Connecting to Illarion

If you found a bug in Illarion or need help ask here. / Wenn Du einen Fehler in Illarion gefunden hast oder Hilfe benötigst, frage hier.

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Hew Keenaxe
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Connecting to Illarion

Post by Hew Keenaxe »

Yes it is true, I live in one of the most rural areas of the USA. If I want to make a cell phone call have to drive two miles to the top of the mountain to get one bar of service then make my call quick before I get dropped.
But I do still have power, and I receive mail to the house. I also have cable, which is my internet provider, phone and TV. They claim to be the fastest in my state. If they are or not makes little difference since they are the only provider here. So I always think, the reason I can't play Illarion is because of the above. Yet somehow I can stream video, play other online games, and enjoy all the web has to offer with little or no problems. Yes I have an old computer, but it is still twice or more than you say I need. Yes I have all the current drivers and updates, except one. The latest update for my graphic card would not play Illarion at all, so had to roll back to the old one. Dont get me wrong,I can play Illarion, barely. I walk when others run, I relog once every ten minutes if I am not moving, more if I am. And i do love the game and have tried everything I can think of, every suggestion, to make this game work. But it doesn't, or not near well enough. I am left with only one conclusion. The problem is on your end. Yes your end. And I know you will come back and defend and say "No you are not doing something" but everything else I try to do on the web works well but Illarion.That is fact. Something, somewhere is making this game hard to play. Just look to the forums, filled with I can't play this game. If you truely want this game to be successful then you need to look there. But honestly, I ain't sure you want it to be all that successful. I think it is like my truck. When the wife is on the rampage, I go work on my truck. It is a running project. But I can always do something with it. Just me and maybe a few like minded friends. We tweak here an there and drink beer. And someday it may be be a show truck, but not at the rate we are working on it. It is just for us. That is Illarion. Either stop tweaking and repair this game or admit you don't want to. I dont mean a bug here or there, I mean bringing it to the public, making it user friendly..
Now that my rant is done enough, I will go back to trying to play the game. It is a fantastic game. I really do love it. Just wish I could play it like I hope you wanted it to be played.
Flux
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Flux »

Walking when others run is not your internet connection, it is your computer.

Either your drivers are not up to date or your hardware does not meet the minimum specifications for a reasonable experience. This should not be a problem for most people, as any mid range laptop or cheap home built PC should be able to run Illarion just fine, but if your hardware is severely outdated, you are going to have problems. This is a game developed by a very small staff, on multi operating system software. It is not going to be as well optimised as some commerical product created by a team of people who are writing their game in a game engine like Source or Unreal, both mastered for years by huge teams with complete support for their target OSes. This is not the Illarion client from 2006 that ran at a fixed 1024x768 which only rendered some small portion of the screen as actual gameplay, had no fancy draggable GUIs and hoverboxes and paperdolling etc. with support up to 1080p, so it will not be able to support really low specification computers that can barely run that.

It's not a case of it being our fault or your fault, it's been a whole hardware generation cycle since the last Illarion client, and this is the major upgrade to go with it. It's the organic process that goes with maintaining a game for a long time. If Illarion stayed at its original version with a top down map with unanimated sprites on it, it would support everyone's computer, but it would be terrible. The last client lasted for nearly seven years. Upgrading your computer once every seven years is just keeping up to date with technology, which is necessary for people who use their computers often. When the last client came out most of us were probably using CRTs, bricks of phones, playing Gamecubes and PS2s. Bluray didn't exist, mobile internet was awful, the latest Elder Scrolls game was Morrowind. You might even have upgraded stuff like your toaster/washing machine/dishwasher in the past 7 years. You may have changed your whole wardrobe in that time.

