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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
Folks, I will publish two articles about the mods I use next week and the week thereafter. Please give me some time, I want to include some tweaking tips as well. Takes some time, since I am also evaluating several mods (most of them those that change the loot system).
And yes, those mods listed above are those I use (amongst others) for the visual tweaks. If you have a good card with 256MB, they won't slow you down, but improve the visual quality a lot.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
Sat Apr 15, 2006 9:22 pm |
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Maylander
High Emperor
Joined: 22 Mar 2002
Posts: 1712
Location: Norway |
First and foremost I have to say it is a really good review. Actually comes from someone who has played the game a lot instead of someone who just touched the game and then wrote a "full review" of it(seen that too many times).
On the modding matter I agree with Gorath - a game should be reviewed as it is shipped, so readers know what they are getting for their money, not what they have to download to get. Game modding should be featured in an own section of the review, not be taken into consideration when giving the game a score. What you pay for is what is being reviewed - not what you can download from other games to improve the game. Personally I feel Rend did a fairly good job at always mentioning what mods he had used to change what, and why, so it's not hard to see that the game definetly could use some fixing.
As mentioned many times before, the levelling scaling problem is much bigger than just the items - as I've posted on the Oblivion General forum, it does in fact make the game impossible at certain points unless you are a pure combat character(doing Kvatch at high levels without for instance). I won't get further into this here though.
My biggest concern right now is the fact that I feel a bit betrayed by Bethesda. "Premium content" you have to pay for? Oh really? Tell me something, how much of this premium content was planned already before release? Did they release a game they knew had far more potential, but held back ideas and things to implement just so they could sell some more? For some reason I find it hard to believe that they just all of a sudden came up with some great new ideas right after the game was shipped.
When Bioware did something similar with NWN, they at least gave you small mini-addons that you payed for, not "a new tower dungeon" or "armored horses". Oblivion is breaking sales records all over the world, a game that relies heavily on the modding community, and then Bethesda wants to squeeze even more money out of the same community that just improved their game vastly? Great.
When I first read about the pay-per-patch thing, I thought it was some kind of bad joke, but it's actually real it seems. I, for one, will certainly never pay for a small patch - I'm putting my trust in the modding community as I did with Morrowind. |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 3:30 am |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
quote:
Originally posted by Maylander
My biggest concern right now is the fact that I feel a bit betrayed by Bethesda. "Premium content" you have to pay for? Oh really? Tell me something, how much of this premium content was planned already before release? Did they release a game they knew had far more potential, but held back ideas and things to implement just so they could sell some more?
Personally, I don't believe there is any big conspiracy going on at Bethesda. If anything at all, what's going on is probably more in the vein of market research to build a business model for downloadable content via the internet.
Also, to be fair, people should keep in mind that 'premium content' isn't anything that you 'HAVE TO' buy. It's optional. If you don't think it's worth it or just are plain not interested, then you can happily not buy it. To feel betrayed over this is just a little strange to me. I agree with you that the 'horse armor' mod definatley feels like 'milking the cow.' So I'm not buying it. But I don't feel betrayed by Bethesda and the fact that they are selling a somewhat 'cheesy' mod has no more or less impact on me as a discount store selling a chia-pet.
quote:
Originally posted by Maylander
For some reason I find it hard to believe that they just all of a sudden came up with some great new ideas right after the game was shipped.
I disagree. From the countless reviews and interviews I've read in my life about game developers, one thing is for sure, they never stop coming up with 'great' ideas for their games... even long after they've shipped. In games that sell well, those 'great ideas' usually take the form of some kind of expansion pack. With today's high speed internet access, looks like this will change now to include 'downloadable content' as well.
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 1:54 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
quote:
Originally posted by Chekote
I think I found some of the visual improvement mods Rend mentioned in his review. I found them Here. Links below for the particularly lazy. =0P
Landscape LOD Replacement
Landscape LOD Replacement (Border Regions)
Normal Map LOD Replacement
Load Message Removal Mod
Color Map Mod
So many people are running around saying that these mods don't affect performance. That is simply not the case. Bethesda carefully sized the texture package "Large" to fit a 256MB graphics card. The Landscape LOD package by itself will push your system well beyond ~270MB - forcing you into your AGP Aperture or PCI-e equivalent access to system memory. The result is Stuttering pure and simple. If you don't believe me try out the packages and make sure you are running the console commands "TDT" and "setdebugtext 13". Enjoy your overflow.
