Oooo! I had no idea!......

[caseyjay]

That there were crews:smoke: I love this game!! :laugh:

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-9/412568/DGcoolookatthegunners.jpg

[Porkchop]

Yeah, very nice feature. love it. If you watch closely and for long enough one of them occasionally waves. :lier:

[caseyjay]

:laugh: :laugh: :p

[Gusington]

What graphics level are the crews available on? Are they always there?

[Dogbert]

Pretty dedicated guys too, manning their guns in the middle of a fire ;)

[Daedalus]

What graphics level are the crews available on? Are they always there?

I do not know what level that they come on at. I know that I have always seen them on the ships.
But I have all turned up to full. I might try a lower level and see if they are still there at the lower levels. You might read in the manual and see , it may tell us if or what level they are at.
Now I will have to look as you have me thinking about it lol.

[Vigilante]

I saw one leave his gun station and take a whizz off the starboard bow once, Casey, honest! ;)

[Gusington]

Sorry Daedalus, didn't mean to drive you insane. :D I haven't played the full campaign yet (just the demo) but I don't remember seeing any crews. I do rememeber that visible crews were touted as a cool little side feature in the run up to DGs release, though.

[Vigilante]

Yep they're there for real:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/vigilantefromvenus/Distant_Guns_1.jpg

[Daedalus]

Sorry Daedalus, didn't mean to drive you insane. :D I haven't played the full campaign yet (just the demo) but I don't remember seeing any crews. I do rememeber that visible crews were touted as a cool little side feature in the run up to DGs release, though.

Your not bothering me at all. ask all the questions you need and we will see if we can find an answer for you.

What level do you have your graphics set to? Post that and then I will try it on mine.

[Gusington]

Ah, I don't have the graphics screen in front of me right now, but my rig is a bit aged and can't handle everything set at the max. Most of my graphics settings are set at medium, and one or two are off. Do you know which graphic feature, when set to off, would turn off visible crews? BTW, the shots I see above look a bit more detailed and advanced than my game, so I must have something shut or not cranked up enough. I guess that's pretty obvious though ;)

[Daedalus]

Ah, I don't have the graphics screen in front of me right now, but my rig is a bit aged and can't handle everything set at the max. Most of my graphics settings are set at medium, and one or two are off. Do you know which graphic feature, when set to off, would turn off visible crews? BTW, the shots I see above look a bit more detailed and advanced than my game, so I must have something shut or not cranked up enough. I guess that's pretty obvious though ;)

Ok I will set mine to what you have here and we will see if I can see the people on the deck. But I would guess that is why you are not seeing them. I am sure that it takes a lot more power to draw the people on the decks and that would be one of the first things that you would drop to save the frame rate.

[Gusington]

Yeah, I agree. I'm going to fiddle with the settings tonight and see what I can come up with to get crews to appear. Here are my rigs specs:

2.5 GHz P4
NVidia 6800 GT
1 GB RAM

Think that's enough to turn the settings up?

[Daedalus]

Yeah, I agree. I'm going to fiddle with the settings tonight and see what I can come up with to get crews to appear. Here are my rigs specs:

2.5 GHz P4
NVidia 6800 GT
1 GB RAM

Think that's enough to turn the settings up?

Yes I agree with that. If you turn them up you should be able see what we do. Turn up everything in the settings but the Res, and turn off the adaptive settings as that will change it for you if it is not to a standard. Try it that way as I think you will not see that much of a slow down that it with bother you. Most of it is personal taste on how it looks anyway. just try a combo of settings and see what looks best for you and still runs at a rate that you can live with.

One thing you can do is turn down your resolution if your game slows down to much for your taste. Each level you go up takes a lot more horsepower to run.


I run mine at 1152x864 32 colors and it is fine. I had it at 1024x768 and it was fine there for me also, I just turned it up to see how it looked.

[Gusington]

Thanks, Daedalus. I will try it tonight. Even with the settings lower I still have a growing affinity for DG, and that's just from the demo. There's something very immersive about the game, much moreso than other games I've played in the last couple of years. Going to buy the full campaign sometime this week. Thanks again :D

[Daedalus]

Thanks, Daedalus. I will try it tonight. Even with the settings lower I still have a growing affinity for DG, and that's just from the demo. There's something very immersive about the game, much moreso than other games I've played in the last couple of years. Going to buy the full campaign sometime this week. Thanks again :D

Yea, I know how you feel, I got the demo and I could not quit playing it.
This game has that special part that you can not put a finger on, but it is there. That part that makes a very good game fantastic. And this game has it that is for sure.

