Euphoria engine

[Th3 ProphetMan]

I'm asking myself if it's the euphoria engine what might be causing the game to consume so much CPU. It shouldn't if a console can run it without problems so it mmight be not optimized for PC or for multicore. Seeing that no matter how much i reduce the resolution the game will run almost the same fps, it makes no sense.

 

Also, does anyone know if gtaiv sues any nvidia PhysX optimization? Im going to test the game with and without physx to see if i can figure out anyway..

 

Whatever it is, i want to believe there's something terribly unoptimized that's causing the game to be so slow because this is just not normal. The game should not require much more than games like mass effect or unreal tournament, which in my opinion look similar. GTAiv scenario is bigger, but for f*cks sake thats where distance draw should kick in.

[livinglogic]

Concerning the game's actual graphics, I agree that it's definitely no more impressive visually than either game you mentioned. Hell, Far Cry 2 and Gears of War were far nicer looking, and way more optimized for the PC. I have to go as far as disabling my virus protection when playing to get as much as I can out of my system, and still the game (with all the settings set to low) chugs along like a fat bitch at the buffet. I guess it's just because of how much is going on in the environment, there are tons of calculations going on with each and every mailbox and lamp post, not to mention the cars, people, etc. that are all processed at the same time. I can sort of see why it sucks on my pc, which is 3 years old now, but I mean c'mon, my PC is still way better than an xbox 360, which runs the game like an effin' charm.

 

 

[Breadman86]

Euphoria would make sense as a cause. I'm not in the loop, but isn't this one of the first if not the first game to use the Euphoria engine on the PC? I can't think of others... and yeah, a 3 year old PC (that was High End 3 years ago, MUCH better than a 360), should definitely be able to run this with visual quality settings on par with a 360. And it doesn't. At all.

[1ajs]

could getting a physics card help?

[GTA3Freak-2001]

Not unless the game was programmed for it I'd imagine.

[Th3 ProphetMan]

could getting a physics card help?

those things are obsolete.

 

they were done by PhysX, a company adquired by nvidia, and the technology was implemented on Geforce cards 8000 and newer.

 

 

 

[One-time]

I think they didn't fully re-code the whole Euphoria to x86, so they just run it emulated.

Only my opinion though.

[Rokz0r]

I think i found why my system and many systems can't play it optimally, it's got to do with software memory leaks - reason i'm saying this is because if i set view distance to 20 and under the game doesn't crash for an hour at least - the engine isn't a cpu hog as much as any other game.

Now if i set the slider to view distance above 25 or so i get lagging/stuttering effects showing symptoms of a memory leak...

 

The engine is nothing advanced really - even the quality of textures arent that great - it seems memory leaks are the performance bug.

 

my specs are Q9550 oc to 3.83 ghz

4gb g skill ddr2 1200 mhz

vista 64 ultimate

xfx gtx280 xxx in sli

auzentech x-fi prelude

1kw cooler master

seagate 32mb cache 500gb hdd's

 

[2lame]

I agree with the above, this is a sort of a leak, and i think i know that Rockstar Social Club app is doing it perhaps. I will explain why. After quitting the game itself after playing for lets say 3-4 hours (no bugs/hangs and so on, game running normally at full details and 1280x800 16:10) i see my system (see sig) is somehow lagged which never happens usually - slow browser openings etc. At one time i notice my "Social Club appplication" is still running in the tray. I turn it off and see what? Everything back to normal for my OS..

Another thing is some sort of video driver optimization they should do, it is maybe related to the faulty shadows at times, cause the CPU is not a bottleneck here - the CPU in the sig is loaded by the 4 cores at approx 50-60%, sometime even down to 40%, so memory/graphics issues

[Rokz0r]

I agree with the above, this is a sort of a leak, and i think i know that Rockstar Social Club app is doing it perhaps. I will explain why. After quitting the game itself after playing for lets say 3-4 hours (no bugs/hangs and so on, game running normally at full details and 1280x800 16:10) i see my system (see sig) is somehow lagged which never happens usually - slow browser openings etc. At one time i notice my "Social Club appplication" is still running in the tray. I turn it off and see what? Everything back to normal for my OS..

Another thing is some sort of video driver optimization they should do, it is maybe related to the faulty shadows at times, cause the CPU is not a bottleneck here - the CPU in the sig is loaded by the 4 cores at approx 50-60%, sometime even down to 40%, so memory/graphics issues

More specifically it's actually a video memory leak to be exact.

[Th3 ProphetMan]

I cant believe rocktar released the game without resolving something like this, which is happening to everybody, didn't they test the game in non-quantum computers or what?

 

About the leaks, i don't know but it might be, and it would be good, because then r* would have a clear bug to fix that would make the game run like it should, so i really hope that's it and they can get this motherf*cker to behave..

 

isn't there any way to actually check that? i think in the task manager you can enable lots of column and i think some were related to memory errors for each process. If not, there's also that sysinternal tool, process explorer that might be usefull to check taht.

