Making Underrail run faster on weaker computers

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Hi.
So, my netbook is a piece of junk and it makes the game run slower in some areas. Running outside of the real system's resolution does not help, but I cannot play otherwise.

I want to run it faster. Any tweaks to do so?

 

[Mac_Orion]

can you list the areas, your system information, if it happens when you do something specific and what the frame rate is.

 

[Severian Silk]

You should be able to run Minesweeper on that system.

 

[Goral]

The Brazilian Slaughter
What games that run smoothly do you have on your computer? Anything from 2014? Because with the rig you have you'll probably have to play something much older. And the main bottleneck seems to be CPU not RAM, 2 GB of RAM should be more than enough for UR.

 

[ghostdog]

Processor: Intel Atom CPU N435 (2x) 1,33 GHZ Dual Core.
RAM: 2gb
Video: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150

Yes, this is shit. No I cannot get something better now.

The main bottleneck here seems to be RAM and possibly lack of a propa video card. Running it in 1024x768 res instead of 1024x600 (native resolution) clearly does not help, but Underrail won't go smaller than that (I tried with dxwnd-og).
Still, Underrail doesn't and should't look like a heavy game.

I usually lag more in big places full of critters, like Junkyard and SGS.

I will see about the frame rates.

Also, sometimes I see some weird-ass white squares where some objects should be.

Run it in a window and then use Windowed Borderless Gaming tool to downscale it to 1024x600. Maybe that will help a bit.

 

[Sykar]

Get a new potato.

 

[shihonage]

Doesn't Underrail require .NET framework? If it requires 4.5, you could uninstall it, install the latest one (4.6.something) and see if it helps any. Chances are low.

Also, maybe change desktop color depth to 16-bit instead of 32? Old trick, probably won't work these days.

Or, like, ask Styg to put compiler optimization flags in his C# code to offload loops to multiple cores, if he hasn't done so already. An option in project settings in Visual Studio, followed by #pragma loop( hint_parallel(0) ) before qualifying loops, or something.

 

[FeelTheRads]

My processor is dual core, so that's 2.66 GHZ

And to not be just an asshole, here's a hint: Atom processors are absolute shit. Even if yours magically doubles its Gigahurtz it's still an Atom so it's shit. I have a notebook with an Atom CPU laying around and it's essentially worthless now. Even trying to browse the internet makes me wish for death.

 

[Mac_Orion]

Also, sometimes I see some weird-ass white squares where some objects should be.

did you update the game over steam?
please post a screenshot of that.

 

[Vorark]

Netbook... Windows XP or 7? If it's the latter, disable Aero if you didn't already. Turn off all background processes and irrelevant services. Even then, gameplay won't be very smooth and there's the mismatched game x screen resolution.

I tried playing it once on a netbook I got sitting here when my desktop went kaput, similar specs to yours. It wouldn't even start, so at least you got luckier than me.

And yes, Atom is terribru. Had to install Lubuntu to get it into a useable state again.

 

[AetherVagrant]

The Brazilian Slaughter
What games that run smoothly do you have on your computer? Anything from 2014? Because with the rig you have you'll probably have to play something much older. And the main bottleneck seems to be CPU not RAM, 2 GB of RAM should be more than enough for UR.

I was playing it on a super old Core 2 duo with integrated graphics and 1gb ram and it wasn't too bad, minor slowdown but doable. Definitely stupid Atom cpu to blame here. But I always disable EVERYTHING im not likely to use via the registry or startup file..like no Bluetooth, no Print Spooler, No autoupdates for apps. No antivirus, turn off ALL windows special effects, on my super old slap-dash pc's I want NOTHING starting up with windows and I want almost every nonessential service disabled. I was often able to squeeze far better performance out of trash laptops and netbooks than my friends. If running Windows 7 you can try using a usb stick for extra virtual RAM, but it's slow and Underrail should work fine with 2gb.

 

[shihonage]

No, you can't use a USB stick for virtual ram. You can only use it as a poor man's SSD cache for your physical drive. That's what ReadyBoost is. It kinds works, and it may help a game which does constant disk reading, but I doubt Underrail is that kind of game.

 

[AetherVagrant]

Isn't cached ram and virtual ram the same thing?
Though the point is exactly as I said -- it only helps ram intensive games, which Underrail is not.

 

[shihonage]

Isn't cached ram and virtual ram the same thing?
Though the point is exactly as I said -- it only helps ram intensive games, which Underrail is not.

The only thing it helps with, is disk read speed. It does not help RAM-intensive games. It isn't cached RAM, it is cached storage.