12 replies to this topic

[FlapsyGames]

Hi everyone!

 

So a week ago I was asking how would my 2009 Mac run this game.

 

As I haven't seen any threads about this, I thought it'd be curious posting it.

 

So, as my minimum requirements were on the borderline of not running the game I tried a piracy version that brought some performance bugs, but before giving up, asked around here to see if it could be of the Piracy version or if that would actually happen in the full version. Got the Steam Version as I could get a refund and because of the FPS counter.

 

These are the results (with screenshots) with my 2009 27-inch iMac (leave specs below)

 

OSX Mavericks 10.9.5

Processor: Intel Core i7-860 2.8GHz

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1067MHz

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD4850 512MB DDR3

 

NOTE: These Screenshots are from BOOK ONE, and valid for Book Two, However, in the 3rd Book, on a Zoe part, FPS got down to 20

 

My average on close spaces as houses, offices, etc... was around 40fps, on open spaces, 30-35 (depending on the graphic detail of the space)

 

2nd Note: I played it on the (almost) minimum graphic specs as in these games I just don't care about the graphics that much. Just turned "Quality" to Normal.

 

You're welcome!

Attached Files

•  Captura de pantalla 2015-07-03 a la(s) 17.35.jpeg   45.17KB   4 downloads
•  Captura de pantalla 2015-07-03 a la(s) 17.39.jpeg   54.77KB   3 downloads

[Mr Moo]

That is quite impressive performance really. Which screen resolution are you playing with? Google tells me Resolution: 2560 by 1440 pixels

[FlapsyGames]

Mine tells it's... 1200x675, which is quite strange, but no, as I said, everything (excepting quality) goes on the lower top, including GAME resolution, which is 1280x720 (My Desktop resolution is 1920x1080)

 

Actually, Resolution was quite the most influence part along with SSAO during first impressions, if you have an old computer, with specs such as mine, run it on the bottom, if performance is smooth, you can try things (I actually heard PC version performs alittle bit better, but as I don't have Bootcamp, I only heard it on this forum).

 

Anyway, thank you for responding, hope you find my answer quite helpful

[Olstyle]

Having a dedicated (though old) graphics card makes your Mac one of the most powerful on this forum .
Considering settings: Apart from the already named SSAO and resolution, shadow draw distance had the most impact on my HTPC.

[Tina]

I'm happy to hear that it seems to have worked out well

[BMack]

I am playing Dreamfall Chapters on a late 2012 iMac:

  Model Name:    iMac
  Model Identifier:    iMac13,1
  Processor Name:    Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:    3.1 GHz
  Number of Processors:    1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
  L3 Cache:    8 MB
  Memory:    16 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB

Setting the VISUAL QUALITY to anything above Low gives unacceptable, choppy animation in certain areas, particularly the Commons and the Magical Market.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that to my eye the difference between Awesome VISUAL QUALITY and Low VISUAL QUALITY is hardly noticeable.  I have an older 2009 iMac set up beside my 2012 iMac.  I have run the program on both machines side by side, one in Awesome mode and one in Low mode and compared the graphics.  Really, you have to look close to see a difference.  The most noticeable is the foliage which is rendered with higher resolution textures in Awesome mode.  This accounts for the poor frame rate in areas with a lot of tree leaves and grasses blowing back and forth in the wind.

Anyway, my advice is to run the game with Low VISUAL QUALITY.  You'll get much smoother animation without significantly sacrificing the quality of the graphics.

[FlapsyGames]

Anyway, my advice is to run the game with Low VISUAL QUALITY.  You'll get much smoother animation without significantly sacrificing the quality of the graphics.

Agree with that, I re-played the game this week to see other possibilities due to some choices and, as it's demn hot here and my Computer gets hotter in less time, decided to set the graphical settings to the bottom top, and it was quite the same, but, at least in my case, it was almost the same for everything, both FPS and quality.

 

On the other part. In 3 years Apple couldn't get to put, at least, a DDR5 graphic card on their iMac?(or at least with 1GB of VRAM)... Man, Apple truly doesn't want Mac users to use their computers for gaming xD

[FlapsyGames]

ADVICE: This Benchmark was made BEFORE the Unity 5 Patch. Since the patch, I have notices something worth explaining.

 

Now I have to run the game on the bottom specs, but that was something I was ready for. Still, the game, thanks to the better shaders and lightning, looks better.

 

I'm curious about one thing, since this patch, the performance has run lower on spaces where, before the patch, my computer was running at 30-40fps, 40fps mostly in close spaces (Rooster&Kitten, The Hand, etc...) and 30 in Open spaces, like Marcuria or Propast. But on the 3rd episode, when Zoë finally gets to **, fps got down a lot, to 15-20.

 

Now I have to sacrifice some fps on those places where game was performing smoothly, to get an average of 25-30, but on Chapters 3 and 4, things go up to... almost the same (More around 20-25, I don't have V-Sync enabled)

 

Any idea why this happens?

 

P.S.: I fell totally in Love with the 4th Book, and am REALLY REALLY REALLY hyped abouth the 5th

[Morten]

Just to chime in here:

The Visual Quality setting will most noticeably impact the resolution of textures used across the game. This means that the major difference between the levels of this setting impacts the amount of memory used by the application.

