Optimal PC Setup for Darkfall Online

First, some important information regarding running Darkfall Online on your PC.

1) Darkfall does not support multiple cores. The speed of your processor, not the number of cores is what matters. This is why a dual core E8400 clocked at 3.0 ghz is better than a quad core Q6600 clocked at 2.4 ghz
2) The game uses 3d sounds which are very processor intensive if you don't have a dedicated 3d sound card like an X-Fi.


That said, I have been playing Darkfall recently on a computer I built in January 2007 (inspired by this guide from silentpcreview). The basic setup was a Gigabyte P5W DH Deluxe mobo with a intel dual core E6600 processor (stock) 2 GB of DDR2 Ram (stock) and an XFX GT7950 GT (512MB). My sound card was a M-Audio Revolution 5.1 (no hardware 3d FX processor). For comparison, this setup ran WoW flawlessly (most PC's will), HL and CS on high settings fine, but I had to tone things down for Warhammer and Darkfall during large scale combat.

If you've got a similiar PC you can probably squeeze some reasonable FPS out of the rig just by turning the settings down:

Turn Shadows completely off (this is the biggest drain to FPS)
Turn ambient sounds off and 3d sounds to 8 (I only do this during sieges)
Uncheck Object Clipping
Disable Post Screen Effects
In windows task manager, set the Darkfall.exe process to high priority

Doing this with the above rig was giving me around 70FPS outside combat. In small PvP encounters i stayed above 30, at large sieges the game started to get choppy.

Since large scale siege combat plays such a prominent role in Darkfall, I set out to see what I could do to make it work. Here's what I did:

The E6600 processor I have is great for overclocking. It runs stock at 2.4Ghz and with my aftermarket cooling (Scythe Ninja) it runs at 30 C idle and 40 under load.

Check out the overclocker.net forums and dig up some information for overclocking your system. Make sure you have adequate cooling though, or else your PC won't be stable. I went for a modest overclock bumping my CPU from 2.4GHZ to 3.0 GHZ. Just this one change alone bumped my FPS about 10-15 FPS outside sieges. I didn't get to try large scale PvP with just the OC'd processor. I used this beginners overclocking guide I came across with a google search. It was a lot easier than I thought, especially since I had never done it before. At 3.0 GHZ I ran a stress test for 12 hours without any errors. CPU temps were stable at around 55 C. More than enough room to operate at a safe temp. I tried to keep pushing it further but started getting logic errors around 3.2 Ghz. I'm a newb when it comes to overclocking so I just left it back at 3.0.

The next thing I did was order some new toys from newegg (where I buy all my components -the best service, fast shipping and great prices!)

The first thing I did was double up on my RAM from 2GB to 4GB. Pretty simple, cost me $30 I would've gone to 8GB but I don't feel like upgrading my 32 bit XP right now. Once Windows 7 comes out I'll probably make the switch. I loaded up Darkfall now with my OC'd processor and double RAM to see how it ran. I didn't notice as much of an FPS increase as the overclock. But for 30 bucks the marginal performance is worth it IMO.

Next, I picked up this Radeon HD 4850 1GB PCIe 2.0 graphics card. I really think my 7950 GT was a major bottle neck. Check out this graphics card ranking list to see if your GPU is holding you back. Two things to note here if you're paying attention. My motherboard doesn't actually have a PCIe 2.0 slot, but the interface is backwards compatible and there is marginal performance loss if any. It's a fanless 4850, but only because I built my PC to be as quiet as possible. The only fans are aftermarket 120mm low noise ccase fans and everything else just has huge heat sinks on it. It's all about proper airflow management. Despite not having a fan on it, this card runs great. Temperatures under load are under 50 C!

The last change I made was swapping out my non-3D accelerated sound card for a Auzentech X-Fi Forte. Using onboard sound is fine when you're just standing around or small scale PvP, but once you get into sieges with 100+ people, all the sound spam just eats up your processor. By installing a dedicated 3DFX sound card I freed up my processor to focus on the graphical elements of the game. Not only does the game no longer sound retarded from running only 8 sounds but I am also getting directional sound. I can hear exactly which direction that mounted guy is coming from or where that miner is hacking away at a metal node. I went with the Auzentech version of the X-Fi which is a little more expensive than some of the Creative branded ones, but comes without the bloated software.

