[falcon2105]

Heyo,

Am trying to run SCP on a laptop with i5 and 4gb of ram but no video card. Was wondering what options of scp are CPU/RAM intensive (shouldn't make that much of a difference for me) and what would be video card intensive and should therefore be turned off for me to have a decent playing experience. I mean anything from spec maps, normal maps, mipmapping to resolution and bit depth. Thanks!

[General Battuta]

Hrm. We've had players who just use an Intel Integrated (assume that's what you have). You should probably keep just about everything off for a start...see if you can play with the MediaVPs at all.

[MatthTheGeek]

Normal map on an intelgrated won't be rendered at all anyway, since the shaders required for those won't be loaded. Glow and spec work fine, at least on my old rig. To be honest, an intelgrated can run the MVPs fine, as long as the CPU and the RAM are sufficient. I'm currently working on a MVP-lite for netbooks, you might want to wait a bit for that if you can't run the current MVPs smoothly.

[JCDNWarrior]

Thats horrible though, a good rig and no video card?

At least Intel's integrated solutions have finally improved themselves a lot over the old generation.

[T-LoW]

I have a rather cheap Geforce 320M inside my Notebook. It's the cheapest gaming-solution I could find - and it runs the engine just as smooth as my desktop computer does - well of course some missions with a lot of action slow down a little, but that's bearable. I can even play DragonAge with 20-40 fps on it (total cost was about 720€ IIRC).

[falcon2105]

I mean the game runs. But mv_advanced obviously doesn't work, and sometimes the slow down is pretty horrendous. I was wondering how mipmapping and spec mapping, glow maps, enviromaps, lighting to missiles, 3d shockwaves,  are processed. I know in games like Dawn of War, lots of the video options are actually handled by the CPU and have nothing to do with the video card, so I was wondering what options in SCP are the same.

[QuantumDelta]

Laptop -> Good rig
No comprende~

It is worth picking up a reasonable laptop gpu card if you have the expansion slot though, but generally speaking certain hardware requirements need GPUs, so although you will have no trouble running FSO you will probably never have access to some of the shinies without a card.

[Dragon]

You should be able to at least enable glow maps (ships start looking really weird without them) and shine maps.

[MatthTheGeek]

Well, you can't enable glow maps on retail ships that don't have them, you see ? You need to have ships that have them, hence MVPs.

[Capt_Thunder]

MVP-lite for on board graphics is a great idea. But I have two questions. 1) what will we miss in terms of picture quality and special effects. And 2) Lets say I reach half way into a mission. but I have to visit some family over the weekend. what would I need to copy over to continue my mission on a laptop.

[General Battuta]

Do you mean halfway through a campaign?

[Zacam]

MVP-lite for on board graphics is a great idea. But I have two questions. 1) what will we miss in terms of picture quality and special effects. And 2) Lets say I reach half way into a mission. but I have to visit some family over the weekend. what would I need to copy over to continue my mission on a laptop.

Assuming that your install on a Desktop matches the install on your Laptop (while the laptop would be running the 'Lite' version, of course), so long as they are both using the same executable, you would just need to copy over the pilot file and campaign data save files, theINory.

[Capt_Thunder]

Thanks and Sorry, I meant a campaign. I found the pilot file - C:\Games\FreeSpace2\data\players\single\inferno . But where is - "campaign data save files". I am playing "Artifice" currently.

[General Battuta]

I believe your pilot file contains your campaign progress.

[Zacam]

The *.pl2 is the pilot file. The corresponding *.cs2 is the campaign save file.

[Rampage]

Why is this in the FSU forum?

[Capt_Thunder]

I know most persons would prefer real textures compared to cell shaded. But would cell shaded textures be easier on Intel on board graphics on Lab top computers.?  Want to bring it back in the lite version.
would the lite version be an installer or a portable application ( a simple paste and run application)
Do you have a separate thread for updates on it?