Graphics card support for PC users

[Lordwafik]

SE seem to be on a binge on trying to get new people to play FFXI, which is fine, I welcome it, but a big holdback for a lot of new people is the fact that while they can run Crysis smoothly, they can't do the same for FFXI.

During the next interview someone does, can they please stress this as a very important issue? There's no reason why the graphics card should be pumping out minimal information when the processor has to do all the work.

I send this in to their suggestions box every now and then, and was very happy to finally read when they were considering DX9 on WotG release, but then was so disappointed when they decided to scrap it.

Seriously, performance is a big issue for many people who play PC games, and if they can't fix performance issues within a few days despite the amount of drivers, many people just uninstall.

TL,DR - Fix your graphics and you'll get more $$$$

[altwight]

I strongly agree with this. I hate it to no ends how much my FPS is crap in some situations on FFXI whereas I run smooth FPS on games such as Crysis. (The demo atleast) I remember back when I wanted to quit FF just because I couldn't break 10fps anywhere even at the shittiest graphics available (this was 03-04ish) But like many players today I've learn to just deal with it and try not to notice when my camera slowly drags its ass as I turn.

[Lordwafik]

I have no idea how these are programmed, but these need to be programmed better :

Shadows - If the processor is handling this, make the vid card do it. Shadows are a huge slowdown in FFXI, and FFXI only. Other games have shadows for every single thing and it runs fine.

Particle effects - Dust/Snow/Firaga, even if they have to be redone from scratch, need to be changed badly. Simple fact is a lot of people need to turn off weather effects from something as simple as zoning into Tahrongi Canyon / Attohwa chasm / Wajaoam Woodlands / Bhaflau Thickets, it's rediculous in this day and age to have a dip in frames per second from that.

Names - peoples names on top of their heads is another source of slowdown, other games can display names fine without lag (See : any MMO) yet this one chugs to some extent.

New effects! - If you start using the graphics card, you can then start pulling off fancy effects like Depth of Field, especially during cutscenes, imagine the mobs in the distance/too close to cam having that nice blur on them. Weapons with glow on them.. etc. Other games have glowy weapons, we need them too! Makes it pretty. Dynamic lighting , items lighting up things around them so you won't have to put static lights in scenery.

Understandably the console users won't be able to get these effects, but it's 2008, there has to be a point where you progress instead of staying held down by the PS2, especially if you want newer customers to come and join.

I don't care about breaking the 30 frames per second mark (although this would be amazing), just make this game pretty already thanks.

[Arthars]

my fps is always 29

wg AH and dynamis bring me to 26 occasionally and i still think its true that FFXI need to break the 29 fps mark

sometimes i play my COD4 just to see what my card can bring me because FFXI cant seem to fully utilise it -_-

[Lordwafik]

Yep but not everyone can get it despite having setups that should be more than capable.

[Shuemue]

Yep but not everyone can get it despite having setups that should be more than capable.

This is spot on, and we're not talking about average users, I know of a Microsoft programmer who had to simply buy new hardware because he couldn't run FFXI on Vista with an nVidia GPU.

[kisada]

while i'd absolutely love for this to be possible, how technically viable is it to change the programming in the game?

[thunderlips]

I would assume that the problem comes from the fact that FFXI is a port of a PS2 game to PC and was never properly rewritten to use the power/efficiency of a PC.

What works well on the PS2 doesn't translate well to a PC which has a lot of other programs running at once taxing the CPU/System Memory/HDD, unlike the PS2 which is only running 1 program at a time.

Similar to how SE released FF7 for PC and it was a port of the PS game. It was terrible on computers and you would often crash after encountering Yuffi for the first time. I don't believe they ever fixed this issue because I assume they didn't care if PC users could play or not, they already had your money when you bought it.

I run FFXI on a Dual Core system running SLI. Granted its not a new system but I should be able to handle anything this game can toss at it but I have to play without weather/shadows on. Last week I tried turning weather back on and when I hit Batallia Downs [S] I think my FPS just took a complete shit.

If they were going to fix the problems PC users have it most likely would requre a complete rewrite of the code or at the very least some optimization for the PC. Then again from what I heard from Shitbox 360 owners, they lag worse than PC users so I assume SE did the same thing to them as they did to us; so I don't see SE being too helpful in fixing this issue.

[Epical]

I don't think anyone would be against this, seeing as any computer built in the last 2-3 years should be able to run this game on max settings well over or close to 29 FPS. However, the way the game coding is now, there is a huge bottleneck when it comes to what hardware is utilized over others (to the point where awesome rigs won't be able to crack 10-15 FPS). There are definite changes that need to be made (starting with the uncapping of FPS at 29 -- imagine what the animations would look like at 40-80 FPS...) if they want extend their game life cycle as long as possible.

