Hotfix Mod / Aranna Legacy Mod

As I said, my graphic card is sleeping, and barely wake up with max antialiasing, anisotropic filtering etc... These setting doesn't impact at all on the performance.
Problem is like you said, the CPU cores. Running with one core only raise my FPS to 40!

another thing i noticed is that ds2 doesnt like running with hyper threading enabled. disabling hyper threading in the bios squeezes out a few more fps and disabling vsync in the ini file can help quite a bit too.

also, ds2 seems to favour pure ghz on both the cpu and ram. so at least a 3 ghz cpu is recommended.

also a correction: i think an amd athlon 64 x2 3800+ runs at 2ghz NOT 2.4ghz as stated by marco. please check this list of cpus here.

as u can see there are many revisions of the athlon 64 x2 3800+ but all of them run at 2ghz. i think u have confused the single core version (which runs at 2.4ghz) with the dual core one.

also, for the recent cpus using ddr3 ram, the ram shud be at least 1.6ghz or faster if u use the standard normal value ram. if u use gaming grade low latency ram like voty, then u can get away with running it at 1333mhz.

however, with all that, i must warn that a few of you are expecting unrealistic frame rates from this game. u are expecting a minimum frame rate of 60fps all the time which is an unrealistic expectation for any game... even if u put the cpu under water cooling at 4.5ghz, u are unlikely to sustain 60fps all the time. around 30-40fps is already very good for this game. i remember one of the gpg devs saying before that this game engine is never meant to run at high frame rates.

dragonxsiege, i suggest u try disabling vsync with the vsync=false parameter in the ini file. the nvidia drivers by default seem to enable vsync for bw which is bad for the frame rates. i believe bare elf and darkelf do not have the same problem with their nvidia cards because i know they have vsync disabled.

You must be really joking. On a typical modern PC worth about 1000$, you'll get 70-80 fps of games like World of Tanks CONSTANTLY. We're talking about extremely old game here, developed for hardware significantly weaker than modern smartphones even, reaching 60 fps shouldn't take more than a few percent of graphics card and less than fifty from a single core. Either your PC is very old, or you didn't really noticed how powerful modern machines are.

Which leads me back to a simple conclusion that the game's code is simply terrible and refuses to work with new machines, something that was extremely common for 1997 games when you tried to make them work on windows XP and such, but by all means is a sad joke for a 2005 game developed by Microsoft and GPG, no less.

It's easily the only game that makes any sort of performance problems on a modern machine that I can think about. With FPS limit off, it should easily get to 300-400 fps simply because of how old it is. That kind of graphic shpuld be a breeze even for 5 year old graphic cards and simpliest processors.

firstly, the comparison with world of tanks is an apples to oranges comparison because wot is multithreaded while ds2 is not.

also, wot is a game that first came out in russian in 2010. i do not understand why u are comparing two games that came out 5 years apart and saying that the older game has rubbish code.

5 years is a big time apart and those games simply had different software tools available at the time at their disposal to make the game. therefore, the comparison with wot is a moot point.

the reason why wot runs faster is because it has been designed to run on multi-core cpus while ds2 uses older single threaded code. i do not understand how u can call it "crappy code" when u are comparing two vastly different types of code.

secondly, it has been mentioned many times before that ds2 is not stressful on the gpu and uses very little of the gpu. the bottleneck is with the cpu.

because the performance per core did not increase much from the core 2 era and due to the single threaded nature of the game, expecting 300-400 fps on a single threaded game is an unrealistic expectation and then trying to compare it with a multi-threaded game results in phailed logic. it is irrelevant how "old" the pc is or how supposedly "powerful" u think a "modern machine" is.

my guess is u have been reading too many benchmarks showing games running at insanely high frame rates. it is well known that game benchmarks do not accurately reflect real-world game performance and quite a lot of them are paid reviews meant for advertising puposes.

but since u like high fps benchmarks anyway, here's some for u to chew on. if a 1 ghz cpu can run quake 3 arena at 150 fps then why does a 3 ghz one run quake 3 arena at 400 fps? its 3 times faster in clockspeed so the game shud run 3 times faster at 450 fps!

this only goes to show that theory != practice. whatever "theories" u have on how powerful u think modern pcs are not accurately translated into practice. where is there a game that runs at 300-400 fps? how many games are there out there that can run at 300-400 fps?! not unless u are thinking of playing at 640x480 with everything off...

if u want 300-400 fps on ds2, u'd have to make a cpu that runs at 12 ghz which intel has stated is highly impossible due to the heat output and energy required.

so with the performance per core of multi-core cpus being around the ballpark figure of a 4-6 ghz single core, thinking of playing ds2 at 300-400 fps is only a dream. an inception... :P

I just installed the game and added the this mod only and i can't seem to get rampage mode or anything other than mirror mode to work. My main character will move but the others will stay there. This only happens when someone else is in multiplayer with me, but works fine when I'm alone in multiplayer. We both have the mod as well.

