I've been having issues with Demigod performance. I had assumed it was my processor as its an AMD 3200+, 8800GT and 2 GB Ram.
However after seeing a similar post I tried the following.
Skirmish Map - Brothers.
First with sound
Game starts at Sim Speed of 4, then I go and cap the Portal to the right as I approach it moves down till hit hits 0 and stays there.
Then without sound using the /nosound option
Game starts at Sim Speed 4, I cap - still a steady 4 and fps 45. I then wade into battle and it remains at 4 with fps above 40.
My card is a Creative Labs Xfi Xtreme Gamer card (latest drivers Dec 2008) - so a good card. I have tried various options such as no hardware acceleration (much worse!) and turning off EAX etc. Tonight i'll turn back reverb back on to see if that has an effect.
So anyone else seeing a difference in performance with /nosound. Also Are there any other options on the switches - the sound options don't seem to make a difference.
I'll also try the onboard sound card tonight and post my findings. However IMHO the game performance should not be effected to this degree
Tals
If you are not sure how to implement the /nosound option then this post should assist http://forums.demigodthegame.com/348389
If you do have the issue Stardock have also made this post
for those of you experiencing the audio performance issues, could you please email support@stardock.com with the following information. Entitle your email NOSOUND PERFORMANCE ISSUE.
Before sending this information, please do the following if you have not already:
1) Update your sound drivers to the latest available.
2) Make sure your motherboard and chipset drivers are the latest available. (These are drivers such as Intel Chipset XXX where xxx is your motherboard chipset.)
Once you have the latest drivers, run Demigod and reproduce the issue. Then exit Demigod and create / obtain the following files. Please attach the following information to your email:
1) Please run the DXDiag.exe utility and save the output to a file.
2) Attach your DemiGodLog.TXT which can be found here:
%userprofile%\My Documents\my games\Gas Powered Games\Demigod\DemiGodLog.TXT
Thank you for your assistence in helping us address this issue for the community.
From the info we're getting back from customers, it appears that some people are running with hardware acceleration for sound turned off. Turning this on may help with these issues. To do so, open Control Panel and double click "Sound and Audio Devices"
Once you are here, under the volume tab, under the speaker settings grouping, click the "Advanced..." button
Once there, click the performance tab and make sure the slider for Hardware Acceleration is set to "Full"
Once you do this, click "Apply" and then "OK" and try launching Demigod again, and see if the performance increases.
Unfortunately not for me For some reason even in the main menu this game runs at almost (+85%), I can't think why the game would require that level of CPU at this point. In game its 100%. Not sure if its a clue but certainly seems to hit the processor hard.
Still strange how sound has such a detrimental effect on the performance and why this game in particular
I checked, but I had it set to full already. So that's not it.
This seems to fit what I've experienced. On my old single-core desktop, which also happens to have a much newer GPU (ATI HD3800 w 512MB VRAM), games turned into slideshows when things got busy unless I ran with /nosound. On my new dual-core laptop, which has an lower-specced GPU (Nvidia 8600M GT w 256MB VRAM), everything stays smooth all the time.
Did submit a DXDiag etc for the desktop, but I guess the answer for me is just use the laptop.
Sound shouldn't have that much impact imho.
I had it on when I tried to play the game originally, and had slowdown. I turned it off while I was tinkering with settings to see if that would improve it (it didn't...), but left it off accidentally while I ran my DXDiag stuff.
I guess it would be something wise turn back on, though
A lot of integrated sound chipsets offload all the sound processing to the CPU, and this can definitely have a performance impact on older single core systems. Lowering sound quality settings should help with any heavy performance loads.
thanks for the update, and even more thanks for the fix, stardock
While it certainly sounds plausible and this is probably the problem for some people, i have a laptop with a Core 2 Duo at 2.2 Ghz and onboard audio -- I hope that this processor is adequate to handle the sound load. If not, then there needs to be an even lower setting on the audio -- its hard to imagine any audio processing taking up any significant CPU load to cause that big a drop in performance.
The other thing is that when I try to force sound on and play through the uber-slow spots, there are occasional periods (when the screen is still busy with 50+ units) that things miraculously speed up to normal before slowly being dragged back into the mud. Its as if some buffer got cleared and is slowly filling up again...
How do we go about seeing if hardware acceleration is turned on in Vista? As far as I understood, in Vista it's automatically on. The option to turn it on/off isn't available in the dxdiag screen like in xp either.
Edit. From what I've read, on Vista any games that rely on DirectSound for hardware-accelerated sound are reduced to software acceleration. So since I have onboard sound, the only thing I can do is to get an external sound card?
If you're having the nosound issue then a lot of us have sound cards and this has made no difference, also likewise for USB headsets (which I hadn't expected). Its a really strange issue - I fired up World in Conflict last night just to convince myself that my machine is capable of playing a game and sound at the same time
That didn't help much in my case. In fact, it didn't help at all. The only thing that helped was playing with /nosound. With /nosound it ran very very smoothly. I kind of agree with Talsworthy: the difference between running with sound on and running with sound off is insanely big.
But I'm getting a bit confused now. Do these posts mean that we are basically screwed and can't play the game unless we either play with no sound at all or until we buy a new comp? Because that's what your posts are hinting at. Or is this going to be worked on, by providing us with even more sound options in game to bring down the sound to a minimum? Which is hinted at in an earlier post by one of the devs in this thread? I would really like to know, because if this isn't being worked on, then I will get a refund (no offense and not meant as a threat or anything, just 'business').
