Just installed

[Gatling]

Hey

I just installed the game succesfully with the D2X patch and downloaded most of the textures and stuff to get everything great..
Though when I play the game it doesn't run very smooth.. I've read something about a 3d accelerator, though don't really have a clue what that is..Do I need to install something or is an accelerator already included with most new video cards... Btw I have a pretty new and fast pc , so that can't be the reason..

Apart from this I also have problems with my mouse...AT the moment I have no joystick, so I need to use a mouse, though the cursor moves pretty slow...I can't really turn around fast enough to be thread for the bots....
I have a logitech laser mouse..

I really like what you ppl have done with this pretty old game and am glad that I finally can play it again, after al these years

Grtz Gat

[MetalBeast]

Hi,

welcome to our forum,
be sure, you read all the stickies here.

If you do not share the infos, about the system you are using, nobody can help you

[Gatling]

Well I didnt thought my specs would matter as this game is pretty old and my pc is pretty new. Though I've adjusted the screen resolution to something smaller and the game is running pretty smooth now.. Didn't thought that the game would run that much havier with all the new textures and stuff. The only thing I need to do now is to recover my joystick from the dust, to have goodgames like the old times again..

Glad to see people still care about this old but great game.

[karx11erx]

Things that make D2X-XL run slow:

High smoke settings (config - render - smoke)
High smoke shrapnel settings (config - render - effects)
Plasma light trails (config - render - coronas)
Lightning plasma and smooth lightning style (config - render - lightnings)
High texture resolution (config - render - texture quality: highest - chose high instead)

High screen resolutions (config - screen res) - you may have a new video card, but if it is a mid end card with only a 128 bit video data bus, it will still be slow, an older high end card can actually be better (e.g. Radeon X850 XT vs. X1650).

Increase the mouse sensitivity (config - controls - mouse)

You can take your time and read the stickies, the installation instructions and the worklog on www.descent2.de and find out a lot by yourself w/o much pain, or ask and ask and ask around and hardly get going.

[Gatling]

Yeah I already found out that smoke is heavilly affecting performance and therefore disabled it...
There are many options in the menu, so I need to dig through many things as I've got some annoying things like my ship's shadow...It doesn't look very real and is very distractive..I also like to disable this, though i will probably manage..

I have a Radeon 256 videocard from the X1600 series, 750 gig fast hardrive + some other( not very relevant), Logitech G5 mouse,
AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 3800+, 19` Samsung syncmaster....This should be enough to run this game pretty smooth I think..

I already knew about the mouse sensitivity setting, though that doesn't do what it's suppose to do with my mouse...when I increase sensitivity it does nothing...

[Sirius]

I've read something about a 3d accelerator, though don't really have a clue what that is..Do I need to install something or is an accelerator already included with most new video cards...

It'd be about as accurate to say new video cards are 3D accelerators. You don't need all that machinery just to get a picture to the monitor; the vast majority of the card is used to render things as fast as possible, with an emphasis on 3D because that's the only part that's really difficult any more.

[karx11erx]

Your gfx card doesn't have the greatest fill rate (128 bit video memory bus) and hence will suffer from fill rate intensive stuff like smoke. Your CPU isn't the greatest either, to be honest.

You cannot judge D2X-XL from what you know about Descent.

Pressing F1 in a menu will display a help message for the currently highlighted menu option.

[Gatling]

Well I didn't say that I had a 1337 machine and time goes very fast with your pc parts.. You buy something new and a few months later it's already outdated..

Don't get me wrong...I just want the game to run smooth and if it's vissually a bit less quality, then that doesn't really matter to me.. I started the game on a high resolution what made the game stutter a bit at moments, with in my mind that this game should run this easilly as it's old anyway... That was probebly my mistake as D2X is a litle different now..

Well thanks anyway

[karx11erx]

All I did was informing you. Nothing personal.

Unless you are a tech savvy person and knew what you did when purchasing your computer (parts) you are the typical victim of all the hype and merchandizing tactics of the hardware vendors. You'd be more happy with a Radeon X850 XT than with an X1650, at least fill-rate wise.

For me, a 128 bit video memory data bus is a knockout feature. A very good deal right now would be a Geforce GT 8800 512 MB or a Radeon HD 3870 512 MB - insane bang for the buck.

As you have a dual core CPU, you can try to set -multithreading 1 in d2x.ini. D2X-XL will split certain computing intensive tasks on both cores then (but that will mean your PC will not do anything else besides running D2X-XL anymore, in case you want to ALT+TAB to some other app ).

[Gatling]

Yeah, I was probably a victim. I'm not saying that I'm a total noob concerning computerparts, but you have to be pretty much an expert to know which videocard is really good and I think that most ppl don't have a clue what they are buying and focus on the things like 512 MB and price, although those things actually don't have to mean a thing.. When I decided to buy a new videocard, I checked some internetpages to see which one was good and at the same time not that much expensive and found that the X1600 was a relative good decision..not knowing about the 128 bit video memory bus as I didn't even know what that was.. I mainly focussed on the 256 MB, it's price and some userratings from different pages..

I did a litle search after some good comparisson page and found this one http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=544&card2=329 In the future I will keep an eye on the video memory bus.

[karx11erx]

The data bus means how many bits can be transferred simultaneously between GPU and memory in one "clock cycle" (eletrical signal controlling the speed of operation of the participating electronical components). Obviously more is better.