Graphic Engine?

[DGTell]

<p>I wanted to give my opinion on the game performance, pls correct if i am wrong:</p><p>EQ2 was developed several years ago, computers have changed significantly since then. EQ2 was develoüed for High End and above as far as i understand, but somehow its ridiculous that several graphic card generations later, dual core cpus and 1+gig ram it doesnt run in high quality perfectly...  Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. run like hell in high quality, eq2 starts lagging in mini zones. Couldn`t the devs look a bit into this?</p><p>PLS share your opinions.</p><p>P.S. The main reason for "me" is the pvp performance, if you play hihger than extreme performance (where it looks like might and magic 3) you are done if there are 2 groups.</p>

[Norrsken]

<cite>DGTell wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I wanted to give my opinion on the game performance, pls correct if i am wrong:</p><p>EQ2 was developed several years ago, computers have changed significantly since then. EQ2 was develoüed for High End and above as far as i understand, but somehow its ridiculous that several graphic card generations later, dual core cpus and 1+gig ram it doesnt run in high quality perfectly...  Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. run like hell in high quality, eq2 starts lagging in mini zones. Couldn`t the devs look a bit into this?</p><p>PLS share your opinions.</p><p>P.S. The main reason for "me" is the pvp performance, if you play hihger than extreme performance (where it looks like might and magic 3) you are done if there are 2 groups.</p></blockquote>I'd say you need like 2 gigs of ram since there is a lot of stuff that need memory in these kinds of games. Hoards of textures and models for instance. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Jrral]

Well, to really run well at high quality settings EQ2 needs a few things. The biggest is a 512M graphics card. Those are still on the high end of the range, 256M is more common and that just isn't enough memory for the high-quality versions of all the textures involved. The next thing is system RAM, 2G is the minimum and 3-4G would probably be better. Most systems these days still only come with 1G unless you order extra. Now, there is a problem with EQ2 and multi-core processors. There's a multi-core exploit that's caused SOE to lock down thread affinity in the game engine. That prevents the exploit, but also keeps the game from making full use of dual-core systems. Such things are usually significantly non-trivial to fix, and AFAIK there's no expected timeframe for the fix.

[DGTell]

Is the ram that significant? When i started plaing 2 years ago i had only 512 mb of it, now its 1 gig, but i upgraded my processor and graphics card (to 8800 GTX) and still no real change, but only in eq2 ^^.

[Willias]

Yeah, there's a pretty significant difference going from 1 gig of ram to 2 gigs.  EQ2 is designed like EQ1, in the way that most of the armor, weapon, and character models and textures are loaded completely, or partially, into your computer's memory. I know that when running EQ2, if I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and look at the EQ2 process, it's usually using over 1 gig of memory for itself.  No other game I have does that.

[Jal]

Eq2's engine was built to be top end and last for a while, the problem being that they had to do this with the current technology at the time and had no way of futureproofing for graphics technology and cpu technology enhancements.  Id love to see it tightened up alot to make more efficient use of modern systems but id guess it would be such a huge process that its not a good use of the dev teams time.

[Norrsken]

Asarla@Splitpaw wrote: <blockquote>Eq2's engine was built to be top end and last for a while, the problem being that they had to do this with the current technology at the time and had no way of futureproofing for graphics technology and cpu technology enhancements.  Id love to see it tightened up alot to make more efficient use of modern systems but id guess it would be such a huge process that its not a good use of the dev teams time. </blockquote>Yah, they would prolly have to rewrite a large portion of it.

[Gungo]

Using a brand new current system with 2+ gigs of ram and SLI 2 8800 cards eq2 can run on High quality (w a few minor tweaks basically lowering # of spell effects because it looks like your standing in a fireworks display) on raids. This was unheard of 2 years ago so yeah they new systems are starting to mesh better with eq2. But really the new graphics on computers really have not had that huge of a jump yet.

[Dragowulf]

<cite>DGTell wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I wanted to give my opinion on the game performance, pls correct if i am wrong:</p><p>EQ2 was developed several years ago, computers have changed significantly since then. EQ2 was develoüed for High End and above as far as i understand, but somehow its ridiculous that several graphic card generations later, dual core cpus and 1+gig ram it doesnt run in high quality perfectly...  Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. run like hell in high quality, eq2 starts lagging in mini zones. Couldn`t the devs look a bit into this?</p><p>PLS share your opinions.</p><p>P.S. The main reason for "me" is the pvp performance, if you play hihger than extreme performance (where it looks like might and magic 3) you are done if there are 2 groups.</p></blockquote>its very hard for the devs to modify the engine even just slightly.   it can be done somewhat better but it will probably take 2+ years.

[Armawk]

<p>Its not the most efficient engine ever, but it is the most complex and in many ways the most advanced in MMOs. You cant really compare to non MMO as the requirements are so different.</p><p>Top quality settings are nice to admire the scenery for a few minutes (and for wandering round/basic fighting they actually work okay for me on our nice shiney new machines) but in the end theres no advantage in what you see to make me want to run better than high really, and high is perfect performance here.. if you raid or PvP compromise is to be expected, because heavy player load is involved and this is less an engine matter and more an MMO issue. A LOT of IP connections are involved and a lot of data transfer.</p>

[Beldin_]

<p>One year ago a lot of people here were also complaining about the engine, and praising Vanguard into heaeven, because the Engine was sooo much better looking and of course only needs 1/10 of the power of the EQ2-Engine. Then Vanguard was released and most people noticed that neither was the engine better looking (what only looks great imo are some landscapes but that more the Arts) nor did it take less ressources. </p><p>So thats the best example in my opinion, that you can't compare a MMORPG against a solo-game or FPS .. because everyone would say that the Unreal Engine would be soooo much better then EQ2 if they just look at FPSs, but if you look at Vanguard you may change your mind <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Liyle]

The current thinking on VG is adding (in addition to the above mentioned RAM and video card) a higher end audio card (like the Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer) and a fast, dedicated HDD, plus religious attention to defragging. Got it, done it and it's still a laggy pig. I saw some improvement to EQ2 after the VG upgrades to my computer but not enough to run above Balanced in heavily populated zones. I tried running Extreme Quality when I was alone in the Tower of the Moon (in Maj'Dul) but the animated shadowing was just too much to deal with and the lag was severe. Very High was amazing though, esp since I'm on our home theater system and using a 54" high def TV for a monitor. Highly recommended tour!!! General consensus is that there is little more to be done on the user end once you get to that point... If it is true that EQ3 development has begun, then I would expect very few changes to the present version's foundation. Most of what we will see (I predict) is additional content built with the existing tools and some bug fixes.