So what is the end result? Just standing around town, doing PvE or other less intensive Darkfall tasks - I am now getting between 170-195 FPS! That's more than a 100% increase from earlier. And this is with the default settings, minus shadows (for whatever reason turning shadows on still drops my FPS dramatically, into the 40s - definitely playable but not worth it).

What about siege combat? Well last night I went to the ATS vs Mitsubishi siege on Yssam. There were a lot of people there. MY FPS did drop considerably, into the 30-50 range. This is still good considering there were multiple alliances present, and tons of combat going on. No choppiness or client side lag and with the X-Fi installed I could actually leave my sound settings at default and hear everything.

All said and done I'm pretty happy with the results. I took a two year old PC (which was built using mid-level components at the time) and squeezed a lot of performance out of it with a minimal investment. After rebates, the whole upgrade cost me $308 including shipping. My PC now has enough power to run perfect in small scale combat and even runs smoothly in chaotic large scale sieges. It's certainly more than good enough to tide me over until the intel i7 systems become a little more affordable.


What is your system setup and how is your Darkfall performance?

P.S.

Before you run out and by the 4850 or X-Fi I linked here, make sure there is enough room in your case. The 4850 I bought is HUGE. I had to rearrange a lot of cabling to get it to fit. It's also sitting lower in the main chamber than wood be optimal for cooling purposes, but it still works. The X-Fi Forte is low profile (narrow) but still very long as well.

Play to Crush, Lessons from Shadowbane for Darkfall Online

The announcement of Shadowbane closing its servers has set off a lot of discussions regarding SB's design. Many people believe that the game closing on May 1st somehow validates their ranting that open PvP and siege rulesets will kill any game. As a UO and SB veteran I am compelled provide a counterpoint to these carebear ways. I still remember well how UO was ruined by a vocal carebear community, and I think it is important that the PvP community makes it's voice clear, in a organized and thoughtful manner. A good example is the comments section on Lum's Broken Toy's blog in here, it's worth a quick read but I'll recap my thoughts here.

One commenter wrote:

"A PvP game is essentially a limiting design. PvE means everyone gets to win. PvP means many players have to play the role of the loser. A well-done PvP game can find an audience, but it will always be a small subset of the audience that a popular game like WoW can command."

I beg to differ. PvE is more limiting, players are limited by the length of the roller coaster ride that the dev’s build. Take World of Warcraft for example. People hit level 80 and 90% of the game is obsolete. Soon they clear all the current raid dungeons and there is nothing left to do until more content is released. WoW is popular because it is easy and accessible to casual players.

On the flip side, I don’t believe that true open PvP games are limiting to players at all. If properly designed, it is quite the opposite. The additional risk from a game centered around open PvP yields far greater rewards. It is important here to remember the rewards are not only purple l33t phat lootz, but also the gameplay experience itself. UO veterans will know exactly what I am talking about. There were no scripted raid encounters back then or instanced x versus x PvP. We had complete freedom to do what we wanted, whether it be going into a dungeon to kill such and such hard mob or going out and warring other guilds or even simply hanging out on the roof of deceit, dueling other players to see who is the 'best'.

It’s like playing no-limit hold’em (PvP) vs playing slot machines (PvE). The one takes skill and a willingness to take risks. The other is mindless, caters to those with an aversion to risk and just feeds money to the Casino in the long run. In poker, even if I lose a hand, I still enjoy the experience greatly. I replay it in my head afterwards and adjust my strategy so that the next time maybe I will come out on top. Slots, well, slots is just boring.

I think even the WoW carebears are starting to understand this. Check out this post on Tobolds MMORPG Blog and read the comments. People are complaining that WoW is getting too easy, catering to casual players by dumbing down content for the sake of popularity. It's sad that it is taking them until now to realize how boring it is. Even the PvP gets old, I must have run warsong gulch a thousand times grinding honor. I probably would have done the same with the arenas if I hadn't quit after season 1. It's the same thing again and again, grind BGs/Arenas, get gear. New season starts, new raid dungeon released, old gear is outdated. Grind BGs/Arenas, get gear. Rinse, wash, repeat, tear out eyeballs.

