barrance

Sorry this is a pretty dull thread. Just after a question/answer kind of thing here...but I havent got any friends to ask... (sadface) Buut, ive come to the conclusion that fps = dayz enjoyability. im sure most people with crap old computers would agree. When its running well, its like the most fun youve ever had lol But I digress. Main question: Which map has the lightest load on your pc? I fancied trying a new map out a while ago, and downloaded namalsk, and ive just found that it always seems to run much slower than chernarus. Made me wonder if theres a map without many trees or something that generally gets better frame rates? And google didnt help...

Ahh amazing link thank you. Everything ive wanted to know! I get as much fun out of trying to tweak dayz to run well as I do playing it lol Really hope I get a few extra fps with the GTS250 replacing my 8800gts(320). Unless my processors gonna be flagging behind. At least I can give it a better tweaking about now, cheers :D

Hmm cool, cheers guys. Never had AA turned on, but shadows are something ive wrestled with a bit...definitely a big knock on fps then? I always used to have them on low as I was worried about missing out on atmosphere in the game, but to be honest the more ive played with it the more ive found that low res blocky shadows actually detracts more than it adds. Might stick with shadows off for good, dont think ill notice after a few days! With that said, am I probably good then to stick with something like this: Objects and terrain detail on high, Shadows off, AA off, AF on high. Again, main worries is any settings that will push weight onto the cpu. So yeah, if so I reckon I should be safe with this anyway? Its a terrible computer. E7300 dell non overclockable and a GTS 250...eugh. Whole rig needed sometime soon enough

Im sorry this seems like a lazy thing to ask. But this really is coming from a good 100+ hours spent tweaking all sorts of setting within dayz to try and get the best balance of good looks/performance for dayz on my computer. Essentially, the better dayz runs the more enjoyable it is. When frame rates are dropping, you tend to look around you less as the stuttery fps makes it very hard to look at. This then decreases the intensity for me as I end up with this "i hope theres noone here!" approach as opposed to making sure there isnt. Anyway, this aside, I have spent many hours trawling through here/google, and have used a whole load of performance enhancing fixes involving config files, ramdisk, nvidia settings and ingame settings themselves and have had alot of success in improving how it runs. Also, recent versions - 1.7.4 especially have given amazing performance boosts and for this im really thankful. But now this is where I get "lazy". I have spent hoours trying to benchmark the impact resolution has on my fps, and find it really hard to get good average. Im not using fraps or any kind of avg framerate recorder, just the gamebooster in built fps shower thing in the top corner. And its hard to really know what your fps is as it can change so much with whats on the screen. Anyway, I cannot for the life of me work out if my framerate is impacted that much when dropping my resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. For a start, the game looks horrid at 1024x768. Massive step effects on curved lines take away alot visually. But, again, when you havent got a great computer, inc. fps inc. enjoyment! Sooo yeah, I know that if your cpu isnt really up to scratch, lowering your resolution can have no real effect on fps (and understand the reasoning behind this) That said, I was wondering if (and I hate doing this) someone could give me any thoughts on my specific system and whether its worth me lowering the resolution? E7300 dual core @ 2.66ghz 8800gts (320mb) 2gb Ram All in a 4 year old dell studio desktop I know. I need a new computer...but its reeeally not an option at the moment. By early next year when im earning (and the standalone is out hehe...) ill go with a whole new system, but in the mean time, do you think im going to benefit significantly/noticably from a resolution drop or am I being throttled by the cpu regardless? Cheers guys, hate asking questions specific to myself...

cheers man, will grab myself a couple extra soon, website looks handy. And I would go a bit more all out, but a round of drinks is off the cards for me at the moment too ^^ been working unpaid since september, likely to stay that way until about february too...yay me -.-

Oh yeah for sure, im not going to replace anything inside it until I get a new rig next year. The whole thing was alright 4 years ago...but its now 2012. Was just considering buying two 1gb sticks of ram to tide me over for until then, as I figure 1gb ram sticks must be cheap as chips now right? Aslong as someone thinks it might make the slightest bit of difference? ...to ebay! Also, i think overclocking my gpu is out of the question now too. The poor thing is on the edge I swear lol Firstly, when I first got dayz it started wigging out big style. It was running fine for 30 seconds to a minute, then going absoloutely loopey. Giving me crazy artifacts, then barely a frame a second. Turned out that when I opened it up (for the first time in 3-4 years) it was an absoloute disaster in there. In the exit of the heatsink distribution plate things, facing the fan, there was a nearly 1cm thick, uncompressable wall of dust and tobacco tar. Literally couldnt compress it with your finger. Came out as one big chunk...was so rank. Cleaned the thing up and it started working again. Until about 2 months ago, when it just stopped registering on my computer. Device manager told me it had been stopped by windows cos it was buggered, and I got red and green vertical stripes on bios screen lol so yeah, didnt play for a couple months until i found some people online saying that people had gotten cards working again by baking them in the oven at 200c for 8 mins...et voila! :D Had to bake it again since when the same thing happened, but fingers crossed shes still doing it just about lol dont think i can push her too much harder... Still, 35 quid off ebay 4 years ago and hideously abused since...thumbs up nvidia! customer for life...

