hello, I'm new to vendetta. I played Elite2 for thousands of hours, so I know that vendetta will be the game that I'm really waiting for.

I have Dual P3 600MHz/matroxG540(OpenGL:1.2 Mesa 6.1) /debian.sarge system. Graphic is too slow :(

I've set 640x480 because this is the lowest resolution where the letters are readable.
I would set 400x300 but the letters become unreadable.

All graphic quality options are set to 20.

And I must be careful to engage in fights far away from the stations (which is not always possible) bacause fighting with FPS at 2 or 5 is a certain death for me. And this happens everytime I'm near a space station. When I'm away from a station FPS is around 50 which is fine.

I'd like to ask developers to enchance 'detail level' settings in such a way, that I don't pick the "percentage" of not-shown faces. I'd rather set a "maximum number of faces shown" or "minimum FPS".

And I really don't care about bad visual quality (as I said I'd play 400x300 if only the letters were readable) - I need high FPS in order to survive.

Your computer is somewhat below the minimum system requirements for our game. We'd recommend at least a GeForce3 or Radeon 8500 series videocard. That would probably help you the most.. I play at home on a P3 450mhz with a 128mb Radeon 8500, and although it's pretty slow, I still get 10-15fps near stations.

At release time we're probably going to be expecting a minimum of at least a 1ghz machine and a Pixel-Shader capable videocard.

You can also try turning off space debris, and turning off backgrounds entirely.

(Also, in Linux people generally recommend Nvidia-based cards, as their driver support is currently superior for that platform. FYI).

nvidia does not work with SMP.

I had nvidia card, and lockups every five days (my machine is also running as a server 24/7), and I cannot tolerate lockups. So when I decided to buy a new card, I turned to matrox. I bought this card 3 months ago, so it should not be THAT old(?).

I turned off debris, and set background to low.

plese include an option turn off textures but only on space-stations (not on ships and rocks), or an option to plot stations only in wireframe(?). I don't know, just something that will make stations draw faster. Even on Elite2 stations were drawn faster on 486, 100MHz. And the graphics quality I have currently set is not-so-much better than graphic in elite2 (I still play elite2 in dosemu under linux).

Or you could just include a font similar to one in Elite2. Then I will just set to 320x240 graphics. And will feel exactly like in elite. And that would be great.

And also I noticed that vendetta client uses 1GB of RAM, and 1.5GB of swap (that sums into 2.5GB !), after 1 hour of playing. Seems there are some serious memory leaks.

Yeah, the memory leaks would be in the Matrox OpenGL driver.
I assume you have Texture Res set to Low?

Also, Matrox doesn't make a G540 card. Do you mean G450 or G550?

oops, I've read what I've written four times, yet I didn't notice this mistake. I have Matrox G450.

here is full set of my options (differs from the set of options described in the manual - eg. there is no gamma correction)

graphic options:
background detail: medium (when set to 'low', I noticed no difference in FPS)
effects detail: low
draw space junk: off
scene level of detail: 20
distance level of detail: 20
chat filter: on
multilog: off

Video:
OpenGL Reference GKGL driver
visual quality: custom
resolution: 640x480
window: window (yeah, I'm writing this)
texture resolution: low
mipmap filtering: off
texture filtering: linear (when 'point' some things are too clunky)
ilumination maps: off
environment maps: off
bump maps: off

In open space/among asteroids I have FPS about 40
near space station it suddenly drops to 1.7 - 3.0 causing instant death.

I suggest any of those two solutions:
- an option to draw space-stations in real-fast mode (low number of faces, wireframe, no textures, whatever)
- an option to choose a different non_subpixel-rendered font. So that it will be readable in resolutions like 320x240, or 400x300. Because in 320x240 FPS==15 near space stations. Example font (from package console-data.deb, converted with psf2sbf from fonty-dev.deb): http://absurd.ds.pg.gda.pl:8435/pub/iso01.f08.sbf

(anyway - vendetta offers to pick full-screen resolution 320x240, but this resolution is unusable - font is not readable)

(and btw: the default font is good-looking, but is erm.. uncomfortable to read, even under 800x600)

when I type glxinfo, I get several warnings:
libGL warning: 3D driver claims to not support visual %h(*)

(*) where the numbers are all hex velues between (inclusive): 0x23 and 0x32 (including 0x2a, 0x2b and so forth)

OpenGL vendor string: VA Linux Systems Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI G400 20030328 AGP 1x x86/MMX/SSE
OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 6.1

>Your computer is somewhat below the minimum system requirements for
>our game. We'd recommend at least a GeForce3 or Radeon 8500 series
>videocard. That would probably help you the most.. I play at home
>on a P3 450mhz with a 128mb Radeon 8500, and although it's pretty
>slow, I still get 10-15fps near stations.

wow ... I play vendetta with a 32mb gf2mx at 1024x768, medium to high settings under linux and it runs perfectly fine only s14 is a little slow :)

Yeah, GF2 is the minimum. He musta made a typo.

