Low Spec Tips Please.
by Mike Fosker · in Torque Game Engine · 02/20/2006 (1:52 pm) · 6 replies
I'd like to use Torque for developing software for schools, and so I need to be able to run on the worst, slowest , most hideous old machines.
Can you give me any tips to help me to get torque to run, and perform acceptably on old machines.
I can't give a minimum spec, as I am still researching that, but the flash stuff that we do at the moment needs to run on win98 233mhz machines, with no 3D accelerator card!! I'm assuming that I haven't a snowballs chance of getting torque to run on those machines, but even so I'd like to be able to target a very low spec indeed.
So far the thoughts that I've had are to remove the terrain, just using DIFs for the whole game environment, and to maybe also remove the sky box, although I don't know what difference that would make until I get around to trying it. I know that I need to keep the polycount down, and use a small textures as I possibly can.
Would there be any benefit to using an old version of Torque? Or is that a whole world of hurt?
What else can I do, any tips or tricks gratefully recieved.
Cheers
Can you give me any tips to help me to get torque to run, and perform acceptably on old machines.
I can't give a minimum spec, as I am still researching that, but the flash stuff that we do at the moment needs to run on win98 233mhz machines, with no 3D accelerator card!! I'm assuming that I haven't a snowballs chance of getting torque to run on those machines, but even so I'd like to be able to target a very low spec indeed.
So far the thoughts that I've had are to remove the terrain, just using DIFs for the whole game environment, and to maybe also remove the sky box, although I don't know what difference that would make until I get around to trying it. I know that I need to keep the polycount down, and use a small textures as I possibly can.
Would there be any benefit to using an old version of Torque? Or is that a whole world of hurt?
What else can I do, any tips or tricks gratefully recieved.
Cheers
#2
I'll be interesting to see what I can get done with 80 polys :)
One of the products that I am working on, a mini golf game in shockwave 3D runs almost OK on the spec that I mentioned above, and that has several hundred polys for the golf course, and the havoks physics engine running with concave and convex collision detection.
Any other suggestions for things that i can try?
Ta
02/21/2006 (2:06 am)
Thanks for the pointers, I'll have to look into vertex animation as I know very little about that.I'll be interesting to see what I can get done with 80 polys :)
One of the products that I am working on, a mini golf game in shockwave 3D runs almost OK on the spec that I mentioned above, and that has several hundred polys for the golf course, and the havoks physics engine running with concave and convex collision detection.
Any other suggestions for things that i can try?
Ta
#4
ThinkTanks was *heavily* optimized to work on the lowest spec machines possible. Our basic rule of thumb around here is that if the ThinkTanks demo can't run on a computer then it is pretty much impossible to get Torque to run on it.
02/21/2006 (2:26 pm)
www.garagegames.com/blogs/6452/3730ThinkTanks was *heavily* optimized to work on the lowest spec machines possible. Our basic rule of thumb around here is that if the ThinkTanks demo can't run on a computer then it is pretty much impossible to get Torque to run on it.
#5
02/21/2006 (2:34 pm)
Think tanks was pretty choppy on my 660 mhz pentium with a 16 bit videocard. not that think tanks isnt optimized, but i think Mike is setting his standards substantially lower than that. I think removing the terrain and only using difs with a minimal number of brushes should work just fine. replacing the skybox with a skycolor value should also help things run more smoothly. 
#6
(this might require Torque Lighting Kit, not sure)
* use compressed textures.
$pref::openGL::allowCompression = 1;
* read each item in Clark Fagot's blog which Matt linked to.
* use small textures to ease memory use.
02/21/2006 (3:04 pm)
* switch from high-quality shadows to simply ellipse shadows.(this might require Torque Lighting Kit, not sure)
* use compressed textures.
$pref::openGL::allowCompression = 1;
* read each item in Clark Fagot's blog which Matt linked to.
* use small textures to ease memory use.
Torque 3D Owner iHugMedia