Very hot

[goebelchx]

I see nothing on CPU-Z utility that shows the CPU temperature. Where are you seeing temperature reported?
- frustrated Grimrock crashed game player.

Make sure both fan and air ducts of your laptop are absolutely clean!

Next check where the heat is produced.
LoG2 makes good use of both CPU and GPU so use GPU-Z to check your grafics card/chip and CPU-Z to check your processor temperature.

In case your GPU renders more frames then necessary (either check with Fraps or "debugInfo = true" inside "grimrock.cfg") activate vsync+tripple buffer in both Log2 options and video driver.

[Dr.Disaster]

my follow-up post told the OP

Oops, wrong tool for the CPU; use HWMonitor instead.

Have the tools run in background or switch LoG to "Windowed" or "Borderless" mode, then check temperatures while playing.

[Neutronium Dragon]

I'm coming to this thread a bit late, but is the problem mostly showing up on laptops or is it frequently hitting desktop systems as well?

It's true that a system's cooling should be able to handle the excess heat unless something is wrong with it, but laptops generally don't seem to be designed with gaming in mind unless they're specifically marketed as such, so you can easily run into the 'budget hardware' issues that afflict low end desktops. While a cooling system that just isn't sufficient in its own right is one possibility (since the manufacturer figured that it would only see short bursts, if that), another possibility is that the PSU isn't capable of keeping everything going at high power over long periods, which could easily result in both performance problems and overheating/crashes (usually the same issue with the manufacturer figuring that more wouldn't be needed).

As for the rendering issue, it isn't reasonable to expect a complete rewrite of the game engine at this point - that's something for LoG3 - but capping the rendering distance in outdoor scenes might be best compromise in the meantime. Yes, it'll look awful in some respects, and certain areas might be difficult to deal with at a really low tile range, but an "everything beyond (N) tiles is occluded" setting (even if it's banished to the .cfg file and doesn't show up on the main menu) seems like it would be relatively simple (as much as these things ever are) to implement?

[minmay]

As for the rendering issue, it isn't reasonable to expect a complete rewrite of the game engine at this point - that's something for LoG3 - but capping the rendering distance in outdoor scenes might be best compromise in the meantime. Yes, it'll look awful in some respects, and certain areas might be difficult to deal with at a really low tile range, but an "everything beyond (N) tiles is occluded" setting (even if it's banished to the .cfg file and doesn't show up on the main menu) seems like it would be relatively simple (as much as these things ever are) to implement?

You can run this in the debug console:

Code: Select all

for e in party.map:allEntities() do if e.sky then e.sky:setFarClip(32) return end end

The skybox on the party's level will then appear in front of anything more than 32 meters away (1 tile = 3 meters). Anything behind it is occluded. Any value for the farClip should work, doesn't have to be a power of 2. It does, as you said, look absolutely terrible, but you can do it.
Changing the fog distance should also work if you want a slightly better-looking approach.

[Dr.Disaster]

While a cooling system that just isn't sufficient in its own right is one possibility (since the manufacturer figured that it would only see short bursts, if that), another possibility is that the PSU isn't capable of keeping everything going at high power over long periods, which could easily result in both performance problems and overheating/crashes (usually the same issue with the manufacturer figuring that more wouldn't be needed).

There are two reasons for a system to power off by itself:
1) the mainboard's BIOS issues an emergency shutdown for whatever reason with heat being just one
2) the PSU is overloaded due to age, a fault or being too small in general

1) can cause a regular shut down while 2) is a clean and immediate power off.
Naturally you'll then check for any heat issues but if you can't find any it's very likely the PSU.

You can run this in the debug console:

Code: Select all

for e in party.map:allEntities() do if e.sky then e.sky:setFarClip(32) return end end

The skybox on the party's level will then appear in front of anything more than 32 meters away (1 tile = 3 meters). Anything behind it is occluded.

Nice find! This can help players to fine-tune their fps.

[badhabit]

As for the rendering issue, it isn't reasonable to expect a complete rewrite of the game engine at this point - that's something for LoG3 - but capping the rendering distance in outdoor scenes might be best compromise in the meantime. Yes, it'll look awful in some respects, and certain areas might be difficult to deal with at a really low tile range, but an "everything beyond (N) tiles is occluded" setting (even if it's banished to the .cfg file and doesn't show up on the main menu) seems like it would be relatively simple (as much as these things ever are) to implement?

You can run this in the debug console:

Code: Select all

for e in party.map:allEntities() do if e.sky then e.sky:setFarClip(32) return end end

The skybox on the party's level will then appear in front of anything more than 32 meters away (1 tile = 3 meters). Anything behind it is occluded. Any value for the farClip should work, doesn't have to be a power of 2. It does, as you said, look absolutely terrible, but you can do it.
Changing the fog distance should also work if you want a slightly better-looking approach.

Awesome, Thanks! And shit... why was this existing mechanism ("maxViewdistance") not added as option/CFG? We begged Petri to give us somemore options to improve the performance...

PS: some more ideas for performance influencing options? didn't found a ref for fog distance