Mac: S&M3 is very laggy.
I have a black macbook late 2008.
It lags when im on straight and narrow, and everywhere else is somewhat decent, but still laggy nonetheless.
On 1280 x 800 (lowered) and 1 Graphics.
Intel GMA X3100:
Chipset Model: GMA X3100
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Total): 144 MB
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
it runs SOOOO smooth on the start/menu screen though.
It lags when im on straight and narrow, and everywhere else is somewhat decent, but still laggy nonetheless.
On 1280 x 800 (lowered) and 1 Graphics.
Intel GMA X3100:
Chipset Model: GMA X3100
Type: GPU
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Total): 144 MB
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
it runs SOOOO smooth on the start/menu screen though.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Judging from where I see the choppiness the most (around Straight and Narrow), I'd guess that it's something about shadows that are causing most of the issue, but the choppiness persists elsewhere.
Wait a moment, if I drop my resolution down to 1920x1080, the menu text graphics look a whole lot less 'stretched', and my performance problems disappear. Very interesting, I'll have to play like this for now.
Here's an example of the 'stretched' graphics: 2560x1440 (Be sure to zoom in)
And the more normal graphics: 1920x1080
The intro tutorial works fine but once I get to street level the framerate drops significantly.
But if changing some aspect of the resolution causes a huge framerate difference, that may be an engine bug. Of course, droping from 2560 to 1920 is a pretty big resolution drop so the framerate increase is probably just due to pushing fewer pixels.
Maybe it's a matter of textures being unpacked or some other background process on the first time through? I dunno.
Actually, just lowered it to 800 x 600, with 1 graphics. And it can run smoothly on narrow.
Maybe it's that engine thing Kevin mentioned.
No matter what, get the choppy performance from the outset, the graphics level or if it's windowed or full screen don't matter, but could be an additional layer of poor performance if set too high. If you have poor performance, first lower the graphics detail to 6, since 7 is when the shadows kick in.
After that, if you still have poor performance, you can work around it by switching back and forth between full screen and windowed (cmd-F) once to restart or do something to get the game engine going properly, and again to get back to whatever you wanted it set as.
What i've found is that if you switch from full screen to windowed, and try to move with the keyboard, it has no effect other than to get OSX to beep at you. You have to click in order to foreground the window and then you can play. Now before you've clicked the performance has already cleaned up nicely, but I have an inkling it could possibly maybe be some wacky glitch that the game isn't properly in the foreground.
It's either that or they're two completely unrelated things and Ive just found work around.
Speaking of unrelated, but still related, I've also encountered the occasional bug when switching from windowed to full screen, where the screen breaks into lots of squares of random gibberish (cut up image of the desktop) and starts to flicker at me. Seems to happen most with graphics levels 1 and 6.
Hope that some fine fellow can come along and fix this soon, though, and that I've been of some use to someone.
It's quite likely that you're being hampered by your integrated graphics. Even so, give my switch to windowed and back trick a try at some slightly higher settings, and see if it does the trick.
I guess your right. Sam and Max uses just about every single byte of video ram I have at 2560x. The processors and ram just sit there, but the GPU is pegged the entire time so the CPU just has to wait.
Watch as my free video memory goes to 20 MB in this image.
I guess that Sam and Max is just beyond what hardware is currently available from Apple, at 2560x resolution at least. But my woes are small compared to those with older hardware.
- Start game, play intro. Framerate is top notch.
- Intro sequence runs
- Load screen
- Cutscene on the street plays, framerate is bad (I estimate 15-20 fps).
- Save and quit
- Resume save, framerate is great again.
- Enter Stinky's. Framerate is worse (back to 15-20)
- Exit Stinky's. Framerate is worse still.
At any point, restarting the game makes it all better, until the next location change. That kind of leads me to think 'resource leak' and not an incapable system. Also, I rebooted into Windows 7 via Boot Camp and had no such problems at the same settings.
System specs:
Model: Mac Pro (MacPro3,1)
CPU: Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
Memory: 8GB
Video card: GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Resolution: 2048x1152
I run also a 2008 MacBook pro.
other scenes with laggy graphics:
When standing near the desoto at "straight and narrow"
Max's View on bosco tech.
rest is perfectely smooth at 1440*900, the video scenes are leggy in every resolution.
First time it booted up it was less than one frame a second once the 3D models came in, I believe because the graphics default to 9. I had to force quit it to leave.
I boot it up again and I can play at native resolution (1440x900) at graphics quality 3 smoothly unless I am controlling Max, where it slows down. I get to the street scene, right after getting out of the ship, where the frame rate again drops to around 4-5 frames per second. I have to force quit again to leave.
Now on the third time I boot it up and the game runs poorly (15-20) at any resolution and graphics quality. The game now looks to have the blur filter on all the time (or whatever you would call that, it looks like it blurs the whole frame even without anti-aliasing ). It is the same filter that Tales of Monkey Island had. But it kicked in around graphics level 7 in that game and also killed my performance (plus I don't really like the way it looks).
Any suggestions? This is kind of bumming me out.
Dont know if this helps or if i'm just spamming you with nonsense, but running S&M3 using /SamMax301.app/Contents/MacOS/Mac_Game, terminal starts and show error messages.
A lot of D3D errors there.
Interesting.. (for me at least:) ) ((Same happens with ToMI))
Here's a sampling:
This build should feature better performance for Macs. For those of you that had problems with 301 but finished the game anyway (either on Mac or swapping to bootcamp), could you try this new version of 302 and tell us if it fixes your problems? If this doesn't fix everything, then hopefully it will provide us with a lot of feedback so we can improve things further.
TO CHECK IF YOU HAVE THE MOST RECENT VERSION: Right click the 302 .app and check the version number. The new version is 1.0.1.25. Don't trust the version number in the wrapper, it's being stubborn and won't change.
That's absolutely brilliant!
How did you do it?
I noticed that the change from 1.0.0.25 to 1.0.1.25 dropped around 80MB in size.
But whatever it was, it's a flipping miracle, because now I can run at 1920x1200 (external display) with detail setting 9 on my 2007 MBP with the 8600M GT. And it looks fantastic.
My only complaints are that occasionally there's a hiccup when the game changes angle or something and the audio goes a little out of sync. But it's far from a big deal compared to what was going on before.
BTW, no idea what you mean about the game wrapper, Get Info on the app shows 1.0.1.25 for the new version.
after quitting this episode the "mouse-problem" seems to be solved as well.
I've just downloaded the newest version of 302, and it works wonders. It runs very smoothly even on graphics setting 5. The only problem I've found was when the narrator is talking, there is a slight pause when the background changes (when he stands up and walks away). Dispute that, it runs beautifully:D. This should help with the fixing of 301.