There's also a couple of other things that gets adjusted based on the level of Visual Quality that is set:

For the lowest setting, some variants of Depth of Field (DoF) that are used are completely disabled. These are enabled by default for Medium, High and Awesome levels.

DoF can of course be toggled on/off by demand for these levels.

Shadow Distance is also configured to its default values upon changing Visual Quality. Defaults are: 1m on Low, 8m on Medium, 18m on High and 25m on Awesome.

As with DoF, the Shadow Distance value can be changed manually by demand as well. Shadow Distance can be turned up to 50m, but this is not recommended - nor needed - for anyone that doesn't have a top-of-the-line* graphics card.

(* - of course this varies, but it's generally the more expensive GPUs)

 

 

The following is a small summary on some of the in-game settings available and their performance impact:

 

- Resolution determines the amount of pixels needed to be drawn every frame and generally there's a pretty noticeable difference in performance between a high- and a low resolution.

 

- Post-processing effects like Bloom, DoF, Motion Blur, Noise/Grain and Lens Flares will have a minor impact. Results may also differ between scenes depending on what assets are used in the scene.

In some cinematics a special variant of DoF that's slightly more demanding is used, so the DoF setting might have a tiny bit more impact than the other settings mentioned depending on where you are in the game.

 

- Anti-Aliasing (AA) and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) are post-processing effects with their own levels of quality. These are generally more demanding than the above mentioned effects. This is because they often have to dynamically update a varying amount of pixels on the screen based on many different variables like the depth at which an object is positioned in world space, texture maps, lookup textures, etc.

 

- Shadow Distance determines how close to the "camera" a light has to be for it to update real-time shadows on nearby objects. Real-time shadow rendering is often an expensive operation that calculates what part of an object (pixel) should be lit or not. Based on the light's intensity level, a pixel's color is determined by a range of different things. For this to be calculated correctly, things like the original color of the pixel (from texture), the light from different light sources, ambient light etc. also has to be taken into account.

The performance impact of Shadow Distance therefore also depends on the amount of shadow-casting lights (some lights are not set to cast shadows) are in one area. The more of these lights that are within the specified Shadow Distance, the more performance impact this setting will have.

 

 

So to sum up; if you have a great deal of performance issues while playing, I would first suggest that you try to reduce the Resolution that the game is rendered in and the Shadow Distance value.

After that I'd recommend playing around a bit with AA and SSAO, as well as the Visual Quality, to where you find a balance between quality and performance that you are happy with.

The remaining settings are more or less player-preference based settings. Some people like Bloom and DoF. Some don't. So basically, these settings will have a minor to no impact on perceived performance and are mostly there for the ability to actually toggle them.

 

 

I hope that helps a bit. Ended up like a bit more than just chiming in, I guess.

[Ikon]

All good info Morten, and most welcome.

[Kari2]

I am playing Dreamfall Chapters on a late 2012 iMac:

  Model Name:    iMac
  Model Identifier:    iMac13,1
  Processor Name:    Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:    3.1 GHz
  Number of Processors:    1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
  L3 Cache:    8 MB
  Memory:    16 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB

Setting the VISUAL QUALITY to anything above Low gives unacceptable, choppy animation in certain areas, particularly the Commons and the Magical Market.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that to my eye the difference between Awesome VISUAL QUALITY and Low VISUAL QUALITY is hardly noticeable.  I have an older 2009 iMac set up beside my 2012 iMac.  I have run the program on both machines side by side, one in Awesome mode and one in Low mode and compared the graphics.  Really, you have to look close to see a difference.  The most noticeable is the foliage which is rendered with higher resolution textures in Awesome mode.  This accounts for the poor frame rate in areas with a lot of tree leaves and grasses blowing back and forth in the wind.

Anyway, my advice is to run the game with Low VISUAL QUALITY.  You'll get much smoother animation without significantly sacrificing the quality of the graphics.

 

I have a GT 620m and I do the reverse regarding QUALITY.  In normally lit location, Low Quality works as you said. However  in overly dark areas and in hazy places, .High Quality adds clarity and definition which is much needed. To my eye the sharpness and clarity of the Rebel figures in the Library, and the Propast river font is much improved. With your setup I would recommend reducing the screen size. First set your Nvidia screen resolution to a amaller size and select "no scaling". Then set the game settings to the same resolution and play full screen or windowed. Also, turn off Advanced PhisyX.

[BMack]

I have a GT 620m and I do the reverse regarding QUALITY.  In normally lit location, Low Quality works as you said. However  in overly dark areas and in hazy places, .High Quality adds clarity and definition which is much needed. To my eye the sharpness and clarity of the Rebel figures in the Library, and the Propast river font is much improved. With your setup I would recommend reducing the screen size. First set your Nvidia screen resolution to a amaller size and select "no scaling". Then set the game settings to the same resolution and play full screen or windowed. Also, turn off Advanced PhisyX.

Since my first post I have upgraded to El Capitan and upgraded to NVIDIA Web Driver: 346.03.04f02.  With this setup I just played through Book 4 with the graphics options max'ed out with quite acceptable frame rates (at least for me).

[Kari2]

Since my first post I have upgraded to El Capitan and upgraded to NVIDIA Web Driver: 346.03.04f02.  With this setup I just played through Book 4 with the graphics options max'ed out with quite acceptable frame rates (at least for me).

I'm envious.