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low fps?

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:42 pm
by legomeaker101
I came back to playing carmageddon (and cried when the carma website didn't work) and I have been trying to get carmageddon to run using the windows 95 patch but I am getting a solid 21 fps with random drops to 13. did I configure something wrong?

(I am using windows XP and fraps to measure my FPS)

Re: low fps?

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 11:50 am
by Toshiba-3
Hello, I think that patch relies on the old ddraw.dll, first you could try checking ddraw.ini and if the renderer is set to opengl, then change it to gdi (though fraps won't show the framerate anymore). Else you could also try backing up these ddraw.dll/.ini and use the latest version from https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/rel ... ag/1.3.5.0
The executable must be named CARMA95.EXE or then you rename CARMA95 in ddraw.ini to whatever your executable is named. As ddraw.dll applies different settings according to the executable's filename.
Haven't touched XP in ages so I never tested the performance of that ddraw wrapper, nor if the latest version works at all. Maybe you could even try removing ddraw.dll altogether?

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2020 12:52 am
by legomeaker101
Thanks,
I checked the ini file and it was at max fps 30, I set it to 60 and my fps went up to 30 so I then set it to 120 and it ran at a smooth 60.

weird bug but I will now try the new dll and ini (will update it in case anyone has doubts about it)

Update: tested the download dll and ini, it gave me huge graphical issues, removed both and the game went up to 300 and gave me a solid 120 (my monitor isn't that good so i stuck to 60)

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2020 1:34 am
by legomeaker101
is it normal that the car stutters and blurs? (everything else is smooth except for the car motion and the camera when falling)

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:27 am
by Toshiba-3
AFAIK Carmageddon caps the framerate at 48fps for the menus and 60fps while ingame (same for C2). So I imagine any higher framerate is the game going too fast or just the wrapper's rendering speed (and not the game's internal fps)?

IIRC, the old ddraw wrapper induced some issues when FPS were higher than 30, especially in the SMK playback (like the intro video). But coupling it to the gdi renderer slowed the game down properly. The updated ddraw wrapper introduced the maxgameticks value to be able to slow the game down without touching the maxfps and safely use opengl as the renderer. Having the maxgameticks set higher than 30 would show great rendering issues (flickering 3D faces).
However, for some reason, I just can't reproduce the problem on my win10 laptop right now. The game just runs smoothly whatever I do. So cnc-ddraw might have been updated again etc.

If the main executable is named CARMA95.EXE on your end then I have no idea why the new wrapper doesn't work, might be system-dependant.

About the car stuttering (no idea what you mean by "blurs"), it's probably the issue caused by CPU being way too fast for the game. I imagine it impacts the interpolation in the car's movement, kinda like C2 ped animations being slightly broken. If that is what you mean, then AFAIK there is nothing to do (besides playing on a computer from the late 90s?). Using a CPU killer barely improves the behaviour and isn't too good for the system.

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:21 pm
by legomeaker101
Seems to be a problem with the hi resolution part of the 95 unofficial restoration patch. I an going to try to change the exe name to carma95.exe.

On that topic what is the difference between CAR95H2.exe and CAR95H2G.exe?

Also i went back to test and the stuttering (when i said blur i was referring to cheap motion blur some modern games have) was caused by a higher framerate than my computer can render (which i am guessing caused problems on the game)

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2020 1:41 pm
by Toshiba-3
I suppose the G in CAR95H2G.exe stands for German and might mean the robot version of the game? Haven't all this installed on this computer so can't check. Logically there should be one with the zombies too then 🤔

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:23 pm
by legomeaker101
okay, I did a bunch of tests,
1. the CAR95H2G.exe is the zombie version
2. not having maxgameticks= set at any number (other than 0) was causing the graphics flickering in the original ini
3.having render=auto was causing a crash which wasn't getting applied to the game because carma95 was called carm95 (no idea why but changing it breaks the 95rpp launcher so I had to change the ini file and add a few lines to account for the HD patch versions and the standard hires zombie version)
4.having singlecpu= set to true doesn't play music, having it set to false does

here is the code for the DDraw.ini (latest cnc ddraw):
â–º Show Spoiler

Re: low fps?

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2020 5:37 am
by QTZ
carm95.exe is a original file name. carma95.exe is a renamed file used in mods. So someone who does this updated version of ddraw wrapper set it to work with mods. It's not required to run setup-launcher for 95 execs, so renamed file can be running directly from C:\MAX_PACK.W95\... Is new ddraw.ddl treat only carma95.exe always in special way or adding other exe sections to ini will do the same effect for other execs? If not - since we have bunch of execs but no carma95.exe we can create batch which will copy selected exec over carma95.exe and run it.

By default there are two modes: full gore and limited - censored. G is for German which mean limited - censored mode - no blood in menu and so on. It usually have robots (androids) graphics and sounds, but in Max Pack C1 they replaced robots graphics and sound with zombie, so this is not full zombie mode as in separate zombie version. In proper zombie version pedestrians are replaced with zombies, so in that case zombie version work in full mode. There is no official robots (androids) version which work in full mode, but it is possible to replace pedestrian graphics with robots - I have done this in UCP. Also for mods I have renamed all the files (so all 3 versions are coexist) and made a separate execs to launch any version in full mode (available with separate patch).