Minimum Video Card Requirements?

#1 I found these relevant threads:

http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/115735
https://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/129874

Also, make sure you set this in the client prefs: $pref::Video::disableVerticalSync = "0";

This will prevent your computer from trying to do as much as it can (locks it at 60FPS, I believe)

#2 Rick,

That is so great! I thrilled that you are interested in showing T3D in a classroom! I have to agree, Robert has given you some good advice. I would take this one step further and state that you will need a Nvidia Geforce 8 or better if you want the students to experience the full level of game design using T3D, and as always the newer the card the better the exerience.

Ron

#3 Fomr the docs:

Quote:
OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Windows 7
Processor: 1.7 GHz Processor or better
Memory: WinXP - 1GB RAM/WinVista, Win7 – 2GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics: DirectX 9.0c Shader 3.0 supported, Nvidia 6800 or 7300 or better, ATI Radeon X1300 or better
DirectX®: 9.0c
Hard Drive: 4 Gb free disk space

To be honest I've had it working on a really crap laptop with only a 128mb internal GPU. It loaded, but fps was ... er ... only a couple. I think it was a 950/965 or something.

#4 You also have to consider on what settings you want it to run, you can run Torque on a laptop for example, but you will have to turn all settings down and resolution to 640x480, then it will run on a playable framerate, but you will not see that much from the game.
But with internal graphics cards you often get the problem that the game does not even load if they are too old, this may be the case here.

#5 T2D would be an option as well. It certainly has a lot less demand on hardware. It is no less significant for game development than T3D.

#6 Cool! Thank you all very much for your help, I think I have what I need now. One last question: would it be better to run in full-screen mode? I know a lot of games tend to handle full-screen better than windowed, while torque runs by default in a window so you can really multi-task(I know when I use it I've invariably got Photoshop and max open :P)

#7 Fullscreen seems to run a little smoother for me.

#8 "(3.2ghz with 1gb RAM)"

that is enough to run t3d under windows Xp with optimized settings.
i used to have one with 1gb ram and intel's builtin GPU.
more then enough for scripting.
not for level designing.

#9 Ok, sorry to dig up an old thread but I'm back with this.

So first of all the school got newer computers and now we have machines with PCIe x16 slots and I have been able to start installing flashy new(ish) video cards. One or two nVidia 6800/7300s, but now some 8800 GTs and a 9600GT so far. A handful of the machines actually just run torque beautifully on the Intel Q965/Q963 chipset drivers and that works fine. We've been installing the fancy cards into other machines that don't have this.

But there appears to be a problem. When I put in one of the graphics cards and run torque, the world editor is not properly rendering the brush. Normally the brush looks like a circle with dots in it, on the machines with the "good" video cards all you get is the dots.

At first I thought this just meant the 6800s I was using were not good enough, so I went out and got a few used 8800s. When that didn't fix it, I went and dug out my old 9600GT. Now, this card was my primary graphics card for several years, it drove 4 monitors and played every game beautifully(well beautifully enough) but most importantly it did plenty of development on torque without having this issue. Suddenly I drop it in a new machine and ask to to run ONLY torque and nothing else, and I am having this problem.

I've been troubleshooting it all day. If push comes to shove I suppose we can get by but the brush will be much harder to use. And if you've ever tried to teach anything to a roomful of kids on computers, you know it gets much easier if everyone is looking at the same thing.

#10 That's really weird. Check your console.log file for errors - might be an issue loading assets or problems in the default shaders.

#11 Comparing the error logs there seems to be no difference between the one that can run it and the one that can't - aside from differences reguarding the video cards.

The only obvious errors(that is - the ones labeled "error") have to do with some asset files not loading properly. These aren't loading properly on any machine(all are configured with identicle clients). I also tried removing the offending assets and it did not fix the problem.

I can post complete log files if that would help, but they are quite long.

So here's something odd: I went and built a default T3D game, the "empty terrain" version where you're just a guy running around in a desert with a gun, and tested that on one of the machines with a Geforce 7300 graphics card - the terrain brush worked just fine. Same machine I launched the 3DAAK game which is having the problem - terrain brush doesn't work. So it appears to somehow be associated with that build of the game.

#12 Ah, Beyond Compare or some other compare/merge tool might help to sort that out then....

#13 So this is interesting. As I mentioned before I wasn't previously having this problem at home.

...till now.

Previously I had been using this same unmodified engine without any problems on my Geforce 650GTX. But I have 2 video cards in my computer, the other being an 8600GT. So I dragged the torque window over to one of the monitors being driven by the 8600 and low and behold... it doesn't work. So I closed the client and reopened it back on the monitor driven by the 650 and now that one is having the problem, too.

