Taugrim's MMO Blog

Earlier this week I was getting 20 FPS on Rift’s Medium graphics setting. A few days ago that dropped to about 10-12 FPS, which is very sluggish in Rifts and PVP.

After finding a fix, I’m up to 30 FPS on Medium graphics setting and 25 FPS on High. Since it took me a while how to sort it out, I figured I’d post the information.

Here are my Alienware laptop specs:

• 6 GB RAM
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730: 1 GB RAM
• Intel CORE i7 Q740 CPU (quad-core) @ 1.73 GHz
• Windows 7
• x64-based PC
• Extended display: laptop (1600 x 900) and monitor (1600 x 900)

Here are the things I tried, and the results:

1. Turned off extended display so that I was only displaying on 1 screen

This didn’t help.

I also went through the usual suspects: background jobs on my computer, other apps running, checking for disk fragmentation, etc.

2. Installed new ATI software

This provided a better Catalyst Control Center UI but didn’t seem to help, as the drivers were the same version.

EDIT (2011/03/10): note that updating CCC does not update your video card driver. That is a separate install.

3. Applied ATI settings in Rift’s Client Performance Troubleshooting Guide

This didn’t help.

4. Used the D3D9 DLLs

I tried using both the pre-generated and self-generated DLL files. This didn’t help. I ended up removing the DLL file.

5. Dabbled with overclocking software

I tried using MSI Afterburner. This didn’t help, as most of the settings were already at max or unlockable.

6. Installed the latest Catalyst Application Profile

Voila!

This instantly boosted frame rate on Medium from 10 to 30 FPS – a hugely noticeable difference. I tried the 11.2 CAP2 file on AMD’s web site, and it either didn’t work or it didn’t work with the older version of Catalyst Control Center that was factory installed.

So I basically had to uninstall the factory-installed Catalyst Control Center, install the latest Catalyst Control Center (using default directory settings), and then install 11.2 CAP3.

I’m psyched because I want a solid frame rate when recording PVP videos, 30 on Medium or 25 on High is good enough for quality footage.

EDIT (2011/03/10): three days ago I started getting crappy FPS again, down in the neighborhood of 10-12, and the UI felt very laggy. So I installed the latest ATI video card driver from Dell (for some devices, especially laptops, you get the driver from your manufacturer not AMD) and updated my BIOS, and the frame rate issues are gone. I hope it stays that way! Frame rate has been my only frustration with Rift.

EDIT (2011/04/02): this week I started getting low FPS again. I tried various things to no avail, and I started to think it was a video card issue. I gave Alienware customer support a call, and they pinpointed the cause of the issue – a really simple cause. On my Alienware laptop there is a bar of touch-activated icons just above the Function keys, and one of the icons is for “Stealth”, or reduced-energy-consumption, mode. This mode is intended to conserve battery life at the cost of performance. It was enabled. /facepalm. After disabling it I’m having solid FPS on High. I am started to wonder whether the CAP actually did anything or not.

Allods Online (AO) Open Beta (OB) starts Feb 16th, and it’s really “live” on that day because OB characters won’t be deleted.

AO is a F2P game, so a lot of people will be playing without paying. If you think you might buy items from the cash shop, be aware that

• the Full Name (see circled red field below) you provide when creating your gPotato account must match the name on your payment accounts  (e.g. credit card, PayPal, etc) otherwise your payments will be rejected, and
• gPotato does not support Full Name changes. Here is the text from their site

Since OB hasn’t started yet and I ran into this issue, so I just went ahead and created a new gPotato account. I don’t know whether I’ll buy items down the road, but I want to leave the option open.

P.S. a clueless poster on a guild forum said in response to my article that you can change the Full Name and Birthday. That’s incorrect. If you click EDIT ACCOUNT INFO on gPotato, you are prompted to enter your Full Name and birth year as a security check before you get to the account info page but you can’t change them. If you don’t believe me, go read gPotato’s link above or try for yourself. I’m just pointing the registration name issue to save people potential headache down the road.

This HOWTO guide explains how to easily fix the “corrupted version” error when installing / upgrading Allods Online without having to download files manually or from sources you’re not sure are safe.

WHAT THE BROKEN INSTALLATION PROCESS LOOKS LIKE

I tried installing Allods Online (AO) this weekend and ran into a corrupted version problem. Here is what the install process with the corrupted version looks like:

1. you run the game downloader and install the game
2. you run AO game launcher and you get a notification that you need to upgrade to the latest patch:
3. the launcher downloads the patches (~450 MB in my case)
4. the launcher installs the patches
5. the launcher reports that the “Version is corrupted. Do you want to repair it now?”
6. the launcher’s attempt to repair the corrupted version fails, and you see this message:

Unfortunately, the repair page mentioned in the error panel doesn’t help this problem. So what’s wrong with the installation process? You can see from the picture above that the launcher itself (bin/Launcher.exe) is broken, so you need to get the launcher to download a working version of itself.

HOW TO FIX THE CORRUPTED VERSION

Disclaimer: the instructions below worked for me and for other people – but use them at your own risk! I’m not gpotato tech support LOL

In a nutshell, the fix for this problem is to rename the launcher program and then run the renamed launcher, so it downloads a working version of itself.

Here’s the process:

1. follow steps 1-6 above, but do not try the repair page as suggested. It won’t fix the problem
2. go to the game installation’s bin directory (by default, it’s C:\gpotato.com\Allods Online\bin) and rename Launcher.exe to Launcher-broken.exe:Please note that Windows on your computer may be configured to hide the file extension (.exe), so if you simply see “Launcher” rename it to “Launcher-broken”
3. double-click Launcher-broken.exe to run it, and when you see the following script error panel, click Yes:
4. the launcher will run and automatically attempt to fix the corrupted version:
5. wait while the launcher runs. What the launcher program (Launcher-broken.exe) will do is download a new version of itself (Launcher.exe) that actually works:
6. once the fixed version of Launcher.exe has been downloaded, you will see the following message box, and you want to click the circled “x” to close it:
7. now click the Allods Online icon on your desktop, and you should see the following panel, which means your game installation is all good

I wasted enough of my time researching this problem and seeing other players stuck on it on the AO forums, so I hope this guide helps you. Thanks to the players who posted the rename fix – all I tried to do was make the process clearer for folks who are struggling with this.