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"For Innos!" |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 5:37 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by ToddMcF2002
quote:
Originally posted by Chekote
I think I found some of the visual improvement mods Rend mentioned in his review. I found them Here. Links below for the particularly lazy. =0P
Landscape LOD Replacement
Landscape LOD Replacement (Border Regions)
Normal Map LOD Replacement
Load Message Removal Mod
Color Map Mod
So many people are running around saying that these mods don't affect performance. That is simply not the case. Bethesda carefully sized the texture package "Large" to fit a 256MB graphics card. The Landscape LOD package by itself will push your system well beyond ~270MB - forcing you into your AGP Aperture or PCI-e equivalent access to system memory. The result is Stuttering pure and simple. If you don't believe me try out the packages and make sure you are running the console commands "TDT" and "setdebugtext 13". Enjoy your overflow.
Granted, I haven't tested these mods yet and can't comment on the performance of the game modded vs unmodded but if 270MB is true then there shouldn't (in theory) be a tangible difference in performance.
I have just recently read a very interesting article about 256MB graphics cards vs 512MB graphics cards (can't remember the site so can't find the link anymore :/).
What's interesting is that just about all current games (Quake 4, FEAR etc) seem to be using 256MB+. That's right. A 256MB card is theoretically not sufficient to begin with.
However, the game performance does not begin to suffer until the game has to swap some serious amounts of data to RAM.
IIRC, that was only the case in Quake 4 which required 470MB+ of texture memory on the highest detail settings. It was the only game where a 512MB card had a considerable edge (5fps advantage or so).
That's why 270MB in Oblivion should theoretically be no prob at all, even on a 256MB card.
I'm kind of suspecting that the real problem lies in the engine itself and in the way it loads/unloads cells/areas into/out of video and system RAM because related ini tweaks (uGridsToLoad and iPreloadSizeLimit) seem to cause more choppiness (and longer load times) as well. |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:45 pm |
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Maylander
High Emperor
Joined: 22 Mar 2002
Posts: 1712
Location: Norway |
Of course, TheMadGamer, developers keep coming up with ideas for their games - that's why Morrowind had Plug-Ins; proffesional content by Bethesda free for anyone to download(new armor etc). This, however, is the exact same thing, only now we have to pay for it.. gives me a "The Sims" feeling, smells Electronic Arts, "hey.. the sims now have uhh.. a few new jobs, yeah.. it''s expansion number 28, The Sims Get A New Job, full price of course". If the developers come up with some small thing they feel would be good in the game - make a patch or a plug-in for it. If it's a whole new campaign like the NWN moduls, sure, charge some small sum for it, but don't force the community to pay for stuff that should already be in the game - such as your own fortress(the new wizard tower thing - we could get fortresses in Morrowind, but have to pay to get one in Oblivion? Don't tell me they just happened to come up with the fortress idea after Oblivion shipped).
Paying for stuff to Oblivion that was free in Morrowind(such as plug-ins, new music, armor, etc) is a step back for Bethesda. I just can't shake this EA feeling.. |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:45 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
You are talking about "ultra quality mode" which is a Doom 3 artifact - it uses uncomressed textures and full resolution normal maps. That is definately not the normal operating mode for Doom 3 or Quake 4 and its only recommended for 512MB cards.
Oblivion uses ~350MB RAM + ~450MB VM and ~250MB Texture memory at its highest setting out of the box.
I have no idea about FEAR - but none of those games are as graphically intensive for the GPU as Oblivion (which does no culling) and uses tons of texture memory. The other games are also not as easily CPU bound as Oblivion - even on a FX60.
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"For Innos!" |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:52 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by ToddMcF2002
You are talking about "ultra quality mode" which is a Doom 3 artifact - it uses uncomressed textures and full resolution normal maps. That is definately not the normal operating mode for Doom 3 or Quake 4 and its only recommended for 512MB cards.
Oblivion uses ~350MB RAM + ~450MB VM and ~250MB Texture memory at its highest setting out of the box.
I have no idea about FEAR - but none of those games are as graphically intensive for the GPU as Oblivion (which does no culling) and uses tons of texture memory. The other games are also not as easily CPU bound as Oblivion - even on a FX60.
All true  . I was just trying to point out that it is very unlikely that Oblivion's performance is negatively affected by mods that make it use 270MB of video memory. You were making it sound as if the 14MB overspill (256MB card) is causing a serious drop in performance. That seems unlikely (but not impossible, of course  ) based on the benchmarks of 256MB gfx cards vs 512MB gfx cards.
BTW, thanks to the almighty Google, I've found the article that I was referring to above. Check here.
Here's a quote that illustrates why I doubt that a 14MB overspill would make a difference...
quote:
We saw that most games in medium to high quality settings used far more than 256MB to hold all the texture data, and so the overspill is already happening – you do need 512MB of VRAM to hold all the texture and geometry data in VRAM. The question is, does using system memory for some of this have an impact on performance, and the answer seems to be only in extreme cases where 100MB or larger spills into system memory.