Back on Lum's blog, Mike Darga left a comment and wonders where all the ex-Shadowbane players will go... WAR or DF. As a former SB diehard, I believe we'll be seeing an influx of former SB players into Darkfall in the coming weeks as accounts are made available. Warhammer is a themepark game, and is closer to WoW than SB. Darkfall, with its FFA PvP, city ownership, siege combat, etc is the new SB. Immediately after the SB announcement our guild, Evil Bastages, started getting more traffic in our forums from former SB players from various sub-guilds of our EB nation that dominated Scorn, Vengeance, etc.

I’d say, barring the difficulty of obtaining a copy of the game, the DF release has been much better than Shadowbane’s. They had a few issues where certain methods of raising certain skills that should have been squelched in Beta were left in for a few weeks on the live EU-1 server. Short term, this gives the players who got accounts in the first few weeks an advantage, but long term things will even out. It is a MMO after all, there will always be players with older characters that are more advanced. The game is still in the early stages, high level magic users are still rare and we are only now starting to see naval combat. With a lot of these small issues fixed in recent patches, I do hope that the Adventurine dev team starts taking a closer look at siege mechanics. There were many lessons SB’s devs learned the hard way, and they implemented solutions to combat things like 3 AM sieges, etc. Still, technically the game is 10x better than SB at launch. I can count on one hand the number of times my client has crashed in the past month and a half.

One thing that Tasos and co. needs to do ASAP - is go ahead and open up NA-1… some bastages are still using it as an excuse for not playing!

Fixing the 'Ping Bug' in Darkfall + New Sales

I am pretty sure I have been experiencing the same issue that others are describing here. My connection has been pretty stable around a 110ms ping since launch but since build 14 or so I have been getting huge ping spikes intermittently. They generally occur whenever there is a lot of activity going on around my character in game. IE if I am just harvesting it is fine but once I run into some PvP involving more than 5 people it goes to shit. My ping jumps up into the 1000-4000ms range.

My first response was to check my router and DSL modem. After multiple restarts the problem continued to persist. It seemed strange to me that I was only having connection issues while playing Darkfall though, and my connection was acting normal otherwise. Since I felt like the problem only started after one of Adventurines recent patches I thought maybe reinstalling and repatching might solve the problem. On my way to uninstall I came across the following in the shortcut folder:


The 'Darkfall(Repair data)' shortcut simply launches the patcher and repairs and corrupt files. Since I ran it two days ago I haven't experienced any issues. I participated in a siege last night and didn't have any latency issues so I feel confident that this is a valid solution and sharing it here.

In other news, I just received a nice delivery from Newegg. I am upgrading my two year old PC to optimize it for Darkfall. I'll be OC'ing my dual core E6600 processor (maybe messing with my cooling setup), swapping out a 7950 GT for a HD 4850, doubling my RAM to 4GB (i'm still using 32 bit xp or else I'd do 8GB) and swapping out my M-Audio sound card for a Auzentech X-Fi. All in, these four upgrades are costing me around $300 USD but I feel pretty confident they'll make a huge difference in Darkfall. Check back here in the next couple of days for a recap and my thoughts on optimizing your PC for Darkfall Online.

In other news, more client downloads are being made available tomorrow:

Tomorrow April 23d we will open up the shop at 3pm GMT for those that want to
get the Darkfall Client. If you want to get the Darkfall Client, visit https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php and
create an account if you haven't done so already.

FYI, 3PM GMT is 11AM EST.

A moment of silence please... R.I.P. Shadowbane

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I am sorry to report that after six years Shadowbane will be shutting down it's servers for the final time on May 1st, 2009. Xanther has posted a regretful but proud farewell to the community on the Shadowbane Chronicle website.

I haven't played SB since quitting in 2005 to focus on real life but I still have ton of fun memories. I remember our early days under the Rolling 30's nation - the weeklong battle culminating in the fall of Compton versus what seemed at times like the entire server was epic. At the time I played a max CON dwarf priest and remember a particular battle where we were taking heavy casualties but somehow managed to pull of a chain of rezzes to turn the tide.

While the ashes of Compton were still burning, the Rolling 30's dispersed and fled to EVE, we took up the banner of war under our own symbol, the red noose. We made our intentions clear to the Scorn community, and followed through with our actions, razing city after city. I remember creating my Aracroix Scout around this time, and using him to tracking incoming enemy stacks to be routed before they could even see our city walls. On the offensive, seeking out enemy scouts to keep our movements hidden and turning the hunters into the hunted, killing enemy assassins looking to take out our healers and glass cannons.