Now, looking back at SE's track record, they aren't exactly the best when it comes to jumping at the chance to do major overhauls, so I think expecting anything this drastic would be setting yourself up for disappointment. As nice as this would be, I really don't think this is a realistic expectation, especially when this game is probably good for another 2-3 years maximum. If this were asked in an interview, they would be jumping for joy seeing as this would be a wasted question and one that is easily dodged by either saying "we'll look into it with the development team" or "no, we need to cater to both our console users as well as our PC users, and doing all this work just for the PC users is not an effective division of labor."

We can dream can't we? =)

[Hyan]

veery pessimistic views about the life cycle, I mean even ultima online is still up and running isn't it?

[fndragon]

First, the PC version is pretty much a direct port of the PS2 code, and thus has all sorts of bad legacy code in it. The problem as far as SE is concerned is that they don't really want to spend the $$ and developer time to re-fit the graphics engine just for one platform. (Wait for the whining to commence from the 360 and PS2/3 platforms if/when the PC platform gets an upgrade.. see also the current state of the Orange Box on 360/PS3 vs. PC).

It's just too much work for them without any serious re-investment by us, their customers. And it is, honestly, a lot of work to upgrade the core graphics engine to use non-CPU based rendering, not to mention all the inherent bug-fixing and technical support that will inevitably come afterwords. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for them to do this, but even if it's technically feasible, it's not financially viable for them to do so.

[Deband]

It would be nice if they separated the sky from the weather effects. Why can't i have the wind and snow effects off and still see the clouds?

[The Blackrose]

veery pessimistic views about the life cycle, I mean even ultima online is still up and running isn't it?

Yes, but at the same time UO has the opportunity to modify their existing engine/game mechanics to however they seem fit as long as legacy code doesn't get in the way. Then you have to deal with pissy PS2 and XB360 users wondering why their versions aren't as good as the PC versions (well, at least upgrade the XB360 users a bit).

[gza]

So, what would be the "best" computer setup to maximize performance/graphic-quality of this poorly coded game?

[Lordwafik]

So, what would be the "best" computer setup to maximize performance/graphic-quality of this poorly coded game?

A decent card (nothing too over the line) and an extremely overclocked CPU. If your CPU is running at 3.5ghz then it should be dandy to run everything at the highest fps possible.

However for a 5-6 year old game, we shouldn't need an overclocked CPU to hit the fullest frames.

[Skjie]

And not Vista if you have an nVidia card.

[test123]

my new comp has CONSTANT 32! (yes 32!) FPS running around in Whitegate when I record video with fraps (Raid0 raptors), it costed about 800 USD, max settings. Score on Benchmark 3 is 10,081-H.
E8400 3Ghz -> 3.6 Ghz OC, 333Mhz -> 400Mhz bus 1:1 with DDR2 6400 2 gig ram.

OC'ing my Asus 4850 from 680Mhz to 720Mhz does nothing

[Omniyoji]

WTF! (may we see a video?)

[Lordwafik]

my new comp has CONSTANT 32! (yes 32!) FPS running around in Whitegate when I record video with fraps (Raid0 raptors), it costed about 800 USD, max settings. Score on Benchmark 3 is 10,081-H.
E8400 3Ghz -> 3.6 Ghz OC, 333Mhz -> 400Mhz bus 1:1 with DDR2 6400 2 gig ram.

OC'ing my Asus 4850 from 680Mhz to 720Mhz does nothing

Bolded is the thing that allows your PC to maintain such a high FPS everywhere.

Bolded is also the thing that shouldn't be the extreme key to letting your PC maintaining such a high FPS everywhere.

[AyzenBahamut]

my new comp has CONSTANT 32! (yes 32!) FPS running around in Whitegate when I record video with fraps (Raid0 raptors), it costed about 800 USD, max settings. Score on Benchmark 3 is 10,081-H.
E8400 3Ghz -> 3.6 Ghz OC, 333Mhz -> 400Mhz bus 1:1 with DDR2 6400 2 gig ram.

OC'ing my Asus 4850 from 680Mhz to 720Mhz does nothing

E8400 4.2ghz(liquid) with a HD4870x2, full shadows, weather and maxed draw distance, never dips below 29 even in high traffic areas such as whitegate, what does seem to lag me though is campaign with over 20 people around, although i think thats more game lag than computer lag.

So yes what is said is totally possible.