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:18 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
Moriendor,
Did you read the part where he talks about actually playing FEAR with 4xAA vs. the benchmark? Stuttering. I monitored Oblivion's VRAM settings and got to ~320MB or so with the LOD Mod and visiting multiple locations to load different texture pallettes. It stuttered badly. It went to ~270MB very quickly and started stuttering. You don't see it in FRAPS as much as you feel it (and on my Raptors hear it).
Here is another article showing Quake 4 in Ultra mode @ 4xAA. Compare it to the "normal" texture benchmark were VRAM is not exceeded. Partly the delta is due to ATI's more efficient AA procedures but memory plays a part:
Look at last graph - x1800 XT @ 512MB
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_high-end_performance/page8.asp
Conclusion:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_high-end_performance/page11.asp
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"For Innos!" |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:33 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
Actually, now that I think about it lets forget about talking about Q4 and concentrate the discussion on FEAR and the paragraph from the article you linked. Oblivion is just like FEAR. I only wish that reviewer had tried the "minimal spillover" scenario. I'm sure it was stuttering as well - if heavy calculations are being performed on geometry data held outside of VRAM. I'm convinced that is what is happening with Oblivion.
Now we are reaching the same levels of memory usage as HL2 in 2048x1536 with everything maxed out. Though the results show huge performance differences they simply cannot fully describe what I felt while playing the game. With 256Mb it was absolutely unplayable with stuttering at every turn, sometimes the screen would not refresh for half a second. This was blatant cache thrashing in action. In comparison the 512Mb card was behaving as it should, no stuttering at all. The average frame rate was low and it wasn’t very enjoyable, but it was a thousand times better than with the 256Mb card. The average frame rates for both cards are as follows:
256MB: 12.9 fps
512MB: 24.6 fps
That’s a 90.7% increase! F.E.A.R has shown itself to be the most demanding game for memory requirements out of all the games here. Add to this the intense use of pixel shader operations and you can easily see why it brings even the most high end machines to their knees.
Link is:
http://www.pureoverclock.com/article33-6.html
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"For Innos!" |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:48 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Yeah. Those links confirm what I (or we both even) was saying though . I don't think we disagree on anything actually, right?
Except for the difference between theory and practice where you have the clear advantage of actually testing the mods while monitoring the performance in Oblivion.
I was just trying to point out that the memory overspill should theoretically not matter since most current games already require 256MB+. However, you can still get very fluid gameplay with a 256MB card (except for FEAR which is indeed behaving a bit out of the ordinary) even though the overspill is happening.
That's why I think that people should heed your advice but also keep an eye on other factors (like ini "tweaking" that does the opposite of what is advertised  ) that might have a negative effect on performance because the texture modding alone should not make much of a difference. |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:05 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
I think we do agree. I'm a wary modder of Oblivion now. I applied tons of ini "tweaks" and mods (including Better Water and LOD stuff). I ended up removing all mods and undoing the ini by letting Oblivion regenerate a new ini. That got me +12 FPS 
Especially that ini file. Notice that all the guides have no benchmarks? That should tell you something about the expert analysis 
I would just say that the LOD replacement stuff should be done carefully and incrementally to make sure people arent hamstringing their performance. I wish someone like firingsquad.com would benchmark ini settings and mods - especially now with games like Oblivion and FEAR literally changing the landscape of resource usage. The shift back to the CPU as a potential bottleneck is a HUGE shift and we arent going back.
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"For Innos!" |
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Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:13 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
My experience is that the landscape LOD textures and the LOD replacement do NOT affect performance. At least not on my system (3700+, 2GB, 7800GFX 256MB). I can ride through Cyrodiil with minimal stuttering.
However, changing uGridsToLoad to 7 or higher WILL introduce massive framerate decrease.
The first part of my article is nearly done, and in it I will show how to tweak Oblivion without sacrificing stability or framerate. My lowest framerate is 18fps, and this is REALLY the lowest, but I have nearly each and every eyecandy that is in the game.
I'll guide you step by step how to do it.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Tue Apr 18, 2006 8:58 am |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
quote:
Originally posted by Rendelius
I'll guide you step by step how to do it.
I've looked and looked but I can't find any Rendelius 2000s in my local electronic stores. Where do I get one of these aweseome things?
_________________
The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Tue Apr 18, 2006 1:53 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
quote:
Originally posted by TheMadGamer
quote:
Originally posted by Rendelius
I'll guide you step by step how to do it.
I've looked and looked but I can't find any Rendelius 2000s in my local electronic stores. Where do I get one of these aweseome things?
lol - the only one available is in the custody of my girlfriend.
The article is ready and should go up anytime soon. I am really looking forward to your experience with my suggestions - there is of course the chance that it only works on my system and not on others.
Apart from the tuning, I am listing all mods for visual tweaks and interface changes. The second part will then list the mods that change gameplay.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:04 pm |
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