[WallysWorld]

Here are my rigs specs:

2.5 GHz P4
NVidia 6800 GT
1 GB RAM

Think that's enough to turn the settings up?

That should easily be more than enough to turn EVERYTHING right up.

My specs are:
Athlon 64 3700+
6600GT AGP 128MB
2GB Ram

And I play DG with everything turned right up at 1280x1024 resolution. I get about 60 fps when there's nothing on screen and about 30-31 fps when the screen is full of ships and firing. Anything above 25fps is good enough for the human eye not to notice individual frames or slowdowns.

[Gusington]

Thanks WallysWorld. I really didn't know if my rig had the juice to handle everything cranked up. Looking forward to seeing my crews running around like mad on the decks ;)

[caseyjay]

One point though ... I only noticed the crew when I accidently zoomed in as close as I could - not quite got the handle on the controls:o and there suddenly there were the crew at the guns! I havent seen crew at any other viewpoint :hmmm:

[Gusington]

I'm still trying to get a handle on the controls myself. But i did notice other differences between the shots posted here and what I see while playing the demo...more ship detail, to be specific. That includes the visible crews. looking forward to see what my machine can get away with tonight.:laugh:

[Gusington]

So I turned everything up and the ships look great, so much better than before. And I got the crews too...great touch. Before I did so though (yesterday) I had a graphics crash, where the gamescreen would pixelate and totally lockup the computer. That's why I was a bit hesitant to bump up the graphics effects.

I bumped them up anyway, and I got another graphics lockup tonight. So this problem occured with both low and high graphics settings.

I've had this happen before in games like FEAR that are quite graphics intensive, so I did what I have done before and downloaded the newest NVidia drivers. Its pretty late now so I won't be able to see if I fixed the problem until tomorrow night. But in the meantime does anyone have any other suggestions to get rid of these graphics lockups besides downloading the newest drivers? Anyone else have this type of problem?

[Daedalus]

So I turned everything up and the ships look great, so much better than before. And I got the crews too...great touch. Before I did so though (yesterday) I had a graphics crash, where the gamescreen would pixelate and totally lockup the computer. That's why I was a bit hesitant to bump up the graphics effects.

I bumped them up anyway, and I got another graphics lockup tonight. So this problem occured with both low and high graphics settings.

I've had this happen before in games like FEAR that are quite graphics intensive, so I did what I have done before and downloaded the newest NVidia drivers. Its pretty late now so I won't be able to see if I fixed the problem until tomorrow night. But in the meantime does anyone have any other suggestions to get rid of these graphics lockups besides downloading the newest drivers? Anyone else have this type of problem?


I think your graphics card is getting hot.
You might see if it is dirty or dusty. And make sure that air is getting to it.
Take a look at it and see, it does not have to get to hot for the card to start doing what you are seeing. This is the first thing I would check.

[Gusington]

Thanks Daedalus, I'll open my machine up tonight and clean it out. As far as heat, what can I do to remedy that?

[WallysWorld]

I know everybody always recommend to download and install the latest video drivers, but sometimes an older driver will do the trick. For my nVidia 6600GT card, I find the 66.93 drivers (from November 2004) work the best with no issues.

[Gusington]

Yeah, I downloaded the newest drivers last night for my NVidia 6800 GT...haven't had time to check to see if that alone worked. I'll still open up the machine and blow out the dust/dirt before I try DG again. But as for cooling the card i don't know how I'll do that if I have to...:crosseye:

[Daedalus]

Thanks Daedalus, I'll open my machine up tonight and clean it out. As far as heat, what can I do to remedy that?
On keeping a machine cool. The first thing you do is make sure that all your heatsinks are clean and the ones that have fans make sure that the fans are working and are clean.

