Some explainations and tips on how to speed up BoA, for whose who have a low to medium spec.
A bit of explainations first: The BoA map is huge, with 876 regions drawn by hand. On computers with 512 mb RAM or lower, they dont fit all in memory, so BoA use a caching technique: it means that only a part of all regions are in memory at a given time.
This means that when you first scroll on a new area, or if you unzoom the map, your video and general RAM get a massive amount of bitmaps. This is the cause for the occasional lag (cursor lag or scrolling lag) you can get at these times.
Some tips now:
System tab be sure to have these options checked:
Textures init
Allow High Mem
Region pre-caching should be disabled, unless you have a fast hard drive with at least 512 mb of RAM.
Defragment the hard drive where BoA is running. Can significatively increase the performance.
If this is not sufficient, when you arrive in the game, scroll a bit around the starting area, without dezooming, so that the regions are loaded.
Playing with a Filter ON ask for more CPU power.
What will do the most good would be to have 1 gb of RAM, memory stick are rather cheap these days (no obligation though, the tips above should be sufficient!).
Thats been said, even a low-end computer should be able to scroll smoothly on regions previously accessed. If you have still a lag, then check if your video driver is up to date, a old driver can significatively hampers the game speed.
How to speed up BoA
Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."
I've got a 3Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM and a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro, but I find that at 1600x1200 the mouse feels a little laggy in the dense regions. High Mem and Textures init were already checked for me. I enabled pre-chaching as I don't like in-game hitches 
Haven't defragged yet I admit, so I'll give that a whirl.
I know a lot of games offer an option to run the mouse in software or hardware, and this is often cited as the solution in those games to fix laggy mouse cursors. Just wondering, firstly what the difference is (I don't know what that option means but I always find Hardware the better choice) and secondly how this game runs it?
Haven't defragged yet I admit, so I'll give that a whirl.
I know a lot of games offer an option to run the mouse in software or hardware, and this is often cited as the solution in those games to fix laggy mouse cursors. Just wondering, firstly what the difference is (I don't know what that option means but I always find Hardware the better choice) and secondly how this game runs it?
Well, I have an AMD Sempron 2600+ (the Sempron class is the low end of AMD now) and I'm running at 1280x1024 with all my developers options on, with a 50 frame rate at 100% view... So I dont quite understand how your computer can have such difficulties.
Some additional notes:
a) 1600x1200 is a surface 50% more important than mine, so its something rather large. Perhaps I should provide an option to reduce the resolution of the game.
b) I can also propose the hardware cursor (the software is shown by an additional bitmap whereas the hardware is the standard Windows cursor). I can give you the impression that the mouse is less laggy, true.
I would like you to give me more infos: in the system tab, check FullDebug, load any scenario and tell me how much FPS you have. You should get 25 FPS (the game limits itself to 25). If not there is a serious driver problem (when I unlock the limit I'm at 50 as I said, and my config is rather average).
Also note that zooming out or scrolling in new regions will reduce the frame rate, thats normal, but once it is done once, you should be able to scroll and zoom in/out without any slow down.
Playing with a filter active slow the game too.
Some additional notes:
a) 1600x1200 is a surface 50% more important than mine, so its something rather large. Perhaps I should provide an option to reduce the resolution of the game.
b) I can also propose the hardware cursor (the software is shown by an additional bitmap whereas the hardware is the standard Windows cursor). I can give you the impression that the mouse is less laggy, true.
I would like you to give me more infos: in the system tab, check FullDebug, load any scenario and tell me how much FPS you have. You should get 25 FPS (the game limits itself to 25). If not there is a serious driver problem (when I unlock the limit I'm at 50 as I said, and my config is rather average).
Also note that zooming out or scrolling in new regions will reduce the frame rate, thats normal, but once it is done once, you should be able to scroll and zoom in/out without any slow down.
Playing with a filter active slow the game too.
Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."
I enabled the debug info and found that, when I viewed the inner-territories (somewhere towards the west, lots of woods, basically nothing but land), I had an FPS count of around 10 with a mouse response of 82ms. When I scrolled all the way to the east of the map (the sea) I got around 22 with a response of 10ms. My refresh rate is 85Hz
I reduced the resolution of my screen to 1280x960 (CRT monitor) and my refresh rate was 60Hz. I scrolled to the inner territories where my frame rate was around 15FPS with a mouse response of 64ms.
