Forums » General

VO 1.8.474

Sep 22, 2018 incarnate link
VO 1.8.474 includes:
- Windows version is now using new experimental multi-threaded job system.
- Windows version now includes a Vulkan graphics driver. To try it out, go to Options -> Video -> Change Driver.

Tonight's Windows-only release is the first public test of a long-running project to re-architect the Vendetta Online engine, and bring it up to a point where we can deliver the kind of next-generation content required from many of our goals.

From our benchmark testing, we've seen about a 15% performance improvement over the previous version of the game, across the board. The new engine is only partially utilized at the moment, so we expect things to continue to get better from here.

We'll discuss this a bit more in the next newsletter, but basically, the new engine should make much better usage of systems with many cores, while still being very efficient on systems without them. Even low-power devices have a lot of cores now (8-core phones, and the like, and new Windows-on-ARM laptops), so multi-core scalability is increasingly important.

Similarly, we're very excited for the future of our new Vulkan renderer, which has been in development for quite some time. At the moment, you should not expect major performance improvements for using Vulkan over DirectX 11, as we're still in the process of re-tooling the greater engine to make better usage of Vulkan's advantages. However, we still encourage you to try the new renderer, if you have a reasonable Intel, NVIDIA or AMD GPU with recent drivers. Please post any issues to Bugs, and revert back to DX11 if things don't work for you. Basically, expect this to be a "beta" renderer, right now.

To those not on Windows: Yes, the improvements will be coming to you as well. As always, our world is very cross-platform, and one of the big benefits of Vulkan is the potential to use a single API across both mobile and PC.. unlike the need for DirectX, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES. On Apple devices, there are translation layers to allow Vulkan renderers to work via Apple's "Metal" API.

We released this only on Windows, as it's better to have a narrower test-case when the code is still relatively "early". We'll expand the engine testing onto other platforms, once we're a little more confident. If something goes awry, it's a lot easier to debug the process on just one platform at a time.

As always, please post any issues on the Bugs forum, and have a great weekend!
Sep 22, 2018 incarnate link
FYI, we have a couple of reports of older machines with pre-Vulkan GPUs and operating systems that are crashing on startup. We are investigating this. Basically, Windows 7 systems and older hardware.

Vulkan is definitely not enabled by default, but clearly some part of enumerating available drivers is causing a crash. If you have this issue, please post your OS/hardware config, and driver version. We'll try to ship a patch before long.
Sep 22, 2018 koba71 link
I've had this issue, and submitted a ticket. My laptop is a Dell with Windows 7

Video Card: VIDIA GeForce GT 525M - N12P- GE 1GB (Quad)
Ram: 8GB
CPU: Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.2GHz /1 333 MHz DDR3, GT2, 650-1300 MH z Gfx Turbo/ 6M
Sep 22, 2018 Heini link
My game crashes when it finishes loading and switches to the black screen just right before the log in screen is visible.

My PC:
Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel i2 Dual Core 1.80 GHz
1.5 GB RAM
32 Bit
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Sep 22, 2018 raybondo link
We released a client patch that should fix both of your problems.
Sep 22, 2018 koba71 link
It worked, thanks so much :)
Sep 23, 2018 Drevent1 link
Is multithread enabled by default or do I need to enable it ?
Sep 24, 2018 incarnate link
On Windows it should be enabled by default, unless you're coming from a configuration using the DX8 or DX9 driver.