With Scorn conquered we moved to Vengeance. Here the competition was even greater. We had generated large amounts of hate throughout our campaign on Scorn and many sought to take us down. We developed extremely focused high def spec groups that could stand against superior numbers and emerge victorious. More wars were waged and more cities were burned. Through it all EB main stood tall and imposing. Many enemies threw themselves against its walls only to die in a (metaphorical) fire.

Anyway, long story short, SB will be missed. SB's character building, along with it's siege system, city building, armor/weapon crafting & resource, and nation/guild systems were some of the best of any MMO. I fully believe had they not been plagued by such a bad launch and the ongoing SB.exe issue, many of their innovative design solutions would have been viewed in a more successful light - and we might actually have seen more of them implemented in todays' MMO market.

*Edit, EB main did burn once, at the end of Scorn, but only because the CSR's set it on fire:

Darkfall Patch Notes for 4/10/09

It's a pretty large patch, and taking a bit longer than expected. The servers should be up within an hour. Thank you for your patience.

Here are the patchnotes:

• gm_help has been updated to become a request

• gm_report has been added (Use it to report abuse or exploits to all online GMs)

• Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

• Attacking an invulnerable player will no longer skill up the skill you are using

• You will no longer skill up by using the conscript (starter) weapons

• Armor durability loss corrected

• The Teleport Anchor Skill can now be found at more vendors

• Placement of items in bags, banks, and clan vault will now be properly persisted in all cases

• Loot window will now stay in the same place between each looting session

• Supreme Generals can now kick players that are bound to a specific city/hamlet. Access this functionality through the Clan Window.

• The overview of a clan’s challenges is now publicly available to everyone. Access it through the Clan Window. You can browse the clans there to do so.

• Gates have been added to all Clan City entrances. To open or close a gate simply press the use button while aiming at the gate house. Note that you must be at least a Lieutenant to be able to open/close city gates.

• Miscelaneous client bugfixes

• Several sound updates


More quests have been added:

ALFAR FACTIONS

• THE HARN MANDEAN
• The Abandoned Stronghold
• Unwanted Neighbors
• Assistance from Shoal's Finest
• The Element of Fire
• Ninseri of Espenhal
• A Fair Trade
• More Clues of an Unknown Power
• TEMPLE OF THE GOD KING
• Nobody disobeys Shoal
• Shoal's Iron Fist
• Not Worthy
• A Mission Completed
• THE RADIANT CIRCLE
• The Demon Hand Legend
• The Windlords of Velmuna
• The Demon's Hand
• A Much Desired Artifact
• THE SHADOW SALIENT
• Grey Ork Hideout


HUMAN FACTIONS

• KNIGHTS OF MALREGARD
• A Trip to Sanguine
• Into the Twilight Kingdom
• WHITE ORDER
• Help for Silverley
• Assisting the enchanters of Silverley ***The Shadow of Highmoore
• SONS OF RIADA
• Secrets of the Nithron
• Heralds of Reconquest
• Chronicles of the Firstborn
• A Prophecy Come True

MAHIRIM FACTIONS

• THE WOLFMASKS
• The Cursed of Fang Lake
• A Marked Gravestone
• Honoring the Alliance
• THE CIRCLE OF NEITH
• These Mysterious Guardians
• Elusive Akathars
• Dim Stormrunes for Celetia
• THE LONGCLAW
• Proof of Existence
• A much awaited package
• Problems in Wolf Run
• The Centaurs of Wolf Run
• The Centaur Report
• ELDERS OF RED MOON
• Summoned by Red Moon
• The Lost Hero


New Weapons

• Orkish Strongbow
• Mirdain Seeker
• Mahirim Preyfinder
• Dwarven Warbow
• Alfar Deathsinger
• Mercian Composite Bow

Armor

• New Scale armor boots have been added
• New Scale armor gloves have been added

Magic

• Tornado in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Explosion in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Heal Other in Greater Magic has been fixed and no longer heals mounts
• Sacrifice in Spell Chanting has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore
• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore


Monsters

• Spellcasting monsters have been re-balanced
• Snow Clan Elder loot has been tweaked