Hi PK I am not sure what is going on with your game, however so that people can communicate with you without one of us moderators finding your comments in the approval queue, I would suggest that you register as a member. We do not always check the approval queue for comments from unregistered people.
I just happened to be bored waiting for someone to show up to replace me at work. (real world work) not here.

The issue with rampage not working only occurs on the people joining the lan server not the one hosting and the ability to heal other players characters is not doable with auto casting heals, but you can heal manually.

Hey guys Reinstalled DS2 on my new PC and I _finally_ can say it's playable. Still need to restart the PC to re-adjust the frame rate every 2 hours cause memory leak gets it worse and worse every hour you play. I start with 180 frames, end up with 40 or so after 2-3 hours.

Oh well, at least it works well. And the game is still one of the most fun ARPGs out there. Esp. with this mod :))

some minor bugs for you, KG, if you still come here:

1. The Taclaks that are supposed to jump out of the holes in the ground don't do it, they remain stuck in those holes. Annoying because if they drop something, it's also impossible to pick down there.
2. There's still "invis Hak'u" in Haku ritial camp, one that can be heard but can't be seen or targeted.
3. Some jumping monsters (for instance Bogroots in Kithraya Caves) get confused when you step back after they jumped, they suddenly start flying backwards, then forwards again, than backwards again... looks hilarious, but is pretty weird and (obviously) bugged.
4. There's some weird notion with some melee characters - in the middle of the fight, they suddenly stop attacking to run around the monster and attack him from a different position. Pretty pointless and pretty annoying when you're playing solo or in a small party (can't they just stand in place and attack unless ordered differently?)

I also believe Tremor is still kinda useless... still needs buffs badly!

Otherwise, I'm really impressed you managed to fix almost everything I pointed out as broken/imbalanced, KG... The game is much, much less "cheesy" now and playing with a friend (single char each) is pretty fun right now.
Great job:)

1.) I've heard about this. I think monsters with a jump range of zero should be able to jump, something that the revised code doesn't support anymore.

2.) This must be a map problem. A quest depending monster that doesn't reveal correctly (or a sound emitter that doesn't turn off). I had to check this.

3.) Hm, could be in context 1.) and conflicting AI routines.

4.) This may be annoying indeed. It's a matter that already exists in the unmodded game. I wouldn't exclude though that retuned parameters or code parts may increase this matter.
Key problem is that (re)approching and hitting is one game command without much tolerance/variance concerning the ideal approach distance, and it's not really transparent which parameters have an influence here.

...and Tremor already got a remarkable boost. The radius could be retuned possibly.

Think about this:
If you are surrounded by enemies, Tremor damages them all.
A low damage applied to many enemies is a big damage.
So, IMOH, Tremor is not so weak and it's perfect the way it is.

Tremor's AOE is too low, and it's a 30% chance.

At best you'll get 600-700 damage, and that requires some really weird build (like 4x ring enchanted with spectral dust, an amulet and spellbook in the same matter, just to make tremor's damage relevant).

30% chance for 600 damage = around 200 aoe damage per hit, that cannot crit.

At the same time, your guys are critting for thousands.

Tremor is badly thought, GPG really misplaced that skill.
First, intelligence and melee just doesn't work together ... To get high INT to get tremor's damage worthwile, you need to give up on lots of strength and skills in the first place (= weak melee guy)
Second, the monsters rarely group in a way to make those kind of skills useful (and when you do, you use AOE powers)
Third, for something that requires an exotic build, it has minimal impact.

Several ways to make tremor matter:

1. Buff it a lot
2. Rework it, so it takes mostly strength in consideration (more than it already does if it has been reworked already)
3. buff the AoE so it can hit stuff easier
4. Make "earth blast" enchantment affect tremor in a way, for example add a passive +50% tremor AOE buff to it

Right now I consider it one of the most useless skills, one that requires a full build around it to work and even then it works poorly.

Minor bug: Corpse shield does not auto-cast when you have the party member that has it in spellbook selected. It does work on auto cast if you have someone else selected other than the mage that has corpse shield in the spellbook.

@czacki: Thanks, I will recheck the power and spell soon.

Sounds good:) Meanwhile, I've been thinking about some powers:

Chain lightning - this power gets pretty much the short stick of powers. The damage is low, it doesn't hit many targets and the short cooldown does not compensate for its lack of utility (no stun, etc). IMHO, it was actually somewhat balanced when it got bugged in one version and got casted twice (it was half a year ago or so). I'd actually reconsider making it working that way - compared to regular "damage" powers like Waves of Force it's strictly inferior. If necessary, it can get a somewhat longer cooldown if straight-out doublecast proves too strong.