If you have one of the type of video cards that do not have fans on the heatsink then you have to make sure that your case is in order. On my case I had to mod it as I have a ATI X1900XTX card in it that has quite a fan setup.
But my case with the fans did not cool well, so I cut a hole in the top of the case and put a 140MM fan in the top blowing air down into the case, not discharging but putting air into the case, I tried both ways and this way worked the best. My AMD X2 4800 was a lot cooler and my issues with the X1900XTX went away.
Case cooling is an art , and there are very few cases that are built that will handle all the types of setups that we can put into them.
AS far as what to do, there is no magic trick, you just have to try ways till you parts are cool and working.
I have had to fix computers for people at the base where it was hot in some of the rooms, more fans in the comptuer did not work, so I would have them take the side off there computer and put a fan blowing into the case, and that would fix there heating issue most of the time.
But keeping the comptuer and fans,heatsinks clean is one of the best things you can do.
Let me know what you found and if you need any help on any part or parts let me know and I will help you come up with a fix for what you find. :)

[Gusington]

Wow, thanks for the detailed post Daedalus.

I am getting a whole new rig hopefully by the end of the year, so I hope that cleaning the parts and case out will do the trick and I won't have to spend any money on additional things. Who knows, maybe a cleaning and the newest drivers will make the freezes go away.

I got my 6800 GT about a year ago and didn't have any heat issues until about 6 months ago...to me it sounds like just enough time for dust and such to build up. Keeping my fingers crossed because I'm really digging DG. Its just really frustrating to have the game seize up like that and having to start again from the same point you did an hour ago, through no fault of the game itself :mad:

[Daedalus]

Wow, thanks for the detailed post Daedalus.

I am getting a whole new rig hopefully by the end of the year, so I hope that cleaning the parts and case out will do the trick and I won't have to spend any money on additional things. Who knows, maybe a cleaning and the newest drivers will make the freezes go away.

I got my 6800 GT about a year ago and didn't have any heat issues until about 6 months ago...to me it sounds like just enough time for dust and such to build up. Keeping my fingers crossed because I'm really digging DG. Its just really frustrating to have the game seize up like that and having to start again from the same point you did an hour ago, through no fault of the game itself :mad:

Yea, heat is one of the main killers of parts,that is a given.
And to let you know how I do, I clean out my computer and make sure the heat-sinks are clean every month without fail.
I blow the case out every two weeks if I can and that helps a lot.
Most of the computers that I work on for people are damaged because of heat build up. I have had them brought to me so bad that when I took of the side I could not see the heat-sinks or even tell what each card was because of the dirt and dust that had piled up on the parts. And they sometimes lost a $500.00 USD part just because they did not keep there computer clean.
Now I will say this, most people are never told to keep it clean or shown how.
So this is something that I try to pass on to everyone and have them teach the others who do not know. It saves a lot of heart ache when they learn to do this!

[Gusington]

I'm going to use one of those compressed air cans and blow out all the crap that has most likely built up inside my rig. I'm hoping that will do the trick. In four years I have probably cleaned out the machine once :eek: thus my problems.

[caseyjay]

Absolutely agree with you there Daedalus:thumup: Only a couple of weeks ago, during the (unusual) period of hot weather I checked my cpu heatsink as it was running at 73C under load and actually shut down twice ...OMG! there was soooo much fluff etc there:crosseye:
After clearing it out it now runs at a more healthy 61C:D ...... Although I do need to change the cpu fan as well.

I have a Thermaltake case with 7 external fans and have always kept them clear, but never thought to check the cpu heatsink .. D'oh! lesson learnt :smoke:

[Gusington]

So upon cleaning out my rig's innards and scooping away about a ton of crap :D I started up the DG demo again and didn't have any graphic issues at all. Thanks for your help, everyone!

[WallysWorld]

Good to hear.

Now you need the entire DG game.:smoke:

[Lempereur1]

We think 1.014 should do the trick! Begone you demons!

[Daedalus]

So upon cleaning out my rig's innards and scooping away about a ton of crap :D I started up the DG demo again and didn't have any graphic issues at all. Thanks for your help, everyone!

Good news I'm glad that you have it going.
This game is just getting better , and the more that I play it the harder it is to quit.

[Gusington]

I feel it in my bones that this will be 'one of those games.' And I'm very happy to see that the plan is to make it a series. For the first time in a while I will have begun a series at the beginning and be able to enjoy it, hopefully, for years.

[Lempereur1]

We have alot of plans for the engine. Each series will stand alone, with some of the features potentially migrating backwards. Each era also requires their own unique code base to make it special.

We truely belive that this type of distribution is the future of 21st century PC Wargaming.