CliffyG

Join Date 04/2009

SimSpeed - what exactly is it and what are the implications

I have a mid range spec PC (maybe its classed as lower than that these days), AMD x2 6000, 4GB 6400 DRR2, nVidia 8800 GTS, Vista x64. Not particularly impressive by any means. When i play the game on low settings i have around 100 frames per second. When i put the settings to high i have around 50 frames per second. Obviously my PC is running the game at an adequate speed. The most i've ever seen my sim speed is 7 and it quickly drops to around 2 late game, i've had it as low as 0 on a 4v4. Regardless of the sim speed my frames per second stay high.

So what exactly is it, how is it calculated? Why does changing the graphics settings appear to have no effect on it?

Also, what difference does it make to me and other players what my sim speed is?

demigod

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low sim speed slows the game a high 1 does not. so if 1 person has crappy sim all the people in the game run on the slowest sim speed pc.

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Generally speaking, anything above 0 is not going to affect your game. Only negatives are going to have an impact, in my pexperience.

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Quoting TormakSaber,

reply 2

Generally speaking, anything above 0 is not going to affect your game. Only negatives are going to have an impact, in my pexperience.

not true anything 0 to 2 the game acts like somethen is holden it back. 3 up the game runs smooth

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So what exactly is it, how is it calculated?

the sim speed is basically, how many more cycles of the game (one instant in the game world if you prefer) your computer can compute during a game cycle. So theorically anything above 1 is enough, but since there are far more units at the end of a battle, if you start with a sim speed of 1 or 2, you are likely to experience some lag in the final moments.

Why does changing the graphics settings appear to have no effect on it?

It is because your graphic card doesn't limit your hability to run the game, it can also come from your processor or your ram.

Also, what difference does it make to me and other players what my sim speed is?

If anyone has a very low sim speed (typically 0), everyone experience major lag, it is either that or desync everyone. It sucks but if someone has a low sim speed, he will ruin the game for everyone, and the devs can't do a thing about it (well, ultimately, they can try to develop algorithms that need less computation power, but demigod is already optimised enough)

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Quoting Fred_Bonaparte,

reply 4

So what exactly is it, how is it calculated?
the sim speed is basically, how many more cycles of the game (one instant in the game world if you prefer) your computer can compute during a game cycle. So theorically anything above 1 is enough, but since there are far more units at the end of a battle, if you start with a sim speed of 1 or 2, you are likely to experience some lag in the final moments.

Why does changing the graphics settings appear to have no effect on it?
It is because your graphic card doesn't limit your hability to run the game, it can also come from your processor or your ram.

Also, what difference does it make to me and other players what my sim speed is?
If anyone has a very low sim speed (typically 0), everyone experience major lag, it is either that or desync everyone. It sucks but if someone has a low sim speed, he will ruin the game for everyone, and the devs can't do a thing about it (well, ultimately, they can try to develop algorithms that need less computation power, but demigod is already optimised enough)

Incorrect. Simspeed is how fast you can run the game. 0 is basic speed, sim speed 3 is double speed, 6 is 4 times speed, etc.

Usually you play at normal speed anyway (default settings) so 0 and anything above is fine.

Of course if you start with 0 it will go negative by the end of the game and slow things down.

Refer to this thread where it's explained in detail: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/348247

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Incorrect. Simspeed is how fast you can run the game. 0 is basic speed, sim speed 3 is double speed, 6 is 4 times speed, etc.

Usually you play at normal speed anyway (default settings) so 0 and anything above is fine.

They can say that's what sim speed really means, but anytime someone has a sim speed under 3 the game starts chugging for everyone. It doesn't need to be negative, it just needs to be low.

It's so obvious too, because if they leave the game suddenly everything runs fine again.

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Incorrect

Shit, now i have to find who gave me a false definition of the simspeed and punch him hard. Thanks for the info anyway

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The effects of sim speed and lag constantly get mixed up, especially with games with a mix of people from different countries. Last night I had my first ever 5v5 (Thanks ...I think his name was Luckus_Ruckus for not kicking me with a 300 ping by the way, that was pretty awesome) and because of my location someone automatically blamed me for the game chugging/slowing down. When you looked at the details though there were at least 2 people with a 1 sim speed and one person who said I was probably the cause of the stuttering had a -1 sim speed.

Morale of the story, Ping above 350 will cause problems but crappy sim speed tends to be the cause of most of the game stutters I personally have had.

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Simspeed is the rate that the calculations for projectiles and movement and everything can be calculated. The simspeed that you see is really the maximum simspeed that your computer could run at that particular moment. If you play a game with normal game speed, it will run at 0 simspeed. If anyone's maximum simspeed goes below 0, the game will run at the highest speed that the slowest computer can manage.

If simspeed goes below 0, the game will seem to happen in slow motion but you probably won't notice any graphical effects. Changing the graphics settings has little effect because your video card handles graphics while your processor handles the calculations that deal with simspeed.

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Hi , PLEASE HELP ME

I feel really fooled buying this game, my simspeed starts with +2 and within a minute it is lower than -2
My Video Card settings are set to the lowest

On the back of the game it says that you need
Processor: 2,4GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Hard drive: 8 GB
Video Card: 128 MB 3D

I have
Processor: dual core 2,2GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM 800MHz
Hard Drive: 200 GB
Video Card: Club3D Radeon HD 3650 1024MB GDDR2

Could someone please tell me whats wrong, please dont speculate, please only say what you know

Thank you very much , Have a great day

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Try turning the sound fidelity to low and turn system reverb off.

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Quoting xDennisx,

reply 10

Hi , PLEASE HELP ME

I feel really fooled buying this game, my simspeed starts with +2 and within a minute it is lower than -2
My Video Card settings are set to the lowest

On the back of the game it says that you need
Processor: 2,4GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Hard drive: 8 GB
Video Card: 128 MB 3D

I have
Processor: dual core 2,2GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM 800MHz
Hard Drive: 200 GB
Video Card: Club3D Radeon HD 3650 1024MB GDDR2

Could someone please tell me whats wrong, please dont speculate, please only say what you know

Thank you very much , Have a great day

First people need to know what cpu you have?

2,2Ghz dualcore means nothing, it can still be a 5 years old cpu thats totally outdated...
Your other hardware seems fine.

Btw playing with low graphics settings will not affect simspeed.

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My guess is an E4500.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2duo/specifications.htm?iid=prod_core2duo+tab_spec

2x2.2GHz is pretty weak anyway. You want at least 3GHz for gaming with new games I imagine.

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Its most likely your CPU.

If a game isn't correctly optimized then having a dual core offers little actual performance increase (Supcom for example, which this games engine seems to be partly based off would rag your first Core 100%, but leave the second relatively untouched at 10-20%).

Consider moving up to something like the E5300. You can pick them up for approx £50 and they overclock pretty well.

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