Frame Rate Limit

[Lord Solarix]

Hi everyone, long time! Got a quick question. Has anyone in Hardwar hacking ever located where Hardwar's internal engine Frame Rate limiter is?

The reason I ask is that with Version F2.1, the frame rate of HardWar was silky smooth, like butter

But at some point down the line SR, or Ian Martin (need to check which patch put it in) decided (for Internet netgame reasons I believe) to cap the game at something like 10 FPS.

And so the game is really stuttery and not-smooth anymore in UIM 06 compared to the original release.

I'd like to find out how to uncap Hardwar, to make it run silk smooth like it used to. I don't really care if the economy or AI routines break from trying -- this is for science!

[magitek]

Bit late to the punch but from my own research:

I spent a considerable amount of time hacking Hardwar to remove this limitation, and from memory I succeeded.
Hardwar multiplayer seems to work from network key-frames, so the actual network speed governs the frame rate; you double the speed these frames are sent, it doubles the frame rate in a network game.
I don't recall it having any negative effects, but it was a year ago I did this.

I'm not sure what other EXE modifications I had done to this so I'll provide the data to fix your HardwarW.exe with a hexeditor:
Start with a HEX search for '85 c0 74 24 39 35 b0 13 51 00 74 0e 8b d7 b9 32'
The final hex value listed '32' dictates the time between a frame. If you can't find it, you can probably shorten the hex string till you find a match.
Switch 32 to 16 for a doubled frame rate, or set it to whatever you want; just remember it requires exponential network bandwidth.

Only the server needs to run with this modification I believe.
Enjoy

[Lord Solarix]

Thank you very much!!!

[Denacity]

Oh really? I think i might have to try that.

[ouch]

I made a quick custom patch with my patch utility if someone wants to try it out.

Attachments:

[holr]

What about non-network games? I tried the above hex-editing suggestions and still only get a steady 10-12 fps on hardwar uim6 in single player. Any ideas?

[scoob]

Here's an interesting thing...on my old system (Q6600 and old passive ATI Radeon 3450hd) the hex hack makes the game silky smooth - it's wonderful. The same hack applied on my Gamer (2500k + 2x 680's) shows NO difference what so ever. The installs are the same (indeed, I copied the files) yet the results are different. This is for a Network game btw.

Both system are W7 64 and I've tried disabling SLI and any driver-level overrides for AA and the like. No joy.

Any ideas? Is this a simple ATI/NV issues do you think? I.e. the NV hack location is different, for some unknown reason?

Edit: ok, I think I was wrong here. The fix isn't having any effect on either machine. My older PC has a MUCH older (slow response) LCD display, it's slow reponse makes things look smoother. So, my bad, this hack doesn't appear to be working for me. While I can find the hex string fine & change it - I am using the modified hardwarW.exe supplied for use with the Enhanced/Enhanced2 updates, if this makes any difference.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[cgialexis]

Feb 10, 2013 6:41:34 GMT -5 ouch said:

I made a quick custom patch with my patch utility if someone wants to try it out.

I've been looking around but not found out how to use your file with the patcher. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[ouch]

make a backup of your HardwarW.exe file if you have not already.

extract the db file from the downloaded zip. Load up my patcher, go to the import/export tab.

Click on load database, select the extracted db file, and then click the custom checkbox.

select both 1 and 2 (use ctrl or shift click) from the pane on the right and click import. you can then click the unload database button if your done with it.

Then go to the custom tab and click the show offsets checkbox twice. Or just restart the program and then go to the custom tab.

Use the up and down arrow in the upper left to switch between the default (undo patch) and the patch (set 2) and click the upper patch game button to apply whatever your looking at.

[cgialexis]

Ah! I thought I needed to do another step to import the file ouch. However now I'm getting a critical exception (Abort, Retry, Ignore) when I try to apply the patch. I'm going to do more research but I'm on W8.1

[glow=red,2,300]My patcher version information[/glow] because I've read that older versions can get this critical fault.

[ouch]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that you need to do the same with the offsets. so go to the custom tab and click show offsets, then go back to the import export tab and select the offset and click import. you may need to create a copy of it as well once you have it. (just click save new on the custom tab with the offset being shown.)

[magitek]

Just a belated note about my hex edit, what this alters is the networking frame rate, not the client frame rate (meaning you still cannot exceed the awful frame rate completely). What you can do (in multiplayer again) is use cheat engine to speedhack the client to get to 60 FPS. It has no defects on game speed because the server is controlling logic, but its probably a bit heavy on the server bandwidth.

It'd be possible to change the client frame rate in single-player, I just never found where.

[techno]

That sounds like progress.Now can I present a similar challenge,I usually run my game with fog distance at max and max resolution,my question is this,can the hexadecimal code in the hardwar file be modified to increase the distance that the moth skins load at (lod) as at present they load too late and not far enough away.

[magitek]

Aug 9, 2015 12:39:15 GMT -5 techno said:

That sounds like progress.Now can I present a similar challenge,I usually run my game with fog distance at max and max resolution,my question is this,can the hexadecimal code in the hardwar file be modified to increase the distance that the moth skins load at (lod) as at present they load too late and not far enough away.

Of course it could be modified, unfortunately finding it is not the easiest of things to do. Perhaps if we knew what the exact distance that the LOD triggered at, it'd be easier to search for.

[techno]

That should be relatively straightforward to get,just target an Ai for the distance and take a screenshot when it's skin loads.

Then save the game when the texture loads.Then back up the savegame,load it up again and double the distance between you and the Ai then save for a second time.You now have two near identical savegame with the difference between them being only the distance.Then cross reference the two savegames hexadecimally and find the differences between both savegames.The variation in the hexadecimal string is the variable of the moth distance.