Oh, sorry, I missed it, I didn't refresh before posting. Mine was cl_letter_box_amount 0.115000 And YAY! It works! Indeed, as soon as you put back a letterbox, whatever the size, it snaps to enclose the whole screen. How did you get that idea?
If this update isn't moving the graphics to the video card, then they need to loosen the restrictions some. Requiring 11.1 when it's the card that stops that from happening seems a waste.
Post patch (17821T): My pointer is translucent now (the mouse turning into an attack arrow or a loot arrow), it wasn't before. I thought it might be tied to the cursor options in User Interface, so I tried to click "Enable software cursor" but it crashed my game (twice) without any error message.
The client engine EQ2 uses was developed 20+ years ago and, at the time, everything was tilted towards ever-increasing clock speeds. Intel and AMD changed the name of the game with a shift towards multi-core CPUs and there was a significant push to get developers to switch to multi-threaded architectures. As far as I know, the EQ2 client is still a fundamentally and old-fashioned single threaded design where it sits in a tight loop, rendering the environment and processing network and KBM events.
Yeah, software cursor is a bit screwy. The cursor bmp size changes based on the monitor dpi setting. We expect a size of 32x32, but the DPI setting could make it 48x48 for example and we don't handle that correctly. Working on a fix for this.
So, basically, this game will be up on blocks or a mechanic's lift for......how long (sorry, I'm a native of southern California, and our metaphors tend to revolve around cars the way the Mongol and Cossack metaphors revolve around horses, for the same reasons)? :-/ 'Cause Sturm, love, that's basically a lot of "ifs" in your optimistic paragraph there. :-/ Uwk who's still worried about my laptop (which, so far as I know, can't be water-cooled without dropping it in a bathtub full of ice water) overheating, no matter how many air fans I own :-/
Would there be a way to, I dunno, "block" that without removing that line entirely, like setting it to "false" or whatever? I like letter box. :-/ Uwk
Hmm... :-/ First, I just tried doing mine as: cl_letter_box_amount 0.125000 false [I think that was the number; don't quote me] That didn't work. Then I tried deleting that line; that didn't work. :-/ Could be that I need that driver updated; I'll check on that. Uwk who really, really doesn't want my Win10 laptop overheating... X-P
D'oh! Of course... X-P Didn't work anyway to delete it (I knew I shoulda saved a more generic file of it, just in case X-P), but it may be just a matter of my needing to update a driver. :-/ Thanks anyway! If it re-creates itself (it may; who knows about such things), I'll see about commenting it out. Uwk
It's all good mate. I can understand being sceptical about this, or wanting to see the results more quickly, but I will keep that vision alive that there is more to come because I won't undererstimate our devs. Angelina's post mentions how multicore improvements are on the list of things that are very well within a certain range, and they even mention art upgrades to take advantage of dx11, so they wouldn't be saying that without reason. So far they have been delivering on their promises from a technical point of view, chances are looking good that they'll deliver again in due time. Also, we have seen other mmos improve their singlecore centric systems to incorporate more modern features and advancements to their old games, see here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/directx11-support-is-coming-to-guild-wars-2/ All of a sudden things start moving and improving. You will always have "ifs" with these things, but not all is completely impossible or out of reach. Some time ago ppl said 64-bit or even DX11 would be impossible for "old" games such as EQ1/2 and had already given up hope, but look at where we are now. All of a sudden it can be done as it is happening right before our eyes. How can we say the game won't ever start using the cpu/gpu more wisely in the future seeing how other games, and EQ2 itself, have done just that over the years? Arandar said it well, EQ2 comes from a different day and age, but then again, so does WoW, GW2, FF14, Swtor and some more. WoW and EQ2 even launched back to back and both were primarly single core games. They were all heavily cpu and single core bound initially, and they still are in a way, but they did start implementing more and more clever optimizations as time went on. They adapted to the more modern tech available and were able to optimize the load accross multiple cores and the gpu leading to better performance or more visual effects being possible. Sure, it's far from ideal in some cases, but it is an improvement. These games are all still single core bound to a certain extent, but they do make more and better use of the multicore systems and the gpu after upgrading their tech (including but not limited to DX11/12). IIRC EQ2 was strictly single core when it first launched, but as time went on, I remember seeing more and more multicore come into play with some things being pushed over to separate threads thus taking the load off the main thread. I literally remember seeing an option in the graphics settings that you could toggle on/off to enable/disable multicore optimizations for