 

About the PhysX thing, i think the game doesnt make any use of it, i didnt notince any difference running it with or without phyx enabled unt he nvidia display panel.

[SuperAlekZ]

I think they didn't fully re-code the whole Euphoria to x86, so they just run it emulated.

Only my opinion though.

Hmm.. I think that the whole game is actually like a sort of emulator.

I mean.. come on.. which modern game has the MS dos box popping out before start? TWICE!

And then I was really shocked.. I played Multiplayer and to talk to other people you need a XBOX 360 HEADSET?? COME ON!..

You know.. Xbox360 Gamepad is alright. It's a good gamepad and works in almost every game.

BTW: My PC is 1 year old and it costed 1500 Euros at this time.. So I think it should be able to play GTA IV on 1680 x 1050 at medium graphics with about 40 Fps if they coded it good..

My PC:

E6600 @ 2 x 2.4 Ghz

8800 GTX 768 mb

2 GB DDR2 800mhz

........ this should be more then enough.. even according to the official requirements..

ah and before I forget: f*ck you RockStar Toronto and Take2 and Securom and Microsoft.

[Rokz0r]

I cant believe rocktar released the game without resolving something like this, which is happening to everybody, didn't they test the game in non-quantum computers or what?

 

About the leaks, i don't know but it might be, and it would be good, because then r* would have a clear bug to fix that would make the game run like it should, so i really hope that's it and they can get this motherf*cker to behave..

 

isn't there any way to actually check that? i think in the task manager you can enable lots of column and i think some were related to memory errors for each process. If not, there's also that sysinternal tool, process explorer that might be usefull to check taht.

 

About the PhysX thing, i think the game doesnt make any use of it, i didnt notince any difference running it with or without phyx enabled unt he nvidia display panel.

Framerate drops and then game crashes - depending on how much vid memory is being used via the graphics options - more specifically what view distance you have it at - to me these symptoms are out of memory leaks, specifically video memory leaks - playing with shorter view distance as in 15-20 makes the gameplay less choppy/laggy for longer periods and in the end it eventually crashes regardless but not sooner as it does with higher view distance/high textures.

You can test it for yourself by using medium textures and tell me if you can play longer than usual without a crash.

[Th3 ProphetMan]

yeah, the gamepad thing is a total shame

 

The dos box its probably just some launcher stuff to connect the game to the social club application, but it should gtfo anyway

 

Rokzor i dont get any crashes when i get ingame, i think it has only crashed once, and i've played for a long while several times. i do think it runs smotther at the begining.

 

However, if i try to change the resolution, i get a dd3d80 error. if i alt tab of anything the game either crashes or stops responding. even runing windowed if i loose focus, open the start menu for example, and try to get back to game, it wont, it just doesnt response.

 

If i try the benchmark from ingame it crashes as wel... And if i try to run the benchmark from the desktop it gives a tipical windows error (like telling me to send a report).

 

So the benchmark utility wont work for me, havent tried it yet actually, and i cant alt tab at all, but once ingame, the game doesnt crash for me.

 

All this with forceware 180.42 on a 8800gts 320mb. i play the game at 1024x640, texture low, render (anisotropic) high, sliders all 10 except traffic at 20 and shadows at 0 (since i dont see the difference at all with max shadows). Get beetwen 20 to 35 fps. about 70 inside niko's safehouse though.

 

Edited December 5, 2008 by Th3 ProphetMan

[2lame]

I personally have not experienced any game crash yet. Maybe its RAM dependent as my 4GB of ram are at almost 80% usage when this thing is running but remains constant.. maybe you're getting out of memory - you should check into event viewer-application log, to see the application error caused by gta on exit and google it. But the game loads up A LOT of ram

 

[Edit] about the command promt which is ran at startup, i think its related to the Securom protection applied, i've seen it on other securom games too i think

Edited December 5, 2008 by 2lame

[Rokz0r]

it seems like to me the lower you have your in game setting the longer you can play smoother without much frame rate hitching or crashes - maybe this is the exact coding bug? when you turn anything higher that's when all the in game problems arise? lazy coding or maybe just something they looked over because its not a huge problem and easily fixable id imagine and they would know where to look.

[Lutra78]

I think they didn't fully re-code the whole Euphoria to x86, so they just run it emulated.

Only my opinion though.

Very good point. If the engine has to be emulated, it would cost enormous CPU-Power. This really could be!

 

 

A good example are Amiga games emulated to the PC. The Amiga had around 7Mhz, but to play the game on a windows-system you need at least 500Mhz(!).

[One-time]

Very good point. If the engine has to be emulated, it would cost enormous CPU-Power. This really could be!

If they really include a re-coded version of Euphoria in the coming-soon patch it will be as huge as 750 MB and will take more than a year to develop. So don't expect anything major from the coming-soon patch, because imho it won't fix very much.