Hello.

35-60fps with 128 bots ! Could this revolutionise your Coop game ? I don't know maybe ya'll playing out there with this set up already ?

After some research into how to do this for Forgotten Hope I decided to try this for 2142. In a nutshell this is it ... you need a multi core CPU. The server is run on one CPU (the AI/bots) and the client (the visuals) on another core. This basically multi-threads 2142 single player or Coop. The client is left to do what it does best - rendering visuals - on one core. While the server is left to do it's thing ... computing bot paths and logic - on another core. This leads to improved performance. This is especially noticeable when using 128 bots. A game started from within the 2142 menu system runs on a single core and crawls to 15 to 20fps or less (FRAPS) on my 2.4Ghz CPU core. But split out the server onto another core and presto ! My client now runs at 35 - 60fps (vsync) with 128 bots. Still in testing so performance may improve some more. There should be noticeably improved bot performance as well - bot pathing, targeting and other behaviour, as the DICE engine is not having to scale the bot performance down to compensate for lack of CPU.

Here is the guide: http://stargate.djbarney.org/node/80

There's only one thing I have not fixed yet, and I managed to fix this problem with Battlefield 2. For some reason the client does not like joining a localhost (127.0.0.1) server. With BF2 the +joinServer switch can be used but 2142 seems to ignore this. Manually joining a locahost server using the server browser menu does not work either. So despite having 35-60fps with 128 bots in 2142 there is still some network lagginess ... this is is on a 192.168.x.x address. There should not be any ping lag at all with it running on one machine ! Anyway, I hope to fix this problem. It's certainly playable on 192.168.x.x but 127.0.0.1 would be better.

BF2142 2012-05-03 19-24-48-34.jpg

BF2142 2012-05-03 19-25-09-43.jpg