MAJOR TAMRIEL REBUILT PROBLEM - UNPLAYABLE?

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trifxn's picture
trifxn
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First I would like to apologize for the Clickbait, but the problem is nonetheless a major nuisance. Again, sorry.

So you may or may not know about this, but I felt the need to say it anyway. The mod itself may just be unplayable. Here is the catch:

-I myself own a high end gaming PC (i7-7700k, GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, 1TB, amongst other less significant pieces). Yet I can barely enter a major city like "Old Ebonheart" or "Almalexia" without dropping under 40 fps. I am not even using ANY graphics mods, and I only have about 3 mods like Code Patch and whatnot. I once tried to play TR on a laptop and I dropped between 50-60 everywhere (which is acceptable for a laptop) whereas the major cities killed my whole frame rate.

I am not trying to be a smarass by telling you this, nor am I trying to be anyhow an asshole, but I think the Major Cities might be Overcluttered. This needs a fixing, or else the average gamer with an average/good PC will not be able to enter a city and truly enjoy it.

I apologize if I wasted your time with this thread, but I truly love the mod and only want to help it grow and become good for everyone.

P.S., I am not talking about villages or the world itself. Only the major cities.

Thank you,
Vladxn

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Kevaar
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This is a known issue we've been working on. Almalexia is due to be reworked, and I think someone's going through Old Ebonheart and doing what they can to de-clutter it.

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trifxn
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This is great to know. I appreciate the response.

Cheers

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Mortimer
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very nice all caps title ty

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We shouldn't be doing that to improve the performance of a 15 year old engine. Of course such an aged engine can't make use of modern systems. That's (partly) why OpenMW is the future for Morrowind, it has much better FPS in those kind of areas.

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Actually OpenMW makes Port Telvannis (nearly, I'm stubborn man) unplayable with about 2 FPS. Sometimes 3.

I agree Old Ebonheart might be a bit overcluttered, but don't have any issues in Almalexia and I have much worse machine (i5-5200U, 4GB RAM, GeForce 940M).

Then again I'm playing without graphic enhancing mods, so maybe that's the reason for my good experience. angel

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I haven't been to any of the major cities in a few years (I've had way too much fun exploring the Valley of Mephala... good job guys, you made a major arachnophobe enjoy that place. I was scared shitless the whole time, but that place was SOOO COOL), but the crappy computer I used to have (read: Oblivion was enough to burn out the video card) didn't have any problems in Old Ebonheart. Has stuff been added in more recent updates?

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trifxn
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Interesting replies

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Undertaker

Actually OpenMW makes Port Telvannis (nearly, I'm stubborn man) unplayable with about 2 FPS. Sometimes 3.

Which version of OpenMW was this?  The nightlies for 0.42 have had extensive work done to improve framerates.

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Looking at FPS as a number isn't always that useful: does the game still run well? That's far more important. Graphics are not the issue here though: the engine is a lardass.

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I never played TR, but have it in my load order in openmw. I accidentally entrered the Mouth council door and thought to myself "Hey why not take a peek at Port Telvannis?" expecting the game to be unplayable in openmw per the existing reports. To my absolute dismay, the game is perfectly playable, with a nice fps of 30-40. Have not tried anything else besides Port Telvannis.

Using openmw, compiled straight from git, but in a computer with a fairly low end graphics card (nvidia GT 630). The game is heavily modded, with some graphical replacers (visual pack, darknut, etc.) although not to the extent that some go, which I do not like anyway, as deviating too much from vanilla looks. Distant land, water, etc. is on, although on low-medium settings.

In summary: things are looking pretty good.

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I have GeForce 940M which is better than GT 630 according to this site http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Nvidia-GeForce-GT-630-vs-GeForce-940M

And here are screens both from OpenMW 0.41.0 aka the newest you can get from here https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw/releases and from Steam version of Morrowind, both with highest graphic settings and the lowest excluding resolution which stayed the same.

26 FPS on Steam version, highest draw distance

31 FPS on Steam version, lowest draw distance

2.63 FPS on OpenMW version, highest draw distance

2.65 FPS on OpenMW version, lowest draw distance

The biggest difference between screens is resolution (it's smaller in Steam version since I made screens without MCP, but that wouldn't change that much, well whatever, I'm just going to check lower resolution on OpenMW, but without doing anymore screens... oh, on lowest possible graphic settings I actually got FPS drop to 2.23 FPS) and 2nd difference is that Steam version has this fix http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44532/? while it somehow hadn't found its way into OpenMW.

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@Undertaker:

When I said "openmw, compiled straight from git", I should have been clearer and added that what this means is that my version was patched with the changes to the physics subengine introduced in, and to be released with, the upcoming 0.42. The latest stable release, 0.41 does not have these patches, which would account for the differences you are seeing.

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Using the latest nightly seems to have some improvement (in 0.41 my experience in Port Telvannis was around 1 FPS, with the nightly it's around 4 FPS).
There's also a rather brute-force solution: disabling the slaves in the Port Telvannis slave pods. Each one had a noticeable effect, and (with the nightly) I ended up at around 38 FPS once I'd gone through them.

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Went back again to Port Telvannis via the Mouth council door, then straight to the slave platform (the one where there is a Dres guy with a bodyguard riding an insect): most slave pods are occupied and still a confortable fps 30-50. I have made no edits to the plugins, so at this point I have no good explanation for the discrepancy. I do note that my version is tracking git very closely (only a couple of revisions behind at the moment of writing). So for whatever is worth, there you have it.

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After disabling most of those slaves my FPS jump up to 60 actually.

After installing OpenMW (which is frankly still called 0.41.0) from here https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1808 my FPS without disabling slaves is now around 40.

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I should have noted that my computer, while not terrible, is not the best (I suspect the optimisation right now is at a point where it is better able to use the equipment that is there but still far more draining in these specific things than Morrowind, hence how I saw an improvement and you saw it being perfectly fine). The brute force solution is of course, well, a brute force solution - if you don't have a problem then there's no need, while if you *do* have a problem it seems to correct it at the cost of immersion without having to wait for OpenMW to further optimise or buying a better computer.

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Yes, the reason for the poor performance in Port Telvannis with OpenMW is that most of the slaves are being stuck in the slave pod doors and thus are causing an insane amount of physics calculations each second. A simple fix for this is to move the slaves further away from the doors.

I put this issue up in our bugtracker.

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Huh, that is the problem? I've heard something about "physics" problems in Port Telvannis, but that it's the slaves is a surprise (although a welcome one).

Is it even possible to move them away from the doors so that they don't get stuck? MW has some rather big collission boxes after all and OpenMW does sometimes do funky NPC placement.

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I'm not seeng any slaves that are literally stuck in doors, but I do see two or three that are floating in the center of their pods.  I'm led to believe that it's the number of NPCs in a relatively small area that are causing lag (NPCs can cause physics-related FPS drops simply by being placed in the world, even without an AI package).

I highly recommend downloading the latest OpenMW nightly as physics-related FPS drops have been greatly reduced.  I get around 85-100 FPS in Port Telvannis now, and up to 40 FPS in Karthwasten (Skyrim: Home of the Nords) when previously I was getting about 10-20.