Known Issues

[AHadley]

That's happened to me, ZA. They also seem to get back in their ships now and again.

[swaaye]

Should have posted this at the outset.  I'll add to the list as I wake up...

1. Spotlights - They're really expensive in DX9, so copy this section out of GamePrefs.ini into LocalPrefs.ini and tweak the setting downwards until it works okay on your rig:

This is interesting.

What if one's running one of the modern DX10 cards that has stupid amounts of vertex shader power cuz of the ability to devote the entire shader core to just that? Is the performance impact mostly pertinent for older cards?

I'm surprised that we aren't at a point where hardware TCL performance isn't just insane and can easily handle whatever BZ2 could toss its way.

[AHadley]

BZ2 doesn't use video cards as much as modern games. Instead, it draws directly from the CPU.

[TheJamsh]

not as of TA5 it doesn't. GPU WILL matter now.

[swaaye]

Yeah the headlights REALLY kill performance when the light sources start to build up in a scene. My Radeon 4670 plummets to single digits fps in battles with headlights on. Crazy.

[AHadley]

Should have posted this at the outset.  I'll add to the list as I wake up...

1. Spotlights - They're really expensive in DX9, so copy this section out of GamePrefs.ini into LocalPrefs.ini and tweak the setting downwards until it works okay on your rig:

// Spotlights are the most expensive light, according to DX9 docs.
// So, an extra cull is put on them. If (range of spotlight +
// SpotlightRangePad) < (2D distance between object being lit and the
// spotlight), then a spotlight will be considered for lighting that
// object.  If this value is too small, then corners of a boxy object
// may not be accurately lit. If this value is too big, then
// performance may suffer as DX9 is told to apply too many lights to
// an object. Pick your poison.
SpotlightRangePad = 8

[bigbadbogie]

Yeah the headlights REALLY kill performance when the light sources start to build up in a scene. My Radeon 4670 plummets to single digits fps in battles with headlights on. Crazy.

Try updating your videocard's drivers.

I used to get really bad light-lag before I updated mine.

[swaaye]

AHadley's post helped a lot.