Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of giving Vanguard another shot. I really enjoy both the crafting concepts and I also have been enjoying the diplomacy game. I haven't been able to really give combat a chance because the game is just too "choppy" for me at the moment.

I currently have an dual core Opteron 165 clocked at 2.5GHz. It is extremely stable and runs with 2GBs of Ram. I also picked up an nVidia 9600 about 6 months ago with 512MB of Ram. I currently have 2 RAIDs. My smaller one made up of 2 10k RPM raptors (stripped) are for my system and virtual file while the larger RAID made up of 2 7200 RPM WDs (stripped) are for my programs, games and data. Both raids are defragged weekly with Perfect Disk which does offline file defrags for best performance. The system is a few years old and works very solid with all my games. In fact, the only reason why I upgraded to the nVidia 9600 was to be able to try out Age of Conan and the price for the card (at the time) couldn't be beat.

By default, the game loads up for me with Moderate performance settings. Which the system should be able to easily handle. Swiveling my character around, I get absolutely no performance lag. In fact, it feels like a redicously high frame rate.

However, when I move my character, I am seeing stuff poping into place and the framerate goes down to the low single digits (3 to 4 fps) for a split second and then everything is fast again. This happens every so many feet my character moves.

I have tried turning the view distance, the tree detail range and even lowered all the performance options. None of which seemed to make any difference even after restarting the client. I did, however, notice that every time my screen studders, it looks like the game is loading files off of my hard drives. So, I think that this may not be a graphics performance issue at all. It's almost like the game isn't caching anything at all and everything is running off of the hard drive. Are there cache settings for objects loaded in the game?

Would anyone have any suggestions?

NOTE: I am running Windows Vista 64-bit. I double checked and my memory is a few hundred meg below the 2 gig cap when playing Vangaurd.

The hitching is an issue introdeced into game about a week ago, and it can be bad or completely off on different logins. Dev team has been notified about it and I think fix is coming as soon as they find the cause.

<Insert not fanboyish "It wasnt that bad a week ago, honest" clause here> ;)

Originally posted by rturja

The hitching is an issue introdeced into game about a week ago, and it can be bad or completely off on different logins. Dev team has been notified about it and I think fix is coming as soon as they find the cause.

<Insert not fanboyish "It wasnt that bad a week ago, honest" clause here> ;)

Thanks for the reply. Looks like bad timing to do the trial though.

Originally posted by Kaelaan21

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of giving Vanguard another shot. I really enjoy both the crafting concepts and I also have been enjoying the diplomacy game. I haven't been able to really give combat a chance because the game is just too "choppy" for me at the moment.

I currently have an dual core Opteron 165 clocked at 2.5GHz. It is extremely stable and runs with 2GBs of Ram. I also picked up an nVidia 9600 about 6 months ago with 512MB of Ram. I currently have 2 RAIDs. My smaller one made up of 2 10k RPM raptors (stripped) are for my system and virtual file while the larger RAID made up of 2 7200 RPM WDs (stripped) are for my programs, games and data. Both raids are defragged weekly with Perfect Disk which does offline file defrags for best performance. The system is a few years old and works very solid with all my games. In fact, the only reason why I upgraded to the nVidia 9600 was to be able to try out Age of Conan and the price for the card (at the time) couldn't be beat.

By default, the game loads up for me with Moderate performance settings. Which the system should be able to easily handle. Swiveling my character around, I get absolutely no performance lag. In fact, it feels like a redicously high frame rate.

However, when I move my character, I am seeing stuff poping into place and the framerate goes down to the low single digits (3 to 4 fps) for a split second and then everything is fast again. This happens every so many feet my character moves.

I have tried turning the view distance, the tree detail range and even lowered all the performance options. None of which seemed to make any difference even after restarting the client. I did, however, notice that every time my screen studders, it looks like the game is loading files off of my hard drives. So, I think that this may not be a graphics performance issue at all. It's almost like the game isn't caching anything at all and everything is running off of the hard drive. Are there cache settings for objects loaded in the game?