Since it would seem this is not as things should be, let me list my full specs:
Pentium IVc 3Ghz
2x512MB RAM, Dual Channel
128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, Catalyst 6.2 drivers
Creative Audigy 2 w/ latest drivers but without Beta OpenAL support
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse with 2.47 driver and 1.1 firmware (latest)
Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard, Intellipro 5.3 drivers
D-Link DWL-G520+ Wireless card Rev A w/ 2.04 drivers.
My system is in no way overclocked.
Actually, my menu framerate varies between 22 and 25. It feels perfectly smooth during the load (I wizzed the mouse around), but then felt like treacle once the menu appeared.
I reduced the resolution of my screen to 1280x960 (CRT monitor) and my refresh rate was 60Hz. I scrolled to the inner territories where my frame rate was around 15FPS with a mouse response of 64ms.
Since it would seem this is not as things should be, let me list my full specs:
Pentium IVc 3Ghz
2x512MB RAM, Dual Channel
128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, Catalyst 6.2 drivers
Creative Audigy 2 w/ latest drivers but without Beta OpenAL support
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse with 2.47 driver and 1.1 firmware (latest)
Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard, Intellipro 5.3 drivers
D-Link DWL-G520+ Wireless card Rev A w/ 2.04 drivers.
My system is in no way overclocked.
Actually, my menu framerate varies between 22 and 25. It feels perfectly smooth during the load (I wizzed the mouse around), but then felt like treacle once the menu appeared.
I dont understand, with such spec you are theorically able to maintain 25 FPS whatever the operations your are doing.Are we talking of FPS without scrolling and without unzooming?
Uncheck Region pre-caching, it queries often the hard disk, and perhaps you will get an increase.
make sure your hard disk has been defragmented max one month ago
what size of swap file have you on your computer (config panel, system, advanced, performance, advanced, virtual memory) <= french to english translation.
are you under Windows XP or under 2000?
Do you have Norton AV? Does your anti virus scan file in real time? Do you have other programs running in the background? Try to disconnect your DSL line to be safe, shut down your AV and other programs in background and then rerun BoA.
You can send me your DxDiag file also (support@ageod.com). It nothing works I will send you a little benchmark with BOA graphics being displayed.
Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."
My framerate is when I am just sitting there, not moving screen or mouse.
I defrag my hard drive at least weekly, and did so just yesterday (I defrag after installing or removing anything).
My swap file is 3GB split across two dirves, 1.5GB on each (Windows picks which file to use depending on disk activity). I have a 72GB 15K SCSI drive which acts as the system drive, while my 7200rpm Western Digital drive (150GB) is used for programs and games. Birth of America is installed on the later.
I am running under Windows XP, SP2 fully patched.
I had no Anti-Virus installed when I first reported. I have since installed Avast! 4 Home, but I don't use Real-Time protection, only the screen saver scan (it scans when the screen saver kicks in).
I tried killing every process running under my account, but it didn't make any difference, nor did any adjustment to the options I made. I'll mail you the file.
BTW, if I open the Atlas over the innter-territories my FPS drops to 3. I suffer similar framerate hits from the tutorial window.
I defrag my hard drive at least weekly, and did so just yesterday (I defrag after installing or removing anything).
My swap file is 3GB split across two dirves, 1.5GB on each (Windows picks which file to use depending on disk activity). I have a 72GB 15K SCSI drive which acts as the system drive, while my 7200rpm Western Digital drive (150GB) is used for programs and games. Birth of America is installed on the later.
I am running under Windows XP, SP2 fully patched.
I had no Anti-Virus installed when I first reported. I have since installed Avast! 4 Home, but I don't use Real-Time protection, only the screen saver scan (it scans when the screen saver kicks in).
I tried killing every process running under my account, but it didn't make any difference, nor did any adjustment to the options I made. I'll mail you the file.
BTW, if I open the Atlas over the innter-territories my FPS drops to 3. I suffer similar framerate hits from the tutorial window.
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