My old single-core desktop has a Creative XiFi card (the integrated audio is disabled), so presumably the card should be handling most of the sound processing (just as the ATI HD 3800 should be handling most of the graphics processing), so not clear why the CPU is getting bottlenecked with sound enabled (and set to Low, Reverb off).
Oddly enough my laptop does use an onboard Realtek sound chip, yet it is fine with sound at Medium (it is dual core, but only 2.0GHz).
We’re still looking at the issue, and testing a couple different solutions.
The main reason for the heavy CPU load of sound effects in game is our usage of dynamic DSP effects. These are CPU intensive, but really help to make important sounds stand out and give a sense of scale to the audio.
The problem is that the low and medium fidelity sound settings don’t reduce the CPU cost nearly as much as is needed. They reduce the number of sound calls being made, but that’s not enough. What they need to do is strip off everything except the bare minimum of DSPs, and maybe even those on the lowest settings. We’re trying to find the most elegant way to make this work right now.
What this means is that once we get this in, you’ll be able to get closer to the performce you get with /nosound when the sound fidelity is set to medium or low.
That's encouraging. Thanks for all the effort.
Thanks Toraque - it's nice to see such a prompt reply that directly explains the problem and what is being done to address it.
+1
Absolutely - great response, has given me a much needed boost. Thanks and Karma added
Toraque,
Thanks for the reply. I was starting to doubt we'd ever hear anything on this. Any update as far as why stereo seems to help vs. quad/5.1? That said, I'll be a happy panda if we can get that performance boost on the low/med settings.
Thanks for the update Devs!
I came here to add to the success of using the /nosound switchReal quick info:My motherboard: ASUS Nvidia A8N SLI DeluxeMy sound card: Creative X-Fi Gamer
Results: Consistent with this thread. Prior to using /nosound, gameplay had horrible lag. Fine with /nosound on.
When you say "Reproduce the issue" when sending the email do you mean turning sound back on then run demigod, or turn sound back on then play a round?
And the No sound thing works perfectly for me, before I could barely play with the lowest settings, but with no sound I can max them all out(Including AA) and it plays perfectly.
Honestly I would like more customization of the sounds altogether. I don't care about "sense of scale to the audio," I just want my game to run as smoothly as it should.
Not only that, but I truely believe that after many sessions of playing this game (that is what you want, right?) that I, and many others that might play this game often, won't even THINK about the sense of scale. All I want is the local sound effects that are going on around my character and alerts about the events going on in the game like whether the citadel has been upgraded or whether a flag has been captured; the global alerts.
Don't take this message the wrong way: I am very happy to see a response and I know as a designer this has got to be a top priority to fix, so believe me when I say I am grateful for a response. Please don't give us a hokey fix though. I and many others will be able to live without the sense of scale - us disabling the audio all together is proof of that.
@Thrixon: I think thats exactly what they intend to give you on the low quality audio setting. The bare minimum. You will still hear everything, but it will sound... flat (don't know of a better word to describe it).
I will say though, the sound effects in Demigod are really well done. A very "godlike" experience to sit with 5.1 surround and play
I was playing around and noticed something about Demigod in Vista. I found that Creative Alchemy effects Demigod (DirectSound is being used) which means in Vista there is no Hardware Acceleration, No Surround Sound (Stereo Only), Limited Positional audio etc. From what I have read Fmod can use OpenAL which would allow for Hardware Acceleration and Surround sound audio which for a game like Demigod would be the Ideal solution for Vista and Windows 7 users and basically any future Windows OS's (windows 8 etc). Unless Microsoft finally decides to make a wrapper for DirectSound3D.
Anyways I tested Demigod and found that when it runs it shows up in the Volume Mixer under Applications, when I added it to Alchemy this disappeared (meaning OpenAL took over), not to mention the game got lounder (More than 2 speakers being used), I also noticed some sound effects were added during gameplay and a slight speed increase (Wrappers can only do so much) although I still had the glitchy sounds during heavy gameplay although now it sounds like it is having trouble playing the sounds instead of just crackling. I think if GPG can get Fmod to use OpenAL instead of DirectSound3D in Vista (at least) that some of the issues with Sound affecting users can be alleviated (DSP effect offloading for X-Fi/Audigy) not to mention giving users an overall better sound experience even for those with Onboard sound.
Anyways any X-Fi/Audigy users using Vista add Demigod to Alchemy set the directory to the Demigod/Bin directory and don't forget to enable it. (should be on the right side list). This should help a little bit with the issues and should at least give you surround sound back in Vista. (Alchemy is free for Audigy users now)
Demigod Default directory in Vista 64: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Demigod\bin
Vista 32 C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Demigod\bin
For GPD Fmod Devs http://connect.creativelabs.com/developer/Gaming/SoundBlasterFMOD.pdf
It is a year old and hopefully still relevent to the current Fmod build, but should at least be a start in the right direction (I hope).
System Specs: Athlon X2 4200+ on K9A Platinum
Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2 Platinum Ex with 6.1 Speaker setup
OS: Vista Business 64bit
Drivers: Radeon 9.3/ PAX PCI Audigy 6.25 (Modded 8/2008 drivers)
Edit: Fixed writing style.
It sounds like I'm double boned. I have onboard AC '97 sound, which I'm sure just runs it off the CPU. With hardware accel on it slows down in battle and the sound is extremely choppy even, or especially, in the lobby. When I turn the accel off, the game is smoother, the sound is smoother, but the sound has ~0.75 second lag.
Dear GPG/Stardock,
Thanks for listening to all of our posts on the subject. If the new beta build gets up today, we'll let you know how it turns out. Hurray for a company that actually listens to ppl that have problems, investigates, and fixes those problems!
Dahkar
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