editing game display settings

Whatever you want here. Just make sure it's off topic. Which...I guess if the topic is being off topic, then it means you should be on topic. Understand?
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kx9488
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editing game display settings

#1 Post by kx9488 » Wed Feb 09, 2011 5:20 pm

i'm not quite sure where this would be discussed here or if it has been already,

is anyone capable or know how one would go about disabling game graphics for a game (specifically Runes of Magic) so that they are only not displayed in the game window.

what i am looking for is either a black screen or very simple graphics so my laptop can handle more instances of the game (to bot with obv... i won't be using black screens to play on)

let me know if this is a stupid idea, or if you have any useful information.

p.s.
i was thinking of auto-mating login, and having characters already setup in a desired location... and RoMBot would let me know if things weren't running smoothly any how... don't really need the extra eyes)

-thank you
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swietlowka
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Re: editing game display settings

#2 Post by swietlowka » Wed Feb 09, 2011 5:32 pm

only thing i know of is setting a window really small for exapmple 100x100 it uses a loot less memory this way (and its still clikable if need be) u configure this in rom config file

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Re: editing game display settings

#3 Post by Administrator » Wed Feb 09, 2011 5:38 pm

Certainly. It's (relatively) easy, as well, assuming you have some programming experience (C).

All you need to do is write a DLL that you can inject into the client which hooks all off the draw functions. Your hooks will ignore the original commands and just return a 'normal' value (for non-void functions, of course). This would, essentially, still take all the load off your graphics card, but still consume just about the same CPU load.

I believe that RoM makes use of DirectX for drawing. This just makes it a bit more annoying (and more work) to write the DLL for, because you'd have to use a VTABLE, hook *all* functions (not just the ones you need), and log any devices that are created (which means you need to load your DLL before the game creates any Direct3D devices). Easiest way to accomplish this is by using a Direct3D hook Starter Kit.

kx9488
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Re: editing game display settings

#4 Post by kx9488 » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:14 pm

Administrator wrote:Certainly. It's (relatively) easy, as well, assuming you have some programming experience (C).

All you need to do is write a DLL that you can inject into the client which hooks all off the draw functions. Your hooks will ignore the original commands and just return a 'normal' value (for non-void functions, of course). This would, essentially, still take all the load off your graphics card, but still consume just about the same CPU load.

I believe that RoM makes use of DirectX for drawing. This just makes it a bit more annoying (and more work) to write the DLL for, because you'd have to use a VTABLE, hook *all* functions (not just the ones you need), and log any devices that are created (which means you need to load your DLL before the game creates any Direct3D devices). Easiest way to accomplish this is by using a Direct3D hook Starter Kit.
thank you,

when you said:
This would, essentially, still take all the load off your graphics card, but still consume just about the same CPU load.
would that mean setting the window to an extremely small size like swietlowka suggested would effectively do just about the same thing?
swietlowka wrote:only thing i know of is setting a window really small for exapmple 100x100 it uses a loot less memory this way (and its still clikable if need be) u configure this in rom config file
because i'm forced to admit i would be starting here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106553
http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

if that is how it is accomplished, is there a measurable benefit in doing this?

you did say it would take the load off the GPU or video card, would making the screens tiny do just about the same job?

-thanks again :)
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Re: editing game display settings

#5 Post by Administrator » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:22 pm

you did say it would take the load off the GPU or video card, would making the screens tiny do just about the same job?
Well, it would help to take some of the strain off the video card, yes, however it would still be performing thousands of translations, rotations, scaling, and all that good stuff for each render on top of all the actual rendering it would need to do. So, yes, it's a simpler, but also much less effective, way to reduce the demand the game has on your PC.

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Re: editing game display settings

#6 Post by kx9488 » Wed Feb 09, 2011 8:29 pm

Administrator wrote:
you did say it would take the load off the GPU or video card, would making the screens tiny do just about the same job?
Well, it would help to take some of the strain off the video card, yes, however it would still be performing thousands of translations, rotations, scaling, and all that good stuff for each render on top of all the actual rendering it would need to do. So, yes, it's a simpler, but also much less effective, way to reduce the demand the game has on your PC.
thank you

and bullocks,

no one has done this already for RoM and wants to be really nice? i don't think i will be learning how anytime soon

*cries :(

this is what only 4 tiny game windows gets me:
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lisa
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Re: editing game display settings

#7 Post by lisa » Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:49 am

Something you can try is to do an OS install just for botting and keep processes to a minimum. So only use it when you bot and don't bother with most of the things that make using a pc more fun but at the same time they throttle the hell out of the resources.

Avoid using win 7 as it uses up 1gig of ram just on it's own.
win xp isn't to bad.

With a fresh OS of pure bare minimum loaded on it you could probably get to 5 or 6 clients.
Remember no matter you do in life to always have a little fun while you are at it ;)

wiki here http://www.solarstrike.net/wiki/index.php?title=Manual

kx9488
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Re: editing game display settings

#8 Post by kx9488 » Thu Mar 10, 2011 9:57 pm

lisa wrote:Something you can try is to do an OS install just for botting and keep processes to a minimum. So only use it when you bot and don't bother with most of the things that make using a pc more fun but at the same time they throttle the hell out of the resources.

Avoid using win 7 as it uses up 1gig of ram just on it's own.
win xp isn't to bad.

