oelarnes Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 Hi, I am newly toying with Oblivion on my 2009 MacBook Pro (2.53 Core 2 Duo, GeFore 9400M). I have no interest in new hardware at this time. It seems to run the game nicely, on medium graphic settings I can get up to 40 FPS even in settings with lots of trees, grass, full draw distance, etc. Even in battles with 5-6 mobs and lots of magic effects it can sustain playable frame rates. However at times the frame rate drops precipitously, as low as 4 FPS which is obviously unplayable, then stays there until I escape and pause the game for a while. I'm pretty sure this is all due to my CPU (mainly because I can see the CPU load maxing out). Toggle AI doesn't seem to have much of an effect once it gets bad. Since mods are really the only thing I can control I'm trying to figure out how they will affect this problem. Specifically, I've unloaded MMM, since it seems to have lots of things going on in the background. I'm really interested in mods, and have no interest in playing the game without a leveling mod like OOO. So... what mods will affect CPU load? I'm assuming quest mods, minor tweaks like Hunger and Thirst Mods, LAME, DarNified, minor texture mods (book covers, etc), and spell and item mods will not have a big effect. What about OOO? MMM? Better Cities? Deadly Reflexes? Companion Mods? Is there a way for me to figure this stuff out of my own without painstaking testing? Thanks for any info you might have. It's frustrating because the game seems to be able to handle everything, then suddenly it can't... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hickory Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 Of all the mods you mentioned, Better Cities and MMM (more spawn rates), and possibly DarN, if your inventory gets overloaded, will have the most impact. Graphic intensive mods, like Better Cities, Quarl's Textures, RAEVWD are the worst, but if you want more specifics you will have to provide a list of your mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhahn123 Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 (edited) Mods in general have an impact on weaker systems. And every pc handles them differently, so to some extent you will have to experiment and see what works for you. There are certain game locations where lag always seems to be more intense, Imperial City Waterfront is one of them, especially if you run something like Better Cities Waterfront. My pc handles it fine, but I see comments from others all the time. Texture packs like Qarls are notorious for straining weaker graphics cards. MMM and Francescos can be taxing because they add so many new spawn points for both npcs and creatures. What you described with the fps drop can be caused many combinations of things. Being in battle with multiple npcs for example while looking in the direction of the imperial city, and in tall grass. Just depends on where your system is weak. My older pc struggled with multiple animals on screen at once, in particular the spiders added by MMM. I found out later that the real culprit was the "foot sound" animals have. The pc just couldn't handle a lot of them at once. So long story short...just play around and find out what functions well on your rig. Even if you can't use some mods that you like, there are a lot of mods to try out, you'll find some nice alternatives if you search around enough. Edited November 28, 2012 by mhahn123 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oelarnes Posted November 28, 2012 Author Share Posted November 28, 2012 I wonder if it is animals... I got three hours into my first game with MMM without any major problems, including a battle with 8 or so human characters, then went into a wolf den (yellow tick cave) and everything went to pieces. I've been testing changes by running a new character to this cave with various mods and graphics settings, and when there are humans, everything is fine. My assumption was the spawning and perhaps scripts related to animal factions (I'm not sure how that works) in MMM were giving me problems, but I will look into feet sound. Thanks for the help, I'd love to play this game but troubleshooting this had me on the verge of uninstalling... I can run around a city with a dozen NPCs and full draw distances at 40 FPS then a stupid cave with some wolves runs the game into the ground. Since I've been testing with the waterfront start, I'm sure the waterfront is fine as well. At one point during troubleshooting i was running chrome in the background and everything was unplayable, so it seems my cpu is teetering on the brink at all times :-/ I just can't let go of the dream... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 (edited) If your CPU is 'teetering on the brink' and you don't have a discrete sound card (onboard sound generally uses the CPU and RAM for all but it's most basic functions) then it makes sense that creature sounds trigger your low FPS. You are already rendering the human sounds for your character, so NPCs won't have the additional impact that critters will. - Edit - Have a look at Quiet Feet, it may help. Edited November 28, 2012 by Striker879 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oelarnes Posted November 29, 2012 Author Share Posted November 29, 2012 Wow... the pieces just all fit. Early dual core CPU, onboard sound... The other places the game slows down in my limited testing are near the stables and around mounted imperial guards. I can't wait to try this fix when I get off work. I never would have thought of this on my own, thanks. Can you elaborate about human NPC sounds being handled differently? are there other environmental sounds that could cause similar problems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hickory Posted November 29, 2012 Share Posted November 29, 2012 Wow... the pieces just all fit. Early dual core CPU, onboard sound... The other places the game slows down in my limited testing are near the stables and around mounted imperial guards. I can't wait to try this fix when I get off work. I never would have thought of this on my own, thanks. Can you elaborate about human NPC sounds being handled differently? are there other environmental sounds that could cause similar problems? Imagine 6 humanoids (two feet apiece) going 'clump... clump' (relatively slow animation/sound per foot). Now imagine 6 spiders (eight feet apiece) going 'scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter' (hyper-active animation/sound per foot). I think you get the picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhahn123 Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 That comment illustrates perfectly why you may not have so much trouble with npcs, but do with creatures. The number of foot sounds are doubled, quadrupled, etc. Also with MMM and Francescos you don't see all the creatures at early levels, they start showing up at say lvl 6 or so...I think. Anyway looks like you may have found your pc handicap. Hopefully quiet feet works for you. Another option if you have some modding experience and want to save an esp slot, you can open up mods in the CS and eliminate some of the foot sound assignments yourself. Load up the mod in question, click on the "creatures" heading. Find the animal you want to modify, right click and select edit. Find the sounds tab and you will see a list of sounds associated with that creature. If a wolf for example has four feet sounds...two front feet and two back, just delete two of them and then save. Doesn't matter which two and won't hurt anything, you will still hear feet sounds just not as many. Game wise should improve performance as their will be less foot sounds at any given time. I believe this is why many farm mods either don't have foot sounds on the farm animals, or only assign them to two or less feet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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