oh, and @ Boneboyz, im a little bit lost by that. Dont really know much about arma beyond dayz... Is that a case of just running the normal Arma in singleplayer mode, then tweaking settings from a stress test to get the optimal performance, with the idea that these settings would translate to better performance in full blown dayz?

Hmm so you reckon RAM could actually be affected here? Makes me tempted to have a go at a temporary fix. 2 x 1gb sticks of ram must be close to free these days... Quite often my game will run surprisingly well (say, 50fps avg in the wilderness, 40 or so in avg/small towns and 25ish in cherno/elektro) but I do get the occasional MEGA fps lag spike. Down to say, 1 or 2 fps for a second or so. Sometimes these happen a few times in a row, and yeah, obviously that causes a few gameplay issues... Possible that might be arma running out of RAM and suddenly having to read/write information direct to HD? With of course mega slow perfomance as a result. If so, im sure I can afford the 15 quid or whatever it'll be for 2gb more ram. Bit annoying too, I bought more ram when I first got this computer, but it was corrupt. That was followed by months of having no idea why my computer was going absoloutely bananas. Especially when I even took it out and kept getting problems...(the bad ram had corrupted my install of windows, and to stay shit was kicking off is an epic understatement lol)

Feeling absoloutely exhasperated with dayz at the moment, and not from the totally lame/hilarious ways ive been killed either... Basically, in the last week, I have had 4 days where I have spent a good few (enjoyable) hours scouring a server for a vehicle (including a heli), fixing it up, refuelling it, then hiding it in some woods so that when me and my rl mate are on at the same time, we can jump on that server and have some fun. But EVERY one of those times, when weve come back to the server...its down!! Its not even annoying me anymore its just draining. Why the hell is this? Is it that more servers than I think are just hosted from a teenagers bedroom? And how the hell do you go about finding a server that will actually be running 24/7, or at least somewhat close to? Im in a phase where vehicles are 90% of the fun in dayz at the moment, and its been COMPLETELY eliminated by servers that disappear constantly! I just want a server I can rely on being running again the next day :( how do I find em??

I dunno really, for sure I can see that. But I dunno, how many computer games (and specifically steam games?) do people own?? Only computer games ive ever played is counterstrike and dayz. Oh, and I totally picked up the commander keen collection when it got released on steam. MEGA nostalgia trip. I guess others dont have the same misgivings as me, but ive seen people talk about hundreds to thousands of pounds worth of games on their steam account. Find it deeply disturbing! Sunshines awesome! I guess each to their own, but if it concerned me to that degree, i know id want some kind of intervention!

Good lord, people worrying about consumer rights or whatever the hell else was involved with Steam really need to play less computer games. Like, in a serious way...fucking hell. Everything from rocket there sounded brilliant. Best point raised since then I think is addressing the spawning of zombies. It is a real tension breaker when you slowly approach a town, to see packs of zombies emerge from the same spot 40 yards away. Suddenly any fear of other players melts away.

So, my graphics card broke and it took me a couple months to get round to getting it sorted. Now that I have, im bang on playing some dayz again... But where are all the players at?? Ive played a looot in the past, and you used to be spoilt for choice with the amount of servers with loads of people (I always try to play on servers with 20-30 or more. Its the potential of survivor shenanigans that keeps me playing) but now i literally cant find any servers (and i mean any at all!) with more than 10 people on. Whats changed then? lol have i missed out on the new way to find servers? Is my putting "dayz" as the filter in the multiplayer window totally old news? cos i cant seem to see more than 100/200 people ever playing dayz at a time, across ALL servers? I dont care if some scripting twat blows me away out of nowhere, i just want a server...ANY server that actually has people playing on it! What am i doing wrong? lol

yeah commander is sweet. Still not up for playing a million private hives. Guess i can filter out private ones? Just keep my good old one...hive

so, are the days of starting up arma, filtering the multiplayer section and jumping in any server gone now? I want dayz as it was before my gfx card broke lol

i wasnt! I am now. Seems to be a fair few full servers there, nice one! But erm, if I came across someone, and ended up shooting them like...loads of times, and they dont die. Is that a hacker? Think i just found one on my first server i tried with commander lol oh what fun So erm...how does one go about finding a private server? lol

