Slow mouse and tech specs

[Jagger2002]

My mouse moves considerably slower than normal while playing the game. I have tried some of the forum suggestions which has improved mouse performance but it still moves slower than comfortable. It is playable but trying to my patience and sometimes I will miss a mouse click because the mouse is not quite where I expect it to be.

Here are the specs for my computer and Nvidia GEForce 210 video card. Considering my technical specifications, should I see a slow mouse? Are there any other suggestions considering my setup that might help with mouse performance? I would appreciate any additional suggestions.

Computer
Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU 2.50Ghz
Installed Memory (RAM) 4 GB
64 bit OS


Nvidia GEForce210 Video card
Total available graphics 2775 MB
Dedicated Video Memory 1024 MB
System video memory 0 MB
Shared System Memory 1751 MB

[zakblood]

my opinion may differ from what you have already been told or had suggested etc,

these are my personal views as a player and tester of games and not a mod here...

as always have a clean profile with as little or as less apps and programs running at the time you play a demanding game, eg disable almost everything at your startup so no junk is loaded, eg anything you don't need auto loading each and every boot.

defrag your hard drive, so it's 100% defragged and has plenty of free space for temp and swap files etc for windows to run.

turn off screen savers and run your hardware at maximum power, so go into power saving / power sleep etc and change from default to max with no power saving on.

turn off all windows background special effects.

here's mine for a compare

Untitled.jpg (163.97 KiB) Viewed 4645 times

alter the mouse in windows to be a higher DPI or better performance etc

The first thing you want to do is make sure your windows mouse sensitivity settings are correct. Go to Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer Options Tab - and apply the listed settings. Next you want to find out what DPI (Dots Per sq Inch) your mouse is running on and change it to somewhere between 400-500

(this is something you will have to guess and try for yourself as it depends on hardware)

now we come to the harder bit, this is the boot options of your pc, you need to go into the bios and see if there is a setting for the bios to alter the shared ram to the video card?

if so disable it or make it as small as you can, some go to 0 others have no options, if your lucky you may have one that's says 64mb etc or less, 0 is best, the lower the better, as you don't need system ram to be shared with the VGA card for the game, your system will use the extra power better than the game will, as for a 64bit o/s, 4gb is low, enough, but still low.

so if you free up this resources for windows to use what's left is enough for the game on the card, so windows has more, the game will use be better for it, FPS wise, then see if doing all this alters the performance enough for you to play it better.

as always no one guide suits everyone hardware or O/S version installed, but here's a tip all the same in a link with pictures explaining it more

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https://levelskip.com/consoles/How-to-Make-Games-Run-Faster-on-Your-Laptop

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http://www.liutilities.com/how-to/make-your-computer-game-run-faster/

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https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Computer-Run-Faster

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http://www.usgamer.net/articles/basic-ways-to-optimize-your-pc-for-a-better-gaming-experience

each one has it's merits

[pipfromslitherine]

I'm quite surprised that it plays at all Are you running with shadows on low (or, as a last resort, off)? Lowering the screen resolution should also help with performance.

Cheers

Pip

[zakblood]

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 88&t=79647

i've tested it on a few older laptops, and got it running ok, slow, but usable on about the same

Operating System: Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
Processor: n/a (no idea why it didn't put it in either) it's a dual core celeron T3000 @ 1.80GHz
Memory: 3072MB RAM
Card name: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1)
Display Memory: 1565 MB
Dedicated Memory: 64 MB
Shared Memory: 1501 MB
Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

mouse use was poor, but got it working better, just took a while, adding in more ram to the overall system would have been quicker and easier for me to do tbh, but worked with what i had, without reaching into my box of spares to upgrade it

[Jagger2002]

Thanks Zakblood, I will give it a shot over the next few days. Keeping my fingers crossed.

slow, but usable on about the same

That is pretty much what I have got. However as far as I can tell, I meet the hardware requirements. So I am hoping some tweaking will pick up performance a bit.

[Toby42]

When a system uses up the dedicated memory, will it tap into the display memory if needed? Or is the dedicated memory all that you can use?

[pipfromslitherine]

DX will move texture data into the card as needed from main memory (where it keeps it backed up). This is obviously slower than if it keeps it in video memory all the time. Note that some integrated chips use main memory as a unified memory store, meaning it reads directly from it.

Cheers

Pip

[Jagger2002]

-as for a 64bit o/s, 4gb is low, enough, but still low.-

-adding in more ram to the overall system would have been quicker and easier for me to do tbh, --

So in your opinion, my major deficiency in my systerm is RAM.... As you can probably guess, I never play anything that is remotely graphics intensive. So I have never noticed a problem until now.

Btw, I implemented a number of your suggestions but unfortunately, mouse is still struggling. So buying some RAM might be the solution and RAM is really cheap. So if I add 2GB to my 4GB RAM, is minimum 6GB enough to take care of mouse problems?

[pipfromslitherine]

While it is very much system specific, increasing the amount of system RAM you have is very unlikely to give better performance. If you are looking to improve, then replace your video card. To give an example the benchmark for a 210 is about 177, while that for a $75 GT 1030 is 2286. That is a massive difference. It is a low-end card released 8 years ago, so that is not a shock.

