Ah, I have max-texture-size (from ~/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults [qv]) set to 1024. & that may be the difference, being as how this primitive monster has crippled i855GM graphics.
Is this something I could do to improve performance? I am running Ubuntu 11.04.
If it truly is the huge textures bogging down your machine, then: yes. For me 1024 gives decent textures with good speed (for the hardware). You could probably bump it down to 512 or 256* if you're still slow, though pretty stuff won't be ever so much so (to obliquely reference Homer Price).
I don't oft get close enough to what I'm shooting at for the texture size to really show. & planets are just lumps of rock: I don't care if they're bleen or grue or something that changes after some arbitrary date.
* according to that thar wicky it should be a power of two, >=64
If it truly is the huge textures bogging down your machine, then: yes. For me 1024 gives decent textures with good speed (for the hardware). You could probably bump it down to 512 or 256* if you're still slow, though pretty stuff won't be ever so much so (to obliquely reference Homer Price).
I assume people with slow hardware are already using the 'reduced detail' settings. If not, you should use it because it also reduces the resolution of big textures by a factor 2 when I am correct. And it does other stuff to improve performance on slow hardware.
Well, they way things work right now, I get a slight 1-5 second stutter from the game when I jump to a new system. Sometimes it will pause momentarily if there are a large number of ships coming into view. I think this is the result of textures loading up all at once, although I cannot say for sure.
At the moment it does not bother me that much, the game looks great and plays just fine. If the step you have taken equates to reduced detail on graphics as mentioned above, then I don't think I need to do it just yet, but it's good to know what options are available to me