And Stefan said he was going to put THAT BACK IN. That was what my post was about in the first place... x.x

I typed it out for that reason, in hope that people will know I was referring to the old version. And I mentioned what I did about heat and so on because I also thought we were talking about Stefan readding the CPU hammering / personal oven feature from pre-2.3 versions.

The question is if Graal should go back into the old mode when it's running slow, e.g. if people ignore to install good gfx drivers. v2.3 and v3.1 should only take 3-5% CPU time on a normal PC, but if you have a bad gfx driver or programs running which take a lot of cpu time then the new version might be slower because it is not trying to steall all the cpu time.

2.2 and forward have always baen laggier than 3.0 and forward for me, despite my graphics drivers. So I just use 3.1 now. :)

That might be the easiest solution, but probably not the best.

If you decide to make it automatically detect if it's running slow, can you add some kind of override so that it doesn't force you to use the old timing? Maybe even ask in a dialog, e.g. "Graal has detected a very low frame rate, would you like to try the pre-2.3 timing method?" and then save the preference which can also be toggled in the options window.

Alright, for all the people who lag real bad with the new clients of graal. We found the problem. Misty/Reiko/Nayoko's Computers were running on 32 bit color and so they lowered it down a little to 24 bit to maybe 16 bit im not sure (i use 16 bit and its very smooth) and the lag went away. So maybe the client doesnt support 32 bit colors and it causes the lag because it tries loading up so many colors? If you lag try lowering your your colors by going to start/settings/control panel/display/settings and set the colors lower than 32 bit.

that's a graphics driver issue; it has nothing to do with graal.

It of course takes double the video memory if you use 32 bit. It can also take more normal memory depending on the video driver. Drawing the images onto screen can take longer if it's 24 bit or 32 bit, old NVidia cards were optimized for 16 bit.

Can be good to test speed when we start graal and if it's slow we can propose to reduce to less than 32 bit mode ...

Should be also possible when we start directx to force less than 32 bit mode ? What's your point of view Stefan ?

I use 32 bit and everything runs smoothly for me; however, there is more lag (than previous versions) when I slash a person. Hit delay some call it.

Wait, you want to avoid trying to harm your computer yet you ran Windows Update?

Yes when you draw windows with OpenGL/SDL (torque engine uses similar) it asks for the bit rate for vid cards so you should be able to choose what rate to show things at :) 32bit is actually just 24bit with some technical things ;)

PS, you just make yourself look stupid when you say these kinds of things. Please show evidence of any harm that:

1. Isn't quickly rectified
2. Exceeds tolerable limits, as compared to other operating systems
3. Outweighs the benefit from security fixes

Otherwise I can only assume that you are acting on some ridiculous zealous assumptions without bothering to check the facts.

I would not think that an alpha channel qualifies as 'technical'.

24 bit often need to be stored as 32bit value so many drivers just offer 32 bit as option and not 24 bit, even if 8 bit are completely wasted (we are speaking about the color depth of the display not of a texture, displays don't have transparency ;) ).
When using OpenGL or DirectX in window mode then the game must use the color depth of the current video mode, it has no choice. The only way to change the color depth would be to change the color depth of the desktop or go into fullscreen mode where it can do whatever it wants to do. I think the best thing is to open a webpage when the game is running slow, and on that webpage we give tips&tricks for speeding up the game.