Benchmark for steam version of the game
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Hello,
I am looking for some kind of automatic benchmark mod for steam version of FA. For instance some kind of fixed replay that will at the end give me average FPS, replay can be like 1, 2 or more minutes long. I need it to compare certain setups and configurations. I know tools like this were out but all the links to download are broken.
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You can find the original performance test map here:
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This might be a dumb question, but why not just use the FAF benchmark tool? Are there going to be computer setups A and B where the Steam balance runs faster on Computer A but the FAF balance runs faster on Computer B? And would the amount of difference be meaningful? If the benchmark utility is already not super-accurate (I think AMD users were complaining that it favors Intel CPUs) and the difference between Steam performance and FAF performance is very small, then you can get good enough results from the FAF tool.
You can even run FAF in offline mode to run the tool if you don't want to log in to a FAF account on the computer that is being benchmarked. I don't know if there's any security issue with copying your FAF files to another computer (e.g. if the password is saved on your computer, and you copy the FAF files over, does the saved password go to the new computer? I have no idea. You could always just change your FAF password after you create a copy of the files that you will copy into the new computers.)
Or just use a generic benchmark tool that measures single-thread CPU performance, because that is the best indicator (perhaps better than the built-in FAF benchmark test) of how well the game will run.
Also, if you're looking at laptops, a 2-minute benchmark isn't really going to tell you anything, because the problems start when they start to heat up. E.g. 15 minutes in to a dual-gap game. So you would want to run some kind of benchmark that takes like 30 minutes to complete I think so you can test how well you keep it cool or at least how well it runs when it's hot.
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I need a mod or program that will measure fps of a gameplay but it needs to be identical every single time, therefor i need a scripted scenario or replay. And obviously i need a way that will do all by itself instead of me sitting there with a fraps. Like i said, i am testing setups and configuration, for my own joy. My pc, as it is, is plenty powerful to run the game without tweaking btw. Please lets stay on topic.
Jip: Thank you, i just ran the thing and it does indeed work and i get the score and total frame time. No average fps, amazing. I guess i can get that by measuring the length of the test. In anycase, thank you for this
If anyone has any even better benchmarks for Steam FAF version of FA, please do tell
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Are you trying to test at an increased speed, like +1 or +10? Or do you want to run it at +0 speed and see whether it slows down at all?
You could create a short replay file by starting a custom game with cheats on, spawning in lots of units (e.g. 100 ASF per player) and letting the fight. Obviously a "natural" game wouldn't have enough going on in the first two minutes to make a good benchmark, and you don't want a benchmark that needs 10+ minutes to run.
You could also create a SIM mod to help with running the replay file. Let's say the mod does the following: it records the system time at the start of the match, then ever time the game time reaches a multiple of 60 seconds, it reports the amount of real time since the start of the replay file, in milliseconds, by sending a chat message. For example, if your replay is 2 minutes and 4 seconds long of game time, the mod would report twice, once at 60 seconds and once at 120 seconds of game time.
If the system runs without stalling at all, it should only take 60,000 and 120,000ms to reach those milestones. But if you get a score higher than 120k, that shows how much lag the particular system has.
Or to make things simple, it could report the time elapsed minus the amount of game time. E.g. if it took 125 seconds to reach the 120-second milestone, it would report 5,000 ms of delay. Then you don't even have to do math of substacting out 60k or 120k, you would just get the exact amount of lag.
Such a mod could be made compatible with the Steam version or the FAF version. Probably there would be very little difference between a mod that did that for Steam and a mod that did that for FAF.
So you could run the benchmark only by playing the replay file with that particular mod active. And the end result would be a numerical score showing how much the game lags.
That would also allow you to make different replay files depending on how "challenging" you want the benchmark to be. Of course you could use a time different than 2 minutes but if you want the benchmark to be fast you should focus on making a replay file that is resource-intensive so you only have to run it for about 2 minutes to get a good idea of the score.
Since this benchmark would require the game to actually run, you would also be testing the graphics card. I have no idea whether the built in test benchmark uses the graphics card at all.
This mod would be very easy to make i think. I might even be capable of it.
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Making a mod would involve me spending time working on it. Though yesterday i did go through some lua files and tweaked the benchmark scenario, thank god i still remember some c(++). What i need is automatic way to get min, max and avg framerate in a benchmark that is a few minutes long. Its important to be consistant. I run it at simspeed +0. If ur further interested, im trying to see the effect of frequency of certain cores on the framerates and also some other things. There is no evil plan to take over the world behind it .. i am doing this for my joy, i enjoy tweaking and looking for that 0.0001% +/- difference and seeing which things in game engine were implemented good and which not so good.
Also, in the meantime, i found out that the benchmark file that is created does indeed offer FPS numbers: min, max and average. It just hides them quite well behind a lot of useless stats.
A member, IceDreamer supposedly made a nice mod for just what i need with tons of ASFs, but download links are broken. If anyone has it, please do share.
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@goblinsly
Just so you are aware. Any test maps you will find are usually trying to measure sim speed, not FPS. Almost nobody cares about FPS, because sim speed is the thing that causes the game to slow down, FPS is usually good enough.
