Grimrock

Hi,

I installed Grimrock on my new laptop. It's an i7 2.2 with 16GB of RAM and a GT 640M video card with 2GB of RAM. Not a rig I'd expect to play the latest shooters at top framerates and resolution, but pretty respectable. And had expected it to run Grimrock without issue.

The game defaulted to maximum resolution, texture & details settings and all was happy until I got to level 3. Whereupon I encountered a timed teleport puzzle I had a bit of trouble solving. So I turned down the detail to medium and was astonished by how much the game speeded up. I could move through the dungeon *much* faster and got through the puzzle without issue.

Now it's possible I didn't need to turn down the settings to get through the puzzle, but it's kind of hard to know for sure. And the faster movement is a nice bonus. So this made me wonder about various things ...
* Was I incorrect in thinking my machine would run Grimrock without problems?
* Is it possible there's a setup issue somewhere and some of my hardware isn't working as it should?
* How can I measure the FPS that the game is running it with different settings?

* How can I measure the FPS that the game is running it with different settings?

http://dxtory.com/v2-download-en.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netfram ... 69263.aspx

* Is it possible there's a setup issue somewhere and some of my hardware isn't working as it should?

No. It's a laptop.

* Was I incorrect in thinking my machine would run Grimrock without problems?

Well. As you said you run it just fine on medium. You probably can use high textures, and lower the particles and such. The biggest impact by far is the shadows, so put them on medium or low, and Texture size on High.

mattdp wrote:Hi,

I installed Grimrock on my new laptop. It's an i7 2.2 with 16GB of RAM and a GT 640M video card with 2GB of RAM. Not a rig I'd expect to play the latest shooters at top framerates and resolution, but pretty respectable. And had expected it to run Grimrock without issue.

The game defaulted to maximum resolution, texture & details settings and all was happy until I got to level 3. Whereupon I encountered a timed teleport puzzle I had a bit of trouble solving. So I turned down the detail to medium and was astonished by how much the game speeded up. I could move through the dungeon *much* faster and got through the puzzle without issue.

Now it's possible I didn't need to turn down the settings to get through the puzzle, but it's kind of hard to know for sure. And the faster movement is a nice bonus. So this made me wonder about various things ...
* Was I incorrect in thinking my machine would run Grimrock without problems?
* Is it possible there's a setup issue somewhere and some of my hardware isn't working as it should?
* How can I measure the FPS that the game is running it with different settings?

No need to install addtional software, for measuring the FPS you can use the in-game FPS visualization, enable it by setting a CFG option described here viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2574&start=10#p26796

Also, potentially it could be a overheating problem (whcih LoG is notorious for), maybe then your GPU throttles the clock down (meaning lower performance). Check the temperature with system tools or GPU-Z.

On the performance, the biggest influence has the resolution, the influence of the quality options is pretty weak (see here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2324&start=10#p26685, *hint-to-the-devs*). You could try to use unsupported below 1024x786 resolutions. (which should be supported, *again-dev-hint*).

Description for arbitrary resolutions:

Close Grimrock and open with Notepad (or your prefered editor), My Documents\Almost Human\Legend of Grimrock\grimrock.cfg
Replace resolution = "1024 x 768" with e.g. resolution = "800 x 600" (or another resolution).

Set also
displayMode = 2 (1 = fullscreen, 2 = windowed mode)
verticalSync = 2 (1 = VSYNC off, 2 = VSYNC on, 3 = triple buffer)

Save the grimrock.cfg, close the editor, start Grimrock.

Great, thanks.

Running in full resolution & everything on "high" results in about 15fps. Setting everything to medium, still full resolution results in 30fps.

What's an "acceptable" fps for play? What should I be aiming for?

mattdp wrote:Great, thanks.

Running in full resolution & everything on "high" results in about 15fps. Setting everything to medium, still full resolution results in 30fps.

What's an "acceptable" fps for play? What should I be aiming for?

I think >=30fps (at least) is recommended/required. I played LoG also around 15-25fps and hat problems too with some timed puzzles and was unable to solve the last iron door puzzle at all .

[quote="badhabit"
I think >=30fps (at least) is recommended/required. I played LoG also around 15-25fps and hat problems too with some timed puzzles and was unable to solve the last iron door puzzle at all .[/quote]

Thanks for that. Bit disappointing my shiny new rig can't quite cope with the game on max settings. Hopefully it's just the heat issue: since I play on my lap a lot I have noticed that Grimrock makes it run pretty hot!

mattdp wrote:[quote="badhabit"
I think >=30fps (at least) is recommended/required. I played LoG also around 15-25fps and hat problems too with some timed puzzles and was unable to solve the last iron door puzzle at all .

Thanks for that. Bit disappointing my shiny new rig can't quite cope with the game on max settings. Hopefully it's just the heat issue: since I play on my lap a lot I have noticed that Grimrock makes it run pretty hot![/quote]

Here you go

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-NOTEBOOK- ... 2_edpp_url

Maxing out your RAM wouldn't hurt neither.

jontycampbell wrote: Here you go

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-NOTEBOOK- ... 2_edpp_url

Maxing out your RAM wouldn't hurt neither.

Nice cooler
About the RAM maximizing, I think more RAM (or maximized RAM clock speed) has no or very limited influence on the LoG speed. LoG performance is only GPU bound, e.g. take a look on GPU-Z when LoG is running, the GPU load is always 100% which means this is the limiting part in the computing chain. grimrock scene with GPU-Z running (right)

Also, someone could try to overclock the GPU for more FPS (e.g. with the ATI Tray tools) but would then need even better cooling.

jontycampbell wrote: Here you go

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-NOTEBOOK- ... 2_edpp_url

Maxing out your RAM wouldn't hurt neither.

Thanks. I didn't realise it was such a big deal with laptops. Silly really as it's pretty obvious when you think about it.

I have maxed out RAM. I don't think it'll take more than the 16GB RAM I've already got.

Anyway, lowering the resolution one notch (you hardly notice the difference), setting texture detail to "high" and the rest to medium seems to result in a good-enough looking game that clocks around 35fps. That's good enough for me. Thanks everyone for your help.