Flame nexus - I recall this power being perfectly fine... when it used to ignite targets with high probability in vanilla game and old versions of this mod. However, in the current one, it seems to follow the probability given in the skill's description, ie. 20% chance. This in return makes for a rather pitiful power that doesn't stun and deals less damage than average thunderous shot/ravaging strike in addition to that. My suggestion is to make it ignite all targets it hits (100% chance) - that makes up for its lack of power and makes an amazing single player spell because burnt targets refill the power bar while taking damage. This will make up for somewhat inferior damage of the power and lack of crowd control. It also makes ignite skill (which is kinda useless atm) somewhat more relevant.

I'd also love to see Elemental Rage buffed (it really sucks after GPG nerfed it in Broken World). compared to really strong powers we have now, it no longer stands out.

It would be awesome if attack-based powers (Elemental Rage, Thunderous shots and Flurry, particularly) worked with modifiers, i.e. rapid attack, berserk - and could trigger it on their own... Out of those, Flurry doesn't really need much buffs (it's strong) but elemental rage and thunderous shots kinda suck... I really recommend to make them work with rapid A/berserk Would make a fun and strong synergy with gear.

I also noticed the workaround for crafted items (lower quality if made without recipe) works awkwardly ie. I got a Archmage's amulet from my mate (I don't have the recipe) and when I start the game it gets the "lower quality" but as soon as I pick it up and put it back in place it becomes regular power item..

Finally, Talon is still active from the start & durvlas get catapulted. Kinda sucks, because it can easilly bug the game, ending with ballista not being possible to use (fortunately saving & starting again fixes that...)

EDIT: stupid me, I just noticed flurry works well with rapid atack! :P thunderous shot however does not, and it's kinda poor, too..

Oh yeah, and training dummies stopped working

...and with some concerns I'm reading that powers are only attractive to use it they are bugged in order to compete with other powers, so perhaps all powers need to be rebalanced in both directions. But so far this has no priority.

I think the powers are mostly OK. The problem with "plain damage powers" is that they actually need to do a lot of damage to compete with the more potent crowd-control powers, and the particular two (flame nexus/chain lightning) really offer subpar damage with no stun.

Training dummies work for me, just have yo hit them 10-15 times

They didn't for me... I left a "retarded" Sartan (two levels lower than the rest of the party) attack dummies with corresponding weapons/spells and lots of loot in his backpack for like 5 mins. Nothing happened... nothing at all

Also, corpse shield autocasting is terribly bugged.. works ONLY if you leave the mouse alone after you kill an enemy, but only if you do it exactly that way! It doesn't work with force autocast and by standing next to corpses. It only works after an enemy dies and if you don't issue any command after his death! weird.

@czacki: The training dummies don't give exp for free, so did you sacrifice an item first?

well, I tried dropping them on the circle and attacking... nothing happened. I also attacked with the items simply put in the backpack. also nothing happened.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

And also, I have to confirm that Talon bug disables the ballista in this version and you have to save the game and restart to make ballista clickable. Happened to me three times already.

Noticed a weird bug... sometimes the ranged powers (Thunderous shot and ravaging strike) don't fly from the archer when used, but rather, from another party member (in my case the shield tank). Pretty awkward.

Beta 5e resp. Alpha 3q are now online as minor update.

There hasn't changed a lot, a better body detection for the AI and a good chance for the Chain Lightning power to stun enemies. There rest has rather been revised for technical reasons.

 
Unfortuately I could not recheck yet the Talon issue. There are natively flaws and differences between v2.2 and v2.3/addon, but it's too time-consuming right now to replay and to completely examine this quest in both game versions.
Although I hadn't any problems with this quest myself so far, it's well possible that my generic test-savegames are not sufficiently reliable concerning all the quest related events and triggers.

Thanks for the Corpseshield fix!

The Talon issue happened for me over 4 different laptops/PCs and several versions of the mod. It's definitively there and extremely easy to reproduce. Hope you'll get some time in the future to fix it

Is anybody else having a problem with the Aranna Legacy Mod file being a .txt file? No matter how or where I download it, it comes out as a .txt file instead of a .zip with the .ds2res files, yet the download is the same size, and when opened it produces such a mass of mix matched letters and numbers that it takes me a good 3-5 minutes to open it.

That was obvious enough to me, no offense, lol.
I completely avoid the README button. I click on the name of the file itself but I still get the .Txt file, it seriously stumps me. I even went to dungeonsiege2.net where the file is also hosted and it gives me the same thing.

I guess I could upload the file somewhere to show you what I am getting instead of the .ds2res file? Are offsite link allowed? It wasn't in the rules section, but I thought I'd ask anyways.

i think u might have an improperly configured browser that doesnt name downloaded files correctly. or it cud be a virus or anti-virus software with too high security settings messing up the file download. or it cud also be ur isp or a problematic/wrongly configured router blocking or messing up your downloads.

try renaming the .txt file u downloaded to .ds2res or .zip. u appear to have a problem with files being downloaded with the wrong filename extension.