[ZmaN]

Well, I'm out with my dad working with him, in his tractor trailer....  I wanna play FSO on his laptop, and well i forgot eh second cd.....  I cant download it because the wireless internet connection we have is wayy to slow....  I cant figure out whats wrong, but it happens when I play Inferno, and the main FS2 Campaign...  What happens is this:

I disable the laptops antivirus, which makes the loading times really long (its EZ Antivirus, which I had on my desktop PC, and never had that problem..)  and play the main campaign (and inferno), and it just freezes up to a chug (like .000005 frames per second, i reckon)....  It resumes 50 seconds later and then freezes again after a second of clean playing...  I tried both the 3.6.7 build and 3.6.5 builds, and the same result...  it doesnt do this in retail, retail FS2 works perfectly.....  Any suggestions people?  I REALLY NEED TO PLAY FS2 OR I WILL BE BOARD OUT OF MY MIND!! 

PS:  it mainly happens when I am firing my weapons or when a ship warps in (not out, in)...

[WMCoolmon]

What mediaVPs are you using?

[ZmaN]

the ones that the 3.6.5 installer puts in, which i think is 'mv_core.vp'...

[karajorma]

Why the hell are you using such an old build?

[ZmaN]

well if u had read my first post, i tried 3.6.7 and 3.6.5 and both of them failed, so i just left 3.6.5 installed...  oh its no problem, i still have the 3.6.7 files on the laptop...

Now, can somebody please help me???  Im being critcised and asked questions and no answers have been given...

[WMCoolmon]

Well you should be using the same mediaVPv versions as the FS2_Open build, or else there's no guarantee that they will work at all.

So far it sounds like a performance issue, but without system specs on the laptop it's hard to say.

[karajorma]

I'm not critcising. I'm wondering why you are choosing to use something so old instead of trying a newer CVS build to solve your problems.

What command lines are you using?

[ZmaN]

the laptop specs are good... my dad just got it recently...

Pentium M 1.6 ghz (works like a 2.6!!)
512MB RAM
Intel 915G Onboard Video
Onboard sound

Its a Dell Laptop, Inspiron 2200

Whats a CVS build?  I am using official builds, Ive never used a fan made build (the ones under recent builds...)

Should I use a CVS build?
I was using the -mod command line to run inferno, but if im not running a mod, i dont use any command lines....

[Fenrir]

That's exactly the specs I've got on my laptop. I remember getting all sorts of lag when I tried playing Inferno on it too, though it's been some months since then and the CVS builds have only been getting more and more stable for me. It also helps to play in OpenGL mode since D3D freezes the instant something bigger than a bomber explodes.

[karajorma]

Whats a CVS build?  I am using official builds, Ive never used a fan made build (the ones under recent builds...)

Official builds and CVS builds are made by the same people The difference is that the official builds are released following a long (often too long) period of testing and bug fixing so they are supposed to be more free of bugs than the CVS builds. However many people find the CVS builds more stable so it's usually worth trying them out.

[WMCoolmon]

I did a little research on the laptop...I found some info on a slightly different model, that apparently uses shared memory. Assuming that's the case here, your problem is probably that you're running out of RAM so it has to page in stuff from the hard drive.

So, stuff you could do; remove one or more mediaVPs. I think I'd go with effects; music doesn't use that memory, but you could try removing that. You certainly shouldn't be using mv_adveffects. removing mv_textures will get rid of shine and glow maps, so I wouldn't recommend getting rid of that except as a last resort, so models would be the next-to-last option.

If you get ahold of a recent build...anything 12/29 and later is incompatible with the third mediaVP 3.6.7 patch and later. However, one of the recent CVS builds will let you use the -img2dds option, which will compress all textures. In 3.6.7, I think there's an option "-pcx2dds" that you could use.


I don't know if I'd suggest going to 3.6.8-delta. It has more high-poly models, but has more media, so it might lag more.

[ZmaN]

i tried the "inferno optimized 12/29 build and it ran MUCH more stable than before...  though I did have to remakee a pilot file, its no big deal...  I was only a couple of missions into it anyway....

I especially like the fact that u can have all the builds of FSO you want in the Freespace 2 directory, yet all u ahve to do is select one of them that you wanna open....

great work guys...

thanks so much
zman...  ill letya know more results when i get em...