Display performance warning on first startup if low FPS

[tomreyn]

When the game loads the main menu for the first time, and after displaying it for 3 seconds, RenderFPS is <= 55, it should display a warning message indicating that the combination of hardware and software the game is running on may be insufficient and which counter measures are available. It should also offer to set some defaults which are known to improve performance. It should also point out that this message is displayed only once and achieve this by setting an option in glestuser.ini.

Example message:

Experience warning
The environment (hardware, drivers, operating system, configuration of all of these) MegaGlest operates in may not provide sufficient performance to allow you to fully enjoy the game. Read more about this at http://faq.megaglest.org/.
It is recommended that you configure MegaGlest to a low performance profile. Would you like this done?

[OK]    [Cancel]

If this is confirmed, another message indicating that a restart is necessary should be displayed.

Restart needed
The low performance profile has been configured.

You should now restart MegaGlest to apply these changes.

[OK]

Maybe the FirstTime INI setting which is currently set to false in glest.ini (not sure why we did this) can be reused here.

If the first prompt is confirmed, the following options should be set in glestuser.ini:

Code: [Select]

AnimatedTilesetObjects=50
EnableVideos=0
Filter=Bilinear
FilterMaxAnisotropy=1
FogOfWarSmoothing=false
FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip=5
MaxLights=4
No2DMouseRendering=1
RainEffect=0
Shadows=Disabled
ShadowTextureSize=256
Textures3D=false
TilesetParticles=false
UnitParticles=false


[Omega]

Wouldn't it be better to set MaxLights to 1 instead of 4? And changing ShadowTextureSize should be unnecessary if we're disabling shadows. For AnimatedTilesetOptions, would the animated models in excess of this number be rendered as static models? If so, perhaps that could be set to 0, as animated tileset models are pretty minor compared to, say, unit particle effects (which can seriously change some units).  Has anyone tried a benchmark of 3D textures on a low end system? I was under the impression that it didn't make much of a difference for performance, but disabling it makes water incredibly ugly.

Would it be possible to have two low graphical levels? Say, one "low" and one "very low"?

[tomreyn]

Wouldn't it be better to set MaxLights to 1 instead of 4?

Whether you set this to 4 or 1 make no noticeable different performance-wise on both of the systems discussed in my signature. Have you (or anyone else) made different experiences?

And changing ShadowTextureSize should be unnecessary if we're disabling shadows.

Not until the user decides to enable shadows. And since we already know her hardware isn't too great, it can make some sense to set a low default there.

For AnimatedTilesetOptions, would the animated models in excess of this number be rendered as static models? If so, perhaps that could be set to 0, as animated tileset models are pretty minor compared to, say, unit particle effects (which can seriously change some units).

I assume that animated models in excess of this number be rendered as static models. This option is rather new, I haven't experimented with it, yet. Unit particle effects can be somewhat performance hungry, and can't be capped, so this seemed like the better candidate to compromise on.

Has anyone tried a benchmark of 3D textures on a low end system? I was under the impression that it didn't make much of a difference for performance, but disabling it makes water incredibly ugly.

Would it be possible to have two low graphical levels? Say, one "low" and one "very low"?

My approach is the very low one here, assuming that most people will experiment with options anyways if they are in this situation. It's better to have this very low / failsafe mode than to have one which might just be low enough for some, still keeping the game unusable for others. And I don't think I'd want to maintain two such profiles, nor support this hardware too well, since people should know they really bought the wrong hardware if they want to play games with it (so they can make a better choice next time they or their friends and family go shopping).