Benchmarking: Let's see the minimum requirements to play.

[Shockproof Jamo]

I've noticed that the Ren'Py engine isn't the smoothest thing out there, kinda surprising considering how seemingly little it has to process. I tried running the Act 1 demo of Katawa Shoujo on my 1.2 Ghz Win Millenium Edition rig that has 256 Mb of RAM (old system by now, 8 years). Some of the effects used by the engine under this system, like the snowfall at the beginning, were slightly sluggish. Not much, and certainly not unplayable, but you could notice it.

So what I'm suggesting is that we could post and compare here our systems to see how the KS demo, and thus, propably the future full version too, behaves under different hardware setups and operating systems, enabling us to figure out the minimum requirements.

Me:

- Windows Millenium Edition
- 1.2 Ghz processor, AMD Athlon
- 256 MB RAM (Can't remember the type)

And (I'm guessing kinda pointless with a game like this, but oh well...)
- GFX Card is ATI Radeon 7500 with 64 Mb of video RAM

And I can verify that under this setup the Act 1 demo is playable, but some jerkyness can be seen with some effects. So has anyone tried the demo with something weaker than this?

[Neko Len]

Windows XP sp3

Intel Celeron M, 1.3 GHz

256mb ram

Intel Integrated graphics controller

Plays decent, sometimes effects lag, like fireworks, or text a bit.

[Warwick]

Dell XPS M1530

Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40 GHz (Undervolted, not that it matters)

4 Gigs RAM

Vista Home Premium SP1

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Driver version 7.15.11.7644 from Dell Drivers page.

Runs perfectly and without a hitch. During Shizune's fireworks, didn't even max one of my cores, though my CPU was running in the high 50%'s

[Anon]

If your computer can't run a VN, I think that's a good indication that it's time to get a new computer.

[BcDed]

It runs absolutely perfect for me but I don't know if that has to do with having a decent computer or maintaning it well or running linux or what.
I'm assuming the py in ren'py is refferring to python. If that is so it makes sense that it would be slower than what your used to as python is a higher level and thus slower programming language.

[A Simple Fox]

And I can verify that under this setup the Act 1 demo is playable, but some jerkyness can be seen with some effects. So has anyone tried the demo with something weaker than this?

Hmm... I have my old Win 3.11 somewhere in my attic... i wounder if it would melt if i tried to install it?

I've had one or two instances where my frame rate has dropped when playing. The snowfall and the fireworks scenes had just under a half second of lag for me. (But only for the first time though.) It might be because I have a nasty habit of running 30 other things in the background and I don't exactly have the best specs. out there. Will pay more attention to my readouts next time I play.

My specs. if anyone cares:

Vista Home Premium. SP1
HP Pavilion dv6000
AMD Turion 64 Mobile X2 (1.80GHz)
RAM 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce Go6150

One of these days I need to get a better build...

[Fatalis]

I think most people should be able to play it. As said before, if your PC can't play a VN, you need to get a new PC XD.

[EvilDragon]

True, Ren'py in some cases isn't the most CPU-effective engine there is, and particle effects (snowflakes, the medical word onslaught) are kind of CPU intensive because they do busy-waits, making 100% of CPU active at all times.

I wonder if that's gonna be solved, because when using a lot of particles things massively begin to slug, dropping the frame rate and mouse responsiveness, which isn't preferred under any case.

AFAIK, Ren'py version 7 (which is in massive development stage right now IIRC) will support OpenGL, so we can hope for some graphical improvements, meaning that all graphic-related things will be conveyed to the GPU instead of main CPU.

But there's a long way before that, and 4LS will have to manage with whatever the current Ren'py version is. The good thing is, Ren'py is constantly updated and bug-fixed overall. The bad thing is, even after the full release of KS, Ren'py will still be updated with newer bugfixes, and theoretically, 4LS would have to do a recompile to make use of all the new bug-fixes, or even change the script if there's a cool new effect they would wish to add. On the other hand, they would probably leave it as it is.

As far as I'm concerned, I have a 2 GHz dualcore CPU with 2 GB of RAM and I have no problems with game running smoothly. Even though that medical word onslaught got a liiiitle bit sluggish by the end. That was a LOT of particles.

[sydwert]

RAM doesn't really matter, 1GB really should be enough for this at any given time.
The main (the only real?) problem is the processor. The engine itself isn't as optimised as it really could be.

[EvilDragon]

Ren'py is highly optimized in many things it does, but for some (some << many) things it's not. That is unfotunately not up to 4LS to solve, but PyTom...

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

CPU: Athlon XP 2100+ OC'd @ 2GHz
Trasitions didn't lag, snow didn't lag. Snow + trasitions at same time just BARELY lagged, fireworks lagged very obviously.

Did I hear opengl support for Ren'Py 7? My oc'd Radeon 9600 256MB AGP is begging to take on those particle effects >:D

And to the guy that said we should upgrade our CPU/PC if it lags - netbooks will lag too, since the Atom @ 1.6GHz is nearly equal my oc'd CPU. Also I can run games like Half-Life 2 and Portal just fine with bloom and HDR, so why should I upgrade?

[EvilDragon]

Did I hear opengl support for Ren'Py 7? My oc'd Radeon 9600 256MB AGP is begging to take on those particle effects >:D

Not until a year or so passes (my speculation). PyTom is doing a lot of work lately, developing both versions of Ren'py (6 and 7), 7 obviously taking much more time as there will be significant changes in the engine. We all anxiously await it, but the release date is unknown.

[Validus Razgriz]

My 4 year old Windows machine seems to have slowdown during the fireworks animation. Everything else works just fine.

HP Pavillion ZV6000
Windows XP Pro, SP2
AMD Athlon 64, 2000 Mhz
512 MB RAM
Onboard video, shared RAM

I haven't tried installing KS on my Ubuntu machine yet.

Acer Aspire One
Ubuntu 8.10
Intel Atom N270, 2000 Mhz
1 GB RAM
Onboard video, shared RAM

both of them are laptops

[unkind]

OP - follow these steps

- uninstall windows ME

- install windows xp

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Actually ME is lighter weight than XP by default. If you want performance, use 2000 instead or turn off tons of background services for XP.