The following skills have been re-ballanced:

• Greatclub Mastery
• Greataxe Mastery
• Greatsword Mastery
• Knife Mastery
• Polearm Mastery
• Sword Mastery
• Axes
• Clubs And Maces
• Greatclubs
• Greatsword Power Attack
• Sword Power Attack

Visual Updates:

• Jungle Vegetation
• Iklit Houses
• Human Houses
• Human NPCs
• Some human castle walls

Area/Worldbuilding updates in the Human area:

• Bloodscar
• Hawkmoore
• Highmore
• Bluefield
• Brockmoore
• Lainstone
• Broadherne
• Greendale
• Cranwyn Bay
• Somerstone
• Wetfang
• Outer Cranwyn Bay
• Bladethorpe
• Quattenhal
• Scarbourne
• Nekaria
• Sandstone
• Taleria
• Hammerdale
• Gulghat

All of the Ice Continent has been updated

New Update from Tasos on Availability, Cheating, and More

Another update from Tasos yesterday on the official forums, here's the interesting bits:

In 48 hours characters with names made in an effort to confuse GMs and other
players, for example adding a string of lower cap L’s and upper case I’s
(IlIlIIIl) in their names will start getting their host accounts permanently
banned. If you have a character like that, delete him and make a new one with a
proper name.

This is fitting. I was actually going to write a follow up post to my last one regarding cheating. Of course the day after I wrote that post I got attacked by a speed hacker whose name was something like IllIlISimpleIllI IlIIJacklII. I haven't reported anyone yet, but I reported him just because his name is so retarded. If thats not strong evidence that someone is using 3rd party programs I don't know what is. I could only describe his name to the GM but it looks like he's getting banned anyway. I hope he doesn't read the forums.

Which brings us to cheating: We hear complaints from some players and some clans that continue seeing cheating everywhere when in fact this isn’t the case. We
should know since we log everything. The exploiters we ban always deny they were using 3d party programs; they complain and ask for proof. There are also people who continue using 3d party programs to exploit, thinking that if they’re careful and not observed by GMs that they’ll go undetected. What all these people have in common is that they don’t understand that we log everything. Characters are flagged server-side and investigated in-game. Reports of cheating players are verified server-side. We have a combination of automatic and manual investigation. We use them both to be thorough, but we don’t rely on one or the other. We know someone’s cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if you’ve even done so once, you’re not safe. There’s no such thing as “clever use” when you own all the server logs. We’ll eventually get to you and ban you. If you’re currently using 3d party programs to exploit with, we suggest you uninstall these programs immediately and hope for the best.

Good to know. As I said before I really haven't had that many experiences where I suspected anyone of speed hacking. I think a lot of the complaining probably stems from newbs getting owned and whining about it afterwards.

Some players have been complaining about lowered performance during massive
battles. Now, let’s put things into perspective here: Small skirmishes in Darkfall are what other games call “massive battles”. We recently had approximately 2000 characters involved in battle in the same area. Battles with several hundred haracters are the norm and run very smoothly. Of course you’ll get progressive frame rate drops when you’re working your way up to thousands of players in the same scene. We’re seeing a lot more characters in Darkfall battles than you see maximum units in RTS games. One of our first priorities is to continuously optimize this experience. Massive battles in Darkfall will get larger and run smoother and smoother. Now we don’t mind if people keep bitching at us about getting this even better, we’re never satisfied ourselves, so please keep that in mind.

LOL now this is a bit ridiculous. Small skirmishes in DF are in the range of 10-40 people involved with no performance issues. Most other games are able to pull this off just fine. Once you get to siege oriented PvP with numbers in the hundreds, performance definitely becomes an issue. Granted, some people with top of the line PCs are reporting that the game is running fine for them. I have to at least give some credit where credit is due, they are managing to get the small/medium size fights to run smoothly but sieges still have a ways to go. All this exaggeration can't be good though. I think Tasos and Adventurine need to take some business courses on managing expectations...

Later today at 5pm GMT we're opening up the store. The last couple of
times we've offered a lot more copies than usual. We're working to keep
improving our capacity so we can eventually leave the shop open 24/7.

Tomorrow we patch and we’ll have patch notes right after

The store has been up longer than usual which is a good thing. It will be nice once it is available 24/7. Now we just need NA-1 to be announced!