Upgrading your PC once every seven years isn't that unaffordable, and it is necessary. It is like everything else I just named. You can't just hold onto a computer for a decade, especially with Moore's Law, technology goes obselete in no time at all. Since the last client came out, Nintendo have released two generations of home console and twelve billion ds iterations. You wouldn't complain that a Gamecube doesn't run Wii U games. That is exactly what you are suggesting.
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Hew Keenaxe
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Hew Keenaxe »

Since you say it my PC that is the problem, just what is the minimal and recommended build for a PC to play this game.
I have ...
Computer
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 3
Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18702
Computer Name
User Name
Logon Domain

Motherboard
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4HT, 3056 MHz (5.75 x 531)
Motherboard Name Dell Computer Corporation Dimension 2400
Motherboard Chipset Intel Brookdale-G i845G
System Memory 2048 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (12/02/03)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display
Video Adapter Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller (64 MB)
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS (256 MB)
3D Accelerator Intel Extreme Graphics
Monitor DELL E153FP [NoDB] (Y44134915HDY)

Multimedia
Audio Adapter Creative SB PCI128 (Ensoniq ES1371) Sound Card
Audio Adapter Intel 82801DB(M) ICH4(-M) - AC'97 Audio Controller [A-1]

Storage
Disk Drive WDC WD1600BB-00GUC0
Disk Drive WDC WD400BB-75JHC0
Optical Drive DTSoftBusCd00
Optical Drive DTSoftBusCd01
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8487B
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8163B

Partitions
C: (NTFS) 30004 MB (8778 MB free)
D: (FAT32) 4548 MB (1384 MB free)
H: (NTFS) 149589 MB (26516 MB free)
I: (FAT32) 3029 MB (861 MB free)

Input
Keyboard HID Keyboard Device
Mouse HID-compliant mouse

Network
Primary IP Address
Primary MAC Address
Network Adapter Belkin Wireless Adapter
Network Adapter Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller

Peripherals
Printer Fax
Printer Intuit Internal Printer
Printer Microsoft Office Document Image Writer
Printer Microsoft XPS Document Writer
USB Device Belkin Wireless Adapter
USB Device USB Composite Device
USB Device USB Human Interface Device
USB Device USB Human Interface Device
USB Device USB Human Interface Device

Yes this is a dinosaur, but it does exceed what you have listed previously as needed. Or Am I wrong?
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Achae Eanstray
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Achae Eanstray »

I have moved this topic to support for hopefully helpful information and for others to also see. As far as the connection. Most that have had problems with the game has been due to graphic cards (this is of course discounting the bugs that have actually been fixed fairly fast and are still being worked on). If a laptop, it appears graphic cards can't be updated. Not very easily.. with a computer some can upgrade to one that takes "shadow 2.0" technology... I think was the term? Considering I had an XP that wouldn't run the game, I don't think the technology is that old for XP, and know some players that can't run Illa are still playing other games such as WOW. But I also had understood the game would have even a wider offering of where it would run and was disappointed it wouldn't run on my computer with XP. Be that as it may.. because you can get the graphics at all and not just a black screen, I am thinking your problem is not the same as others however making sure you have the latest graphic drivers can't hurt.

Running slow or not running and lag sounds like connection. Have you run a tracert or ping http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/tr ... route.html, http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/tr ... /ping.html to see what the packet loss is between your computer and Illarion. I recall you complaining about lag even before the VBU so wonder if you are getting too much packet loss on the connection? At one time I was getting a lot of dropped packets in of all places switzerland... and had to contact my isp for help. I don't know what exactly helped in the end but the connection improved.
Flux
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Flux »

Well.. it's probably your GPU.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/midlo ... _gpus.html

In the low range GPU section on passmark it's in the centre, with 150 points. I'm an unemployed student and my PC is 2 years old, but I have 2 cards that each score 2200 points in the passmark tests. Obviously that's pure anecdotal though.

I believe parts are quite cheap in America from Newegg. Building a computer is like expensive lego, the manuals are always very clear, it takes a few hours for someone doing it for the first time but it's a very rewarding experience.
If you're on a budget and you feel up to the challenge of building one for yourself, I'd be happy to help you figure out a good set of components to get. Alternatively, to avoid the hassle of trying to work out which parts are good and which parts you need, you could get a premade PC from there. Or you could even just try and upgrade the parts you think are not good enough, but there's no guarantee.

