level. The participation of OXPs is only a fraction of the factors that contribute to performance. For example, have you tried running Oolite at 640x480? The performance is much better than in 1400x1050. I recall Commander McLane saying that he is playing in a window. The Mac version is using by default a window of 800x540. Is this the window size he refers to when he talks about 100fps? We don't know. Is LittleBear referring to 1400x1050 when he says he gets 60fps? We don't know.

Then it is a matter of drivers, Vsync settings, other graphics card settings, graphics card itself, programs running in the background etc etc. Just switching off the antivirus when running Oolite (or any game for that matter) can be a performance boost in itself.

If we want to be comparing performances, all these factors must be levelled off first. This is so inherently difficult to achieve, that I honestly think that the best measure of performance is the personal player's perception of how the game runs and nothing more.

[Commander McLane]

Yes, of course things like window-size add to the mix (now as you've mentioned it, a_c, it seems natural; why didn't it occur to me before?), and programs running in the background. I have usually PListEdit Pro, nowadays also PageSpinner (that's the program that by default opens JS-scripts on my system), the Console, TextEdit, Preview, probably GraphicConverter and anyway a couple of Finder windows running in the background, and that's only what I need for Oolite. My fan runs a little mad when I on top of that open Word or Excel, or - heaven beware us - even both of them at the same time. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention Mail and Safari.

If I come to think about it, the 100 FPS seem even more amazing!

And it is true, I am running Oolite in a window, but I can't tell its size. Is that stored somewhere? I have resized it manually to something that seemed reasonable to me on my screen. I would say a little bigger than the default 800x540. My screenshots should tell, shouldn't they? <goes and opens one with the already in the background waiting GraphicConverter > Indeed, they are 992x709.

That's pretty much all information I can think of for the moment.

[Frame]

Comparing performance is not only a matter of FPS absolute numbers. To me, it does not mean much that one user gets 100 fps and one other gets 60, if we are not comparing on the exact same level. The participation of OXPs is only a fraction of the factors that contribute to performance. For example, have you tried running Oolite at 640x480? The performance is much better than in 1400x1050. I recall Commander McLane saying that he is playing in a window. The Mac version is using by default a window of 800x540. Is this the window size he refers to when he talks about 100fps? We don't know. Is LittleBear referring to 1400x1050 when he says he gets 60fps? We don't know.

Then it is a matter of drivers, Vsync settings, other graphics card settings, graphics card itself, programs running in the background etc etc. Just switching off the antivirus when running Oolite (or any game for that matter) can be a performance boost in itself.If.

Add to that, that Certain cards seem to run much better at higher resulotions and options maxed out...

for example my HD2600XT is doing way better FPS with 1280 by 1024, with all options maxed, than in say 800 by 600 with all options set to minimum or disabled. That enigma caused me a bit of a head ache at first...

It makes abosolutely no sense until you hind sight think about it.. the card was from the design process streamlined to run at these high resolutions with all options at high or maxed.. rather than at the low resolutions, with the options disabled... it finally makes sense why HIS have this slogan:
Power Up Gamers....

only bad thing is, that the standard ATI drivers does not seem to work with it.. you have to use the ones supplied by HIS.. at least when running Vista Ultimate...

[Amen Brick]

I did re install it (for some reason all but two of the folders were missing from the first install, no idea why...)

I ran it and I took a 30fps (to 32fps) hit and very slow loading times for new solar systems. It was just playable, and maybe if I hadn't played it smoothly without it I'd have sucked it up, but I decided to take it out. I figure 1meg would be enough to play it, maybe 1.5.

I really want Sung's textures and some of the ships. I've decided to keep the ooniverse pure, so no ships from other universes.

Oh, I second the suggestion to break the realistic pricing section from the ship models. Maybe a pick and mix approach to the models, if that's possible?

[Lestradae]

Oh, I second the suggestion to break the realistic pricing section from the ship models. Maybe a pick and mix approach to the models, if that's possible?

As already noted quite often I will do so when 1.72 comes out.