With a fresh OS of pure bare minimum loaded on it you could probably get to 5 or 6 clients.
i actually managed to get 10 up on my new machine. how do i know if i am running my computer too hard with too many clients? i havent noticed a performence drop yet

im running new intel i7 3.47 ghz + 12gb of RAM ... but im running windows xp 32-bit.. so only 3.12gb is displayed (does this mean 12gb isnt getting used, or it just isnt being displayed in properties?), 2x nvidia gtx 460 2gb cards in sLI mode (32 inch 1080p screen) water cooled, bigfoot killer 2100 network card, 1100 watt power supply.

task manager shows cpu ussage staying close to only 16% and peeks at 21%, and pf usage steady at 6.70 gb (does this mean 6.7 gb of my 12 gb of ram is being used? so my machine could handle just under 20 screens before i over work it?)

i wanted to take a screen shot, it looks nasty, but i think the admin disabled posting pictures for some lame reason

*edit
with 15 bots going,
peaking at 33% CPU usage, 10GB PageFile Usage (10GB of 12GB RAM?)
fan speeds at 67% my GPU is at roughly 47*C according to speed fan.
probably even cooler when i turn my 32" screen off... i tried the game still runs :)
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lisa
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Re: editing game display settings

#9 Post by lisa » Fri Mar 11, 2011 10:18 pm

Nice sounds like your having lots of fun getting more and more clients running =)

All links are dissabled and since pictures come from an external link they are also dissabled. Unfortunately the site has been getting hit with lots of spam lately and it is very annoying to say the least. I am sure admin is still working on a solution to handle them but also keep the function of the site working for the actual users.

as an after thought maybe just stop new "accounts" from posting links. So as an example users who joined atleast 1 month ago can post but if less then 1 month then can't post links?
Remember no matter you do in life to always have a little fun while you are at it ;)

wiki here http://www.solarstrike.net/wiki/index.php?title=Manual

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Re: editing game display settings

#10 Post by JackBlonder » Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:29 pm

im running new intel i7 3.47 ghz + 12gb of RAM ... but im running windows xp 32-bit.. so only 3.12gb is displayed (does this mean 12gb isnt getting used, or it just isnt being displayed in properties?)
Windows 32Bit is not able to handle your 12GB.

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Re: editing game display settings

#11 Post by MiesterMan » Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:53 am

Pardon the necro but for Runes of Magic there is a solution available. I'm not sure if it is still available on the RoM forums but I can describe it here. Essentially everything in RoM is packed and loaded and similar to the FDB extraction, the graphics are in the same directory like structure. You'd have to find the list of files and directory structure but there was a mod to the game called "Remove Sparklies" or something like that. It was origionally made to remove flashy graphics that made doing the bigger dungeons impossible but was later adapted to reduce siege crashes.

Anyways, the mod is, that you take all the graphics files and past them into the graphics directory for Runes of Magic. As RoM will load the graphics from your actual directory instead of the compressed DB you can then replace the unwanted graphics with blank files. One of the sparklies that was removed by this mod was that annoying sparkly on the Miller's Ranch eggs get.

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Re: editing game display settings

#12 Post by Administrator » Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:26 pm

im running new intel i7 3.47 ghz + 12gb of RAM ... but im running windows xp 32-bit.. so only 3.12gb is displayed (does this mean 12gb isnt getting used, or it just isnt being displayed in properties?), 2x nvidia gtx 460 2gb cards in sLI mode (32 inch 1080p screen) water cooled, bigfoot killer 2100 network card, 1100 watt power supply.
A 32 bit OS can't handle over 3GB of RAM, to put it simply. Sure, it could be done, but it isn't. The simple thing to do would be to just install a 64-bit OS.
task manager shows cpu ussage staying close to only 16% and peeks at 21%, and pf usage steady at 6.70 gb (does this mean 6.7 gb of my 12 gb of ram is being used? so my machine could handle just under 20 screens before i over work it?)
A paging file is different. It uses your hard drive. That means it is slow.
i wanted to take a screen shot, it looks nasty, but i think the admin disabled posting pictures for some lame reason
You should be able to post external links now, so I'm not sure why you would think that.

Avoid using win 7 as it uses up 1gig of ram just on it's own.
win xp isn't to bad.
That is misleading. It will make use of available RAM to speed things up, yes, but when the system starts running low on RAM, the OS will free that.

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Re: editing game display settings

#13 Post by 3cmSailorfuku » Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:09 am

Administrator wrote:
you did say it would take the load off the GPU or video card, would making the screens tiny do just about the same job?
Well, it would help to take some of the strain off the video card, yes, however it would still be performing thousands of translations, rotations, scaling, and all that good stuff for each render on top of all the actual rendering it would need to do. So, yes, it's a simpler, but also much less effective, way to reduce the demand the game has on your PC.
It still would do them though, even if you hooked it with a wrapper. I mean it's pretty obvious, how would you be able to click on things etc if you would remove those calculations. However the CPU usage isn't a problem for RoM, what's an issue is how it loads the assets, because it does it right away on startup and it's pretty tricky unloading it from the memory. It's much easier to just hook directx and null every texture or mesh that is being loaded. But then again, if you stop meshes from being loaded you might run into problems if you can even get past the login screen.

It's not a big deal and you don't need to do a vtable hook either, there's a starterkit that already has all the functions for your wrapper and you literally just need to add return null; to whatever function you desire. Then adjust it to your liking.

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