Personally if I were to do anything, I'd just try and upgrade that GPU and see if it fixes it. The problem is.. your motherboard only supports PCI video cards as far as I can tell, not PCI Express, so that motherboard would only ever support cards that were, say, 1.5x as good as your current one. You'd have to do the whole shabazzle, a motherboard upgrade, gpu, cpu, psu and ram, and since your primary hard drive appears to be 30gb, you'd probably want to upgrade that too. (Since you can survive on such low disc space though, the up hand is that you would go very well with a solid state hard drive, as they're absolutely beautiful, super fast, magnificent things, but low capacity).

And @Achae: I don't think operating system should be a problem? Illa uses OpenGL, not DirectX, so I think operating system should be irrelevant. In fact, it might even run better on XP because less system resources are needed for Windows Aero etc. . XP's default OpenGL drivers suck though, so you need to download the appropriate ones.
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Hew Keenaxe
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Hew Keenaxe »

First, Illarion I installed and run off my second hard drive, plenty of room. next, it is true I only have PCI support on this motherboard. If you know where I can get another .5 out of it I would buy it. But as is I believe 256 is as big as I can go. I have a 512 PCIX but this PC doesn't have the port for it. In any case, the VBU Q&A listed the new requirements and I do exceed them. So why should I need to upgrade or are those requirements wrong?
Flux
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Flux »

I think that's hard to know right now, but I don't actually know how people calculate minimum specifications, as in.. whether or not it is just a case of trying lots of computers. I don't think it's been tested much on low spec computers, regardless.

I would really not recommend upgrading to a higher quality PCI card for a couple of reasons.
1. It will be much more expensive than a much better PCIe card, because they're not mass produced on the scale PCIe ones are.
2. It will be obsolete in 2 years, so there's absolutely no future proofing at all.

If you're going to do anything involving purchasing new components, you should definitely just upgrade to a PCIe motherboard. Either an AM3/AM3+ motherboard if you go AMD (and hence, well priced for mid range. You'd be looking at e.g. a quad core Phenom ii processor in that case) or an P67/768 for Intel (much more expensive for low budget, but more cost efficient for mid budget, like an i5 2500k). Then you could throw in 4/8gb of ddr3 1600mhz RAM, that's really cheap nowadays, a 500W PSU or so, and a good ATI card that has a decent price point like a HD 6850. That'd put you down around £300 over here and our parts are expensive. If your case is already the same form factor you could just hold onto that. Personally I'd throw a 60GB/120GB SSD on top of that so it glides like a cloud.

And that is for a build that would future proof you for many years.

For a little bit lower than that in price you could be looking anywhere between, say, a HD3850 and a HD5750, maybe something like a decent spec Athlon dual core, though I really would recommend going for a Phenom, with some rubbishy £30 am3 mobo that uses DDR2 ram, of which you could just get 4gb or something. Tack on a 400W psu, sorted.
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Hew Keenaxe
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Hew Keenaxe »

So just a simple rebuild of my motor and can play Illarion. I get that and look forward to it, though my wife doesn't. Still if I have to do this to run the game why do you say the requirements are so much lower?
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Llama
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Llama »

Because not all systems are created equally ?
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Hew Keenaxe
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Hew Keenaxe »

But this is just what I mean, and you are the perfect scape goat....umm Llama. If my machine ain't up to the task, fine. But the new requirements say it is by far. If it ain't, then what benchmark do I need to reach? It is simple, give me the numbers, this ain't old school skill by color, this is real world, do I pass or not?
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Nitram
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Re: Connecting to Illarion

Post by Nitram »

I think I know the problem.

You system has two graphic cards. The Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller and the NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS.

For older system is depends on where the computer monitor is plugged in to the computer to determine the graphics device that is used. On newer system you can select at runtime the graphics device used. In case the second is valid for you the default settings WILL cause Illarion to run on the Intel graphics device because those drivers automatically run Java on those low end graphic cards.

In either case make sure the NVidia is used to play the game.

Nitram
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