Graphical Problems

[paulomeg]

Hi all,

I really like the new RCT, but I am having some major problems with frame rates in the game. My system more than meets the min specs, and everything is using the latest drivers. My parks are fine as long as I have only a few rides. As soon as I get more than this in the park my frame rate drops to approx 4.

My system is an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.66GHz, with 1024MB RAM, an ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256MB, and a Creative Soundblaster 2. All hardware is using the most current drivers, including motherboard. I'm also using DirectX 9.0C, and WinXP Pro with SP1a.

Before running the game I shut down all non-essential system processes, just to be sure. However, frame rates are very poor. I have even tried putting all the sliders to the left on the level of detail, and distance, and turned off 3D trees etc and turned off reflections and shadows. Yet I still can only acheive 5 or 6 FPS max with a few rides in the park.

Any suggestions anyone? It's driving me mad because my graphics card can easily cope with any other games including Half Life 2. :cry:

P.S I have update 2 installed for RCT3.

:bounce: Thanks in advance. :D

[fill85]

I have a simular problem i can build anything i want when the prk is closed and it works fine, as soon as i open the park it tends to be jerky. i thought it was computer memory or game needed updating, graphics card is a radeon so im pretty sure it wont be that. but i did both of above (got more memory and updated game) and still the game carry's on been jerky.
any suggestions?

[paulomeg]

At least I'm not the only one! The official Frontier FAQ states that the game will be jerky if you turn on reflective water, 3D tree's etc, but even without these it seems a problem. I wonder if its hardware related. I might try turning off some of my soundcard acceleration and see if that helps.

I've even tried increasing the page file to 3500MB and putting it on a completely different disk..... :(

Anyone out there got any suggestions? I really wanna play RCT3 properly!!!!

[Fluxx]

RCT3 is an absolute system hog.............forget your Doom3's and your Half Life 2's......it brings top end systems to their knees.

Ive got an AMD 3200+, a gig of RAM and a Geforce 6800 and when the park gets busy it slows right down.......... :(


Sorry that wasnt much of an answer.

[Silkius]

I would agree with Fluxx - I have a p4 3.2 - 1gig of RAM, twin 120gig hard drives and a Radeon 9800 pro - and even this can hit a slowdown -

I have found though that spaced out parks, with wide paths and centered around single theming work much better than tight packed parks, the way we learnt to build them in RCT 1&2.

The peeps ai (with the patches) is much better than we have had before, and they can now handle parks with rides and areas wider spaced thewn they used to. This also avoids clustering (lots of peeps hanging around single areas) and thus helps the system keep up with the demands - as does bigger spacing between rides.

Also small to medium parks will play much better than enourmous ones, and you can still spread a lot of rides even on a 100x100 park - a good standard to go by is to look over the scenarios, they were made by the team and intended to run on most systems with little trouble (except for Box Office which is a real system hog due to the multi theming it uses)

Lastly, make a note of your settings and then play around with the draw distances - you will find a lot of them do not need to be as high as the standard settings (especialy some of the less important ones) - I have cranked quite a few right back, that I don't really need to see from a mile away, and found it actually helps me see what I want easier (and of course takes some of the demands off untill you are pretty close in, which with wider spaced rides and food areas are not demanding quite so much on your system at once).

It isn't the best answer, but it helps make the game more playable.

(the best answer is to start saving now for one of the new SLI systems or a system that can handle one of the upcoming ATI R520 boards, also known as Fudo
http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/atinewboardwith32pipelines.shtml
(32 pipelines for graphics processing ..... yummy - Can I have one please? :D :D :D )

[paulomeg]

Yeah I guess i'll just have to put up with it for now. Maybe Frontier need to look at their game engine......... :rolleyes:

Those new ATI cards look like the way forward. For now i'll just take your advice and spread out the park abit and try playing with the settings. Perhaps a future update will fix some issues? I'm a bit reluctant to buy the new add-on pack when it comes out until I can iron out the graphical problems because its gonna surely make it worse with more water in the park.