Prophecy Frame Rate Boost

gr1mre4per

Rear Admiral
Hi All,

Been a while since I was last here so I decided to check in and give a little something I made to the community.

I've previously dabbled in rendering 3D scenes before now. Now with Klav's amazing models available I may do again.

But for a short time I've been teaching my self some coding with C++. Using HCl's fantastic site as a source of information, I made myself a few little tools. Although some of these were previously available, I wanted to make my own as a kind of 'proof I can' type thing. I made myself an IFF compiler/decompiler for any IFF file and a TRE/PAK un'pak-er' for Privateer. I've also extracted almost all of Prophecy's ship models, all detail levels, including many some people may have never seen (or may have, I'm a little out-of-date here). I'll create a separate thread for that soon.

But the one I want to give out now is a Frame Rate booster for Prophecy. By default, Prophecy runs at a fixed 32 Frames Per Second. I wanted to see if I could change it to increase it. Now I have, I put this tool together to make it easy for everyone to do. The advantage is that space flight looks and feels a lot smoother.

The tool has some pre-set levels and a custom level (limited between 15 and 1000). In most situations, 60 is enough as by default the game runs with Vertical Sync enabled, which synchronises to the monitor refresh rate, which is usually 60 Hz, so maximum 60 FPS possible.

It is possible to force V-SYNC off in most graphics drivers. This allows much higher frame rates. But this does start introducing some problems when the frame rate gets above 100. Some animations, such as shields, will happen quicker, sometimes to the point you don't even see them. Also COMMS can sometimes stutter. My personal favourite is asteroids will rotate stupidly fast.

But for the most part, there are no adverse effects in game play and V-SYNC is better left on for the smoothest results.

I have tested the tool with Prophecy and both the web-downloaded and Prophecy Gold Secret Ops versions (they are slightly different) and it works on all of them. It should also work on Standoff, UE and other mods, but this is untested. I am also not sure if it will affect the multiplayer enhancement.

I hope you enjoy it.

You can download it from my DropBox.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8031749/WCP FPS Utility.zip)
 
Wow, pimping those games seems to be THE thing these days! Awesome!

Should this make playing Standoff and UE easier also? There seem to be some problems with today's OS versions
 
Hi All,
It should also work on Standoff,

Awesome! I'll give it a try in my wine wrapper. If there are no issues, I would certainly like to put it in a new OSX wrapper. I don't know about easier, but It would make the game even more enjoyable.
 
Holy heck, what a difference! Seems to work great! I have so many old space sim games and they are all at 30 frames a second. It is so jarring playing now. After so many spins I start to feel a little motion sickness. :) This needs to be added to the standoff launcher.
 
I don't think it will make it easier. May even make it a little harder as the controls feel a little more sensitive.
 
Thanks @AD.

Stating the (for some) obvious: the framerate patch is part of the Model Upgrade Pack (alongside the OpenGL patch, too).

Just learned that myself
 
yeah that's probably my fault for not making it more clear. The upgrade pack is being built into the open GL patch installer along with WCP:Unlimited which includes the frame rate patch. In fact the MUP would be impossible without unlimited.
 
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