Sins on Vista

from Sins Forums
First off, this game is more than what I even expected, especially for a Beta release. Its really enjoyable to sit down and spend hours conquering an entire galaxy.

Now of course, heres whats annoying me:
1. The sound, the ships look too similar when zoomed out, and the AI is a little dumb (sending one little scout frigate against 30+ capital ships...)

2. It runs VERY weird on my system. People say it runs perfectly smooth with it on high resolutions and such, but mine chugs a LOT. What I mean by chugs is that it'll appear to run smoothly but it'll pause for a split second every few seconds and when I zoom in on medium sized battle it'll get really low FPS!

Here's my specs-
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.40 (no OC)
RAM: DDR2-800 (its OC'd to 800 because the motherboard didn't show it right)
Grahics: XFX Geforce 8800GTX XXX
all with Vista Home Premium

No game should do this. I am not sure if its my set up or if its Vista/the fact the game is Beta/or my processor. Need any other information on my comp?

As for improvements, here's what I think would work best:
1. Improved AI
2. The diplomacy and how the AI changes it so much really annoys me
3. Some other way to tell that there is an artifact at a planet, such as a small icon when zoomed out.
4. Special "combat" camera angles, so when there's a fight the camera could maybe pan around the fight and follow fighters.
5. Make the capital ships different prices, and not all the same.

There's my ideas...
3,046 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Was it a clean Vista install or an upgrade? My buddy did an upgrade from XP to Vista home and he had a lot of slow down issues with almost every game.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Was it a clean Vista install or an upgrade? My buddy did an upgrade from XP to Vista home and he had a lot of slow down issues with almost every game.


It was a completely clean install, I built the comp myself. Another thing I thought of too, could it be slowing down a bit because I have three hard drives in there (one for OS stuff, another for games, and another for music/videos)? I didn't think it would make a difference...
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
It might be your memory, that sounds pretty weird.

It's not the Duo, I don't think.

Well - in supreme commander windowsXP, you would get similar behavior if you had /usepmtimer in your boot.ini. But I don't know how Vista handles that sort of thing.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
YES = Agreed - check your memory - if its not showing up right then its not right  so replace it with the proper size/style
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I'm running on Vista HP with 4200, 2GB of RAM, and an ATi 1900XTX at 1400x900 with full AA support and max graphics. Not a single slowdown.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
This is for problem 2   

What I found helped was disabling the sidebar, I'm noticing that sidebars cause a lot of problems with some games. Also do you have Aero running? If so maybe try disabling it. Also try this, in the compatibility tab for the exe try disabling visual themes, desktop composition, and display scaling on high DPI settings. That might help the game run more smoothly. Other then that, I'd say it's because it's in beta   . Hope this helps.

Oh yeah, I also run the game as admin... don't think it really does anything... but it's worth a shot.   
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the ideas and info. I might return my memory, even SupCom runs crappy on here, so most likely bad memory then.

I run Aero, yes. I don't need to run games in admin since I took off UAC. I only noticed problems with Sidebar with Oblivion, and thats it.


It might be your memory, that sounds pretty weird.

It's not the Duo, I don't think.

Well - in supreme commander windowsXP, you would get similar behavior if you had /usepmtimer in your boot.ini. But I don't know how Vista handles that sort of thing.


Yea, I did the same thing that Vista uses for it: BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 2900 in a cmd window.

So yea, its my comp, not just the game versus Vista.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
How much RAM does your system have?  It could also be the Nvidia drivers, which are not great on Vista.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I got 2 gigs. My brother has the same exact type of ram, i'm going to test his out in my system later today.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Not a single issue here running Vista (suprise there some games have little quircks).

Running..

E6400 @ 3.0Ghz
4Gig of ram well above rated speed
X1900XT slight OC

1920x1200 screen res with everything cranked. Not a single issue, slow down or anything. But it does use ram. Slow down might because its swapping between the HDD and the Ram. I've seen 1.1Gigs of ram being used and early in game its around 800Megs.

How much ram is your system using and are you running 32-bit or 64-bit Vista? I'm running 64-bit currently. As well its very possible the video drivers just don't work well with it. 8800's and Vista haven't been a smooth transition. Do you have fraps or something to monitor frame rate within the game?
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Hmm. Okay, this is what I'm doing, using, etc:

A Custom Game with 100 planets, 4 systems, and maxed artifacts. I have graphics turned to 1280x1024 with everything highest as I can set it. I am using Vista 32-bit with the 8800 and current WORKING drivers (the beta ones...had issues. When I tried playing a Small sized galaxy, it didn't stutter or anything. Also, I un-OC'd my ram but its still doing the same thing.

I was getting about 10-35 FPS. Zoomed out was at 30 and zoomed in on a semi large fleet bombing a planet went to 10.

On my large game, I get a crash about 10 minutes after I load.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Hmmm well I'll give that a shot tomorrow morning and will report back with my findings on it. Mind you I'm running faster 3.0Ghz CPU but my GPU is half as powerful and running a much larger screen so we'll see what results I get.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Gave it a shot on your settings not a single problem, just played for a bit just to get something going but not one issue. 60FPS across the board. Battles, planets, system views, galaxy view, you name it.

I was running still maxed out on my system, 1920x1200, with my CPU at 3.0Ghz.