>(my machine is also running as a server 24/7)

Hmm... maybe this is slowing stuff down a bit?

>>(my machine is also running as a server 24/7)
>Hmm... maybe this is slowing stuff down a bit?

Oh, it's not a full-blown server. Just a few apache pages, and shell accounts for some of my friends. And I have SMP, so that's not an issue. (normally (game not launched) loadavg is 0.2; slowing would occur after reaching loadavg 2.0; when playing it's about 1.3)

The Matrox G450 is quite an old card. About 3-4 years old? It competed with the TNT2 and Geforce1 era Nvidia chips. It's a good 2D card and all, but not up to speed for any current 3D hardware requirements.

I would suggest turning your background *OFF* completely (not Low). This should yield a small framerate increase. But, fundamentally, your videocard and system are below our minimum requirements. Upgrading your videocard might help.

I did not make a typo about the "GeForce3" recommendation. I didn't say it wouldn't run on less than that, I said that's what we recommend. We're not going to recommend anything without Pixel Shaders, anymore. You can still theoretically run the game on a 16meg TNT1, but the lowest we *recommend* is a Pixel Shader capable videocard (Nvidia GeForce3, ATI Radeon 8500, 64mb or better). Both of these cards are currently in the ~$55 range on pricewatch.com, which isn't unreasonable.

Does that mean that rglow is going to be required? Because most of the people I know are on GeForce2-level video cards. I only know one other person with a vertex+pixel shader capable card, and he has a GF4 4200.

No. *recommended*. Not required. Different.

I understand what you say :)

And I checked: disabling background does not influence FPS.

while looking at space station under 640x480.
background:
off - FPS=2.9
medium - FPS=2.8
extremly high - FPS=2.8 , honest!

Maybe this is special to matrox cards, while other cards have problems with the background. I don't know.

And hey! I can play with background set to extremly high, with no FPS drop!

Sadly I cannot afford buying another card.
Is it that difficult, to increase a range of a 'scene level detail' slider? Say let's make a maximum not 20, but 40. C'mon I'm only asking to change one line of code.

Maybe fixing that huge memory leak problem will help FPS? Writing 1GB of leak into swap can slow down computer considerably.

It wouldn't be one line of code... From what I remember from, say, last week, detail of 20/20 gives you asteroids which at a distance of 200m are made of ~75-100 visible polygons. Goign much lower, asteroids would be cubes.

Try editing your config.ini.
Look for:
dovertexbuffers=1
doindexbuffers=1

and change them to 0 and see if that helps.

Supporting any lower system specifications would require quite a lot of work, including doing a lot of new art specific to that use. Plus, it may not even be related to the number of raw polygons on screen, it may be due to the number of overall objects in the scene, and other fundamental limitations. Our game was intended for use with a card that at least does hardware T&L (Transformation and Lighting), which the G4x0 series does not do, if we recall correctly. Additionally, your CPU is pretty slow (the fact that you have SMP is cool, but Vendetta doesn't take advantage of that for architectural reasons that.. are involved to discuss). I play the game on a slower CPU (P3 450) which says it can be playable.. but you really need a better videocard. At least a GeForce2 or some such. Those can be had for the $30 range, new, on pricewatch. Probably even less for something used on Ebay.

Sorry the game isn't fast for you. But.. when you consider the current status quo for "gaming" systems, and that our game is still even *playable* with some rather low end hardware.. we've done our best to make it as scalable as possible. No other "current" game would probably even run for you, for whatever that's worth.

Good luck (trying Ray's suggestions would be worth it as well).

45 bucks for a 64 MB Radeon 9000 Pro on Pricewatch. That ought to be enough to play Vendetta. ;)

lol I play with an 8mb ATI card with settings on med and I get over 25fps->45 fps

I am getting a new system this fall though so thats why I have not updated to a decent card

> dovertexbuffers=0
> doindexbuffers=0

I tried that. And it helped a little :/ from 2.8 to 3.1 or such..

is there a chance to allow custom fonts in vendetta? I'd then use a font that is readable in 320x240. And use this resolution, it goes quite fine. I have played Elite2 for years under 320x200, so... that won't be too bad for me :)

I hope that memory leak bug is being adressed now?