EQ2. That toggle isn't there anymore, so I can only assume enabling these patches was made the default at some point, because what I'm seeing on my system is how one core is getting the main workload, yes, but the other cores are still being used up to 30-75% varying between zones and locations. So that's already an improvement in my book, but it can go even further. It can be "optimized" even more. Same goes for features like cpu/gpu shadows. EQ2 used to have the option for cpu and gpu shadows, but now it's gpu shadows only. The idea here to further optimize the load accross several threads and use the gpu more wisely can benefit even more from DX11 in the long run. We have seen it get done in other mmos, other mmos that were just as single core as EQ2 post launch, and they have improved over time. So can we. Some recent benchmarks: WoW, even today still one core hitting harder than the rest, but it has improved over time WoW and FF14 comparison Interestingly, even EQ1 has improved in this regard, a game older than EQ2. At first only single core, 32-bit, dx6 ofc, but then things started changing. I still remember how we were given the option to manually enable and set affinity cores via ini so that EQ1 could make better use of multicore systems: it was hitting a single core pretty hard by default, not making much use of the other cores, but manually changing this option via config file increased performance on multicore systems big time. Nowadays that affinity ini entry has changed and become the standard for EQ1, see here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ading-any-other-future-benefits.280849/page-2 I quote EQ1: I just retested again and low and behold, all cores more or less evenly matched during normal gameplay situations accross old and some of the newer zones, not sure about raids as I don't do much of that anymore. Running through various zones you can see some spikes here and there, some zones hit harder than others, but it's spreaing the load much better and more even than it was a few years ago. EQ1 is an even older game than EQ2. So what I'm saying is, I expect things to improve for sure, no doubt about it tbh. Not immediately, but over time most certainly. To what extent, well, only time will tell. Personally I'm not expecting EQ2 to completely spread the load accross all cores and the gpu in a perfect 50/50 balance like more modern games do (IIRC New World is pretty good in this regard), but I think we can most certainly improve more and take it another step further this time around. I will be giving it the benefit of the doubt though and will wait to see what our devs are truly capable of once these things have fully stabilized and are optimized to their fullest extent.
Er, well, apparently AMD suggested we go over to HP and see if they had anything OEM available. The answer was yes, sort of; HP was disappointed to the extreme that we only had Win10, 22H2, which is now a sin, and the most recent driver was from May 2021. So we'll see how big a difference that makes. X-P EDIT: Nope. Not a whit. X-P Gonna try again over at AMD itself, and ignore its advice about "Don't bother us, go over to HP! Duh! " EDIT: Well, yeah, there are newer drivers on the AMD site, but everyone's screaming around about "For the love of G-d, whatever you do, DON'T USE OUR DRIVERS FOR YOUR LAPTOP!!! " X-P Kind of reminds me of Weird Al Yankovic's "Virus Alert" song... X-P EDIT: Nope. Nothing worked. My most recent driver is 2021, nothing will apparently change that on my laptop, and I get nothing but black UI even after deleting that cl_letter_box_amount jazz. X-P Uwk who guesses AMD didn't wanna get sued or something...
So, @Sturm, is that why, when I look at how things are going on Windows Task Manager, there's usually 3 different Everquest2.exe files up? They're spreading the load? Uwk
Uhm, that's strange, lol. No, I wouldn't know about that, and I don't think they will be doing that. I only see one EQ2.exe on my end, but I'll check again later tonight. Do all three take up the same amount of ram and cpu clocks in your case? Update: Just tried real quick and I only have a single eq2.exe both on live and on test. Are you actually seeing three of those?
Yep, I am (well. at least regular, non-Test EQ2 on my Win7 desktop), and nope, they're not taking up the same amount of RAM and cpu clocks. It's more like......(brief pause while I get in there; keep in mind that this is not how it actually looks in Task Manager, but I can't do any fancy formatting natively here, and the commas are U.S. usage): Primary one: Image Name = EverQuest2.exe | CPU = high 30s (this varies) | Memory (Private Working Set) = 1,668,216 K (this varies, too) | Description = EQ2 Client Application Secondary one: Image Name = EverQuest2.exe | CPU = 00 | Memory (Private Working Set) = 16,628 K | Description = EQ2 Client Application Tertiary one: Image Name = EverQuest2.exe | CPU = 00 | Memory (Private Working Set) = 6,738 K | Description = EQ2 Client Application I've been getting three of these for quite some time now; the secondary and tertiary ones don't vary much at all, but that Primary one is a major hog. :-/ When you talked about "spreading the load," I got all excited that someone had finally hit the nail on the head and solved that question... X-P And nope, I don't have 3 separate installations of the game anywhere. :-/ Uwk