Anyone got any thoughts as to why my (at least reasonably decent computer) is having SUCH a struggle with the mod? This computers not too old, decent enough dual core processor, and an 8800GTS. Used to run crysis on a tweaked version of ultra high settings alright, only slowing down when shit kicked off. But for some reason, arma just isnt having any of it. Even with settings down to low, 800x600 resolution and all the advanced tweaks from the thread on this forum, its fucked. Like 1fps fucked. Weirdly enough though, the first 2/3 mins of playing is absoloutely fine. High settings running on 1280x1024 are absoloutely smooth as a whistle until ALWAYS, after a couple of mins it just completely dies. Loads of graphical bugs start appearing (often jagged lines of white appear across the textures, also textures on the floor keep appearing/disappearing) and the whole thing becomes unplayable. ...am I right in thinking my graphics cards goose is basically cooked? Started having problems with CSS a few months ago where similar things would happen then the screen would just go to black. My graphics card is dead isnt it? Would be the biggest surprise, got it off ebay for like 30-40 quid 4 years ago or so... oooh, and quick addition! If this is the case, anyone got any good suggestions as to how I could best spend 30-40 quid again on a graphics card? The geforce 400 series?

i swear some of the fps improvements have already happened though. Im noticing considerable increased framerates throughout playing 1.7.1.5! It had upped somewhat at the beginning of it i think, up to around 35-40 fps when running in an open/wooded area. Now in the same spots in rocking 55-65. Its a nice noticable difference! New features will be nice, but on my ropey old rig im really enjoying the upping performance! Cherno/elektro still frazzle my computer though...20 fps is pretty good then

Personally I think the fps performance needs to be SERIOUSLY improved before implementing a blanket 1st person view. Like, since recent updates (1.7.1.5) my fps has improved dramatically. And I can now play in 1st person with not too much difficulty (until I enter a big city) But before the fps improvements (and still in big cities) 1st person is 100% totally unplayable for me. I havent got the best computer, and when the framerate drops to 20-30 it makes it almost impossible to see a thing in 1st person. I know quite a few people who play dayz on laptops, who would just be forced to quit altogether if 1st person was enforced without the fps performance increase to allow it.

lol really adultswim? Greatest change in a while. I think its going to reduce early days players killing each other so readily, and add a much needed level of difficulty. After not much time playing this game you get the hang of where you are, where you can go, and with a mak with 6 clips you can pretty easily get where you want to go. Now youre going to have to start off ransacking small villages/farms to get you started, before venturing anywhere near a big town or military base. Has increased the overall playability of this game twofold at least, and im over the moon. Now with the fps sorted hotfix, this games off!

Wow! Looks amazing, every time I think youve been a bit quiet rocket, you turn around with a SERIOUS update! So many things getting fixed here, and if it cleans up server fps lag as well, this games just going to have taken a huge step forward. Just constantly impressed by the man!

yeah, no word? Assuming a new version coming soon?

I think theres a way round this problem without realism taking much of a hit (im someone who will generally play US servers when its night here in the UK). And thats simply having the servers run on a midsummer kind of night/day. In proper midsummer (in the uk at least!) theres probably only maybe 2-4 hours of full blown darkness at night. Either side of that theres a good few hours where its dusk/dawn, with a blue glow on the horizon that means you can still see a bit in front of your face, but not exactly much. Definitely not far into woodland or something. Would stick with the realism (again, definitely in the uk rain in the midsummer is far from unrealistic...) and I think take a lot of pressure off the servers. My two cents!

met up with a couple teams of friendlies in cherno now! Granted by giving away all our positions on global chat, but as a unit of 4 or 5 we were pretty solid!

Heads up guys, mine fixed itself! Didnt change anything from when i last posted, but had been at work for a few hours. Came back and i could get through the loading screen, still had standard connection difficuklties but its back to normal for me. And running well ingame too...

mine has been fine for the last few hours now. Was able to play (and die and respawn a few times) and it was running really well. Nothing changed really, just started to be able to get through the loading screen! Then normal difficulties.