Would anyone have any suggestions?

NOTE: I am running Windows Vista 64-bit. I double checked and my memory is a few hundred meg below the 2 gig cap when playing Vangaurd.

I was on for a bit last night in Tursh and didn't see any lag issues with my system.   I logged into the game in the middle of the tursh tow and ran to the crafting barn.  It was smooth till I just got past the corn field they  I had 2-3 hitchs and then everything was fine.  I did some crafting and ran back to the broker.  I didn't experience any hitching.

I have vista 64 bit also.

The only thing I can think is that perhaps the cache is bad?  You might try doing a /flush.  This won't eliminate the hitching as it does that to build the cache and /flush should get rid of it.  But once the cache has been built which happens when you move around an area for the first time the hitching should go away.  Like you said the hitching is loading stuff off disk.  Several updates ago they created a compiled texture cache that greatly reduces this hitching.

Another thing you could try is go into the vanguard install directory, then bin, then cache.  Make a backup copy of everything in this directory then delete it all.  Restart VG and it will reload some files and you will start clean without compiled shaders and it will download/rebuild the shaders.  This might help.

Good Luck

Originally posted by ethion

I was on for a bit last night in Tursh and didn't see any lag issues with my system.   I logged into the game in the middle of the tursh tow and ran to the crafting barn.  It was smooth till I just got past the corn field they  I had 2-3 hitchs and then everything was fine.  I did some crafting and ran back to the broker.  I didn't experience any hitching.

I have vista 64 bit also.

The only thing I can think is that perhaps the cache is bad?  You might try doing a /flush.  This won't eliminate the hitching as it does that to build the cache and /flush should get rid of it.  But once the cache has been built which happens when you move around an area for the first time the hitching should go away.  Like you said the hitching is loading stuff off disk.  Several updates ago they created a compiled texture cache that greatly reduces this hitching.

Another thing you could try is go into the vanguard install directory, then bin, then cache.  Make a backup copy of everything in this directory then delete it all.  Restart VG and it will reload some files and you will start clean without compiled shaders and it will download/rebuild the shaders.  This might help.

Good Luck

I doubt that the cache is corrupt since this is a fresh install from the trial and is only a few hours old. I'll go in tonight and remove the cache directory to let it recompute the shaders for my card. I'll also try the /flush as well.

This could just be my misunderstanding. Since I am a brand new player with a brand new client, it could possibly just be building the cache for the first time. However, it seems to do it even when revisiting the same area. But, to be honest, I didn't go too far.

I went to the official forums and I found some different settings for the .ini file as well. I'm going to try those out as well.

Originally posted by Kaelaan21

This could just be my misunderstanding. Since I am a brand new player with a brand new client, it could possibly just be building the cache for the first time. However, it seems to do it even when revisiting the same area. But, to be honest, I didn't go too far.

 

Finished playing from Level 5 to level 10 on the island this evening in a group of 4 (then 5), No hitching problems beyond the initial loading.

Basically, if it's still hitching after you've spun around in place and moved more than 20ft, it's not loading hitching.

Some hitching is normal in a new area for the first time.  Maybe you just need to run around a bit and it will smooth out.

Tip to max out your system performance in any game:

1. Get 2 more GBram, it is cheap right now.

2. Install Lavasoft Add-Aware. Free program to clear of any malware, slows you down a lot if you got some.

3. Get Easycleaner, free program. Clean the registry, take off all junk from the startup meny, kill off all dead links. Very useful program.

4. Defrag your harddrive. Have 10% free on it.

This few things usually opt your performance together with getting the latest drivers for your system.

Good luck

Originally posted by Loke666

Tip to max out your system performance in any game:

1. Get 2 more GBram, it is cheap right now.

2. Install Lavasoft Add-Aware. Free program to clear of any malware, slows you down a lot if you got some.

3. Get Easycleaner, free program. Clean the registry, take off all junk from the startup men