As far as comparing the log files I doubt a tool would help. I pretty much went through them line by line side by side by hand(they aren't really that long) and the only differences I spotted had to do with the graphics cards.

#14 No, no - not comparing log files. Comparing scripts and assets between the clean install and the 3DAAK install.

Also, try cleaning the game/shaders/procedural folder out. ShaderGen should replace them fresh the next time you start the game.

#15 Tried clearing out the shaders - no dice. Running Beyond Compare now, not terribly impressed with it's poor interface design but what are you going to do? Anyway it's not imediately helpful, what I'm seeing are a lot of the sort of differences you'd expect to see with a kit that was made after the original T3D release. Without at least some idea of what files relate to the terrain editor

Do you happen know what files are related to the brushes so I can compare them? Everything in the tools folder checks out as identical except for 2 lines of code in one script file related to the material editor.

I tried copying that file over from the game where its working to the one where its not, just in case - not only did that not fix it, but now the problem has officially gone from bad to worse. Instead of just being very faint, the brush is now entirely invisible. And its not fixed by going back to the old file.

This is quite officially weird.

#16 Got a little information back from the makers of 3DAAK - Lornem says he was able to replicate my problem and then fix it by building the file without TORQUE_SHIPPING.

The documentation helpfully explains what TORQUE_SHIPPING does and it seems like building without it wouldn't be a problem. I just can't seem to figure out how to do that. I commented out

#ifdef TORQUE_SHIPPING

but it didn't help. Anyone know what I'm missing?

#17 i am far away from my pc.so not sure if it can solve your problem or not.but do a try.
from debugDraw.h comment out this line:

#ifndef TORQUE_SHIPPING
//#define ENABLE_DEBUGDRAW //<----this one.
#endif

i had found several old resources which was using this defination for debugging render code.
could solve your one also.

#18 That line is already commented out in my version. The TORQUE_SHIPPING secotion I was told to comemnt out was actually in torqueConfig.h and it turns out I was only commenting the first line. Unfortunately commenting out the entire section didn't really help, either.

#19 Usually when I can not figure something out, its the simple solutions that I over look. You've stated the engine works fine for the old cards, then you swap them out for a new card, are you installing the latest drivers for the new card?

If so, have you tried finding a legacy driver for the new card?

T3D seems to work fine for many, many stock setup's out there. Old, New, and mixed.

I Imagine you have a cd with the torque install on it you use for all your installs. How about downloading, unpacking and installing a fresh copy on the server in question?
Changing all graphic options to minimal? Set them all to max?
Create a new map? Maybe its a problem based in the mission file.

I am only guessing, but I think the brush tool is displayed procedurally so no tweaking of in game settings (Or code for that matter) 'should' have a direct effect on the visibility of the brush outline. As far as tweaking the settings are concerned.

Is there any way you can take a screen capture of the problem?

You also noted that when you cross monitors from the GTX 650 to 9600 Gt your having problems. First suggestion would be to toss the 9600 GT as its swamped by your primary card. Would be like running DDR ram next to DDR3. Your going from 1 gig of video ram down to 512Mb of differing bit rates. If you cant have the same cards, don't run duels. So once you swap to the poor card the errors have been induced, moving back to your primary will only copy the errors in the video memory.

Im sorry but the more I read into this forum post, the more novice hardware flaws that lead me to believe you need to take a step back and fix the computer issues first, and not blame the software.

I hope i'm not insulting your process of due diligence, but if complicated 'fixes' are not working, perhaps its a simple solution.

#20 It's a little bit complicated to follow but there is quite a bit going on here besides just my setup at home.

First of all, there are 2 environments in question. One is a school with a collection of Dell computers to which we've added various graphics cards. The other is my home where I also have various graphics cards... I have a lot of computers, its complex.

Now, there is nothing at all wrong with running multiple un-matched cards in a system. This is especially true when you're just using one of them to run a few extra monitors - they even sell cheap dual-head PCI(not PCIe x16) graphics cards for that purpose(did you know you can still buy a Geforce 6100?). Yes, if you're doing graphically-intensive work on all screens or dragging graphically-intensive programs across all screens then it is better to have the same cards. But if, like me, you just needed a bit of extra real-estate for web browsers and text editors, then it's no big deal.

Now, as for your theory about the problem starting on the other screen and getting "copied over" That makes a certain amount of sense. Except the problem "started" on the computers at work which only had 1 graphics card. I was then able to duplicate it at home, at which point it spread.

I have since tried compiling a whole new Torque project. Its limited to 3DAAK projects, but no amount of tweeking with torque appears to do anything.

I can try loading legacy drivers, that might work, but I've already seen this problem branch across multiple driver versions.

Hey, where is the brush appearance controlled in torque? Why can't I just go in and manually set it to appear however I want?