Are you playing U8?
Are you unhappy with the general speed of U8 on your system?
Are you wondering how U8 performs speedwise on other systems?
Well, I am. When I started U8, I was not too happy with the speed (still am), and wanted to find out how well U8 runs on various systems. You hear many comments disqualifying the game as unplayable on a 486DX2/66, others still seem to like it on their 386DX/33.
Let's have some numbers!
That's what I asked for in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, and that's what I got. Here are the results for a little benchmark that I made up for testing the speed of U8 on various systems and under varying conditions.
Rating is an integer, 10 for best, 0 for worse. The first rating refers to how one rates U8 as is. For the second rating, I asked to imagine how one would rate U8 if it ran smoothly (without time delays and jumps) most of the time.
The idea of the benchmarks is to time (with a stop-watch) representative events at the very beginning of the game. Saving/loading refers to saving and loading the game position. Animation characterizes how smoothly figures are animated. The time quoted refers to the end of the execution sequence where several figures move off screen. For scrolling speed we take the time for a sprint through Tenebrae.
The benchmark times are in seconds: the smaller, the better. Standard game options are no sound, animation on, frame limiter on. The results are ordered as
rating/pot.rating saving/loading animation scrolling
Pentium/60/256kw/Comtrade 16M Quantum/540M/SCSI-2/No DiamondViper/PCI
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-/- 11/ 3 16 27
14 with frame limiter off
It takes only 3 sec to save a file in Serpent Isle. From my experience, U8
does not slow down for the most part. It runs at a constant speed on my
system. With music on, there is no appreciable decrease in speed. Rating:
7(8). The parenthesis represents the game without the platform jumping.
486DX2/66/256k/? 8M/3Mr Quantum/525M/SCSI/Adaptec1542C ET4000W32/VESA
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7/8 20/ 8 15 20 times are approximate
486DX/33/256k/SBC ? Maxtor120/64Mpartition/IDE/- Realtek/ISA
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-/9 4/ 7 24 50 with disk caching
2/9 27/12 24 50 with boot disk (no cache)
I had trouble with the game crashing when I tried to retrieve games so
called Origin and they had me create a boot disk to bypass my caching
system. Maybe I'd have been a little happier camper if it hadn't taken a
week and a half to reload on all those jumping puzzles ...
486DX/33/256k?/DMG 8M/4Mrw/NortonSCPLUS Connor/127M/IDE/No Tseng4000/ISA
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4/6 3/ 6 33 54 with SCPLUS
39/16 33 58 without Diskcache
Comments on rating/potential rating
4 (no show, good graphics, lousy plot)
6 (SHOW, lousy plot, EXCELLENT GRAPHICS)
486SX/33/64k/NICE 8M Seagate/431M/IDE/- TVGA9000/ISA
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6/8 19/ 9 32 55 no sound (as defined for benchmark)
36/24 all sounds on
21/ 9 32 58 1M read smartdrv as recommended in docs
30/21 dto. all sounds on
486SX/33/64k/NICE 4M Seagate/431M/IDE/- TVGA9000/ISA
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21/ 9 32 57 no sound
38/25 44 71 all sounds on
486SX/33/64k/NICE 4M Quantum/50M/IDE/- TVGA9000/ISA
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42/14 34 71 no sound
58/33 all sounds on
486SX/33/64k/NICE 4M Quantum/50M/IDE/dblspace TVGA9000/ISA
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85/17 35 64 no sound
87/19 45 82 music and steps off, effects on
100/34 50 91 all sounds on
AM386DX/40/64K 20M/4.8M Seagate/120M/IDE TVGA8900/ISA
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8/10 5/ 9 31 63 benchmark
20/23 38 70 all sound, frm skp, limiting
386DX/25/-/CompuADD 8M Seagate/210M/IDE/- Tseng4000/IDE
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-/- 30/18 46 102 nothing loaded except mouse driver, and
dblspace, but Ultima 8 was not on a compressed
drive (it's on c:, while d: is compressed)
29/22 49 74 without loading doublespace drivers by
pressing CTL-F8 while booting
24/15 46 78 loaded smartdrv with a 1M read and write cache
Once, I accidentally had the music, sound fx, and steps on while saving,
and I noticed it was twice as long as without.
This I can confirm for my 486SX/33 where even just plain walking is quite jerky and `sirupy'. One golden rule of adventuring is to go absolutely everywhere. Therefore, how fast and undetracted by system slow-downs you can get there appears crucial to me. (That's `to crawl jerkily absolutely everywhere'.) Others seem to mind the jumping exercises more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send me YOUR data! If you can't find the original post where the benchmarks are defined, email me. Thanks, Bernd bruegman@iws170.mppmu.mpg.de ---------------------------------------------------------------------------This Report is Copyright (C) 1993 by Bernd Bruegmann for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.