RRT3 = a computer power maniac

[thietavu]

I have seen some games that really tax your computer's speed. For example, the Microsoft Train Simulator still makes the lesser PCs sweat. Civilization 4 (and now 5) are notorious for their tendency to use everything your computer has - and sometimes more. But one of the most formidable power thieves I have ever seen must be good ol' RRT3! And I mean: OLD. Guys, this one is from 2001..2002 by design! PC stone age compared to modern multicore marvels.

Some of you know that I made two monster scenarios for RRT3/TrainMaster. The bigger of them, China Ultimate 2.0 for TM (works in RRT3 too, just does some slightly weird things) is, I believe, the biggest and most demanding RRT3 map in existence. Or at least: it's a tough one for the computer! With its 170 towns/cities alone and easily even over 600 trains running simultaneously, carrying thousands and thousands of loads to thousands of places, it really puts the AI of RRT3 in good use. And how!

While developing "China Ultimate 2.0", I noticed that at latter parts of the game, my 3.2 GHz 4-core PC used 100% of its power to run this scenario. That made me wonder. I recently upgraded to a 4.1 GHz (!) 6-core system. And guess what? It's still 90..100% load all the time... Kind of incredible.

Even the graphics card seems to struggle a bit (could be because of that CPU limitation), since the frame rates can dip from the usual 170..200 FPS down to about 30 FPS in certain situations. This, of course, happens only when you have a LOT of trains doing a LOT of things in this particular scenario. But the same happens in my other giant map, "Scandinavia".

I have to admire the programmers of RRT3. They have created an incredible AI into this old game. And the game can really utilize the modern computing technology to make the experience better and better for us. Sadly, RRT3 doesn't utilize multi-core processors, but neither does any game of its era. Still, I can easily recommend a computer upgrade for RRT3 fans. You don't need many cores, but you need lots of single core speed. For example, AMD's fastest dualcore "Black Edition" processors can easily work at 4..4.2 GHz - which really makes a difference in the heavier RRT3/TrainMaster scenarios.

[BTB]

play roller coaster tycoon with the wild and soaked expansion packs and see how your pc runs when you have 4-5,000 people and 15-20 rollercoasters and waterfalls and 90% of the available rides running, it is really bad

[Wolverine@MSU]

I recently upgraded to a 4.1 GHz (!) 6-core system. And guess what? It's still 90..100% load all the time... Kind of incredible.

Could be that the program isn't able to use multiple cores. A lot of older programs don't.

[Moggie]

RRT is a bit troublesome under newer operating systems because of the Disable hardware T&L thing. That means all display load goes to the CPU too...

[thietavu]

RRT is a bit troublesome under newer operating systems because of the Disable hardware T&L thing. That means all display load goes to the CPU too...

But as I wrote in another thread, one no longer needs to disable T&L under Windows 7-64 at least! :) I don't know if Microsoft has changed something or if it's the latest AMD Catalyst 10.9 drivers - but now both RRT3 1.06 and TrainMaster work fine T&L enabled. The problem with low-res graphics remains, unfortunately. Wish somebody here could hack the code so that RRT could utilize modern 1 GB and so video memories properly...