That said, CPU also accounts for performance. If lowering your resolution increases performance then that is generally a good indicator that a better video card will help.

I assume you are running with shadows off, and you can also try adding DEBUGSLIM 1 to your USER.TXT file to reduce texture resolution.

Cheers

Pip

[Cablenexus]

Hi, I have the same problem with the mouse lag, but only in one specific menu, the MP lobby. Ingame and in all other menu's the mousemovement is smooth (also in all other games I have based on this engine).

Intel Dual Core 2.66, 8GB RAM, AMD R7 2GB, 1680 x 1050 AMD driver version 17.10.1 with AMD profile Vertical Sync set to always off as suggested.

Changing any setting (aa, shadow etc) doesn't change the mouse lag that happened ONLY in MP lobby (even with the DEBUGSLIM 1 fix) Any idea what I can try more?

[pipfromslitherine]

Hi, I have the same problem with the mouse lag, but only in one specific menu, the MP lobby. Ingame and in all other menu's the mousemovement is smooth (also in all other games I have based on this engine).

Intel Dual Core 2.66, 8GB RAM, AMD R7 2GB, 1680 x 1050 AMD driver version 17.10.1 with AMD profile Vertical Sync set to always off as suggested.

Changing any setting (aa, shadow etc) doesn't change the mouse lag that happened ONLY in MP lobby (even with the DEBUGSLIM 1 fix) Any idea what I can try more?

Odd - I will take a look. My guess is that it is likely a firewall or AV issue causing some additional work. Thankfully you don't need to spend a ton of time on the lobby screens.

Cheers

Pip

[Cablenexus]

Hi, I have the same problem with the mouse lag, but only in one specific menu, the MP lobby. Ingame and in all other menu's the mousemovement is smooth (also in all other games I have based on this engine).

Intel Dual Core 2.66, 8GB RAM, AMD R7 2GB, 1680 x 1050 AMD driver version 17.10.1 with AMD profile Vertical Sync set to always off as suggested.

Changing any setting (aa, shadow etc) doesn't change the mouse lag that happened ONLY in MP lobby (even with the DEBUGSLIM 1 fix) Any idea what I can try more?

Odd - I will take a look. My guess is that it is likely a firewall or AV issue causing some additional work. Thankfully you don't need to spend a ton of time on the lobby screens.

Cheers

Pip

Pip, I'm planning to spend the rest of my life in the MP lobby of this game!

[pipfromslitherine]

Hi, I have the same problem with the mouse lag, but only in one specific menu, the MP lobby. Ingame and in all other menu's the mousemovement is smooth (also in all other games I have based on this engine).

Intel Dual Core 2.66, 8GB RAM, AMD R7 2GB, 1680 x 1050 AMD driver version 17.10.1 with AMD profile Vertical Sync set to always off as suggested.

Changing any setting (aa, shadow etc) doesn't change the mouse lag that happened ONLY in MP lobby (even with the DEBUGSLIM 1 fix) Any idea what I can try more?

Odd - I will take a look. My guess is that it is likely a firewall or AV issue causing some additional work. Thankfully you don't need to spend a ton of time on the lobby screens.

Cheers

Pip

Pip, I'm planning to spend the rest of my life in the MP lobby of this game!

Well thanks for reporting this, as it let me track down some UI code which wasn't scaling well to a subset of use cases (damned artists! Using things!!). Once I fix the drawcall overload the issue should disappear.

Cheers

Pip

[zakblood]

While it is very much system specific, increasing the amount of system RAM you have is very unlikely to give better performance. If you are looking to improve, then replace your video card. To give an example the benchmark for a 210 is about 177, while that for a $75 GT 1030 is 2286. That is a massive difference. It is a low-end card released 8 years ago, so that is not a shock.

That said, CPU also accounts for performance. If lowering your resolution increases performance then that is generally a good indicator that a better video card will help.

I assume you are running with shadows off, and you can also try adding DEBUGSLIM 1 to your USER.TXT file to reduce texture resolution.

Cheers

Pip

as Pip has already pointed out, a newer or better card is a good idea, just make sure your case and motherboard supports it and also your power supply can, and it's rated for it, as old pc's don't tend to work with many new cards, so depending on make and model and age, be very careful of what model of vga card you go looking at, without first making sure fully what slot and type it can use and what power supply is fitted and what it's rated to handle.

in the UK it can be quite hard to find video cards for older pc's, where as memory is still made or easy to buy, video cards can be harder unless second hand etc for some slot types.

good luck all the same and hope some of it works or in the end you get a solution that works for you which isn't too costly.

[Cablenexus]

Well thanks for reporting this, as it let me track down some UI code which wasn't scaling well to a subset of use cases (damned artists! Using things!!). Once I fix the drawcall overload the issue should disappear.

Cheers

Pip

Thank you for looking at the problem. Hope you can solve it in a future patch.

[Cablenexus]

Just want to let you know that latest patch 1.0.2 solved the issue for me.

[zakblood]

glad to hear Cablenexus, hope the others come and say if it helped them or not to