Borderlands 2 in 2012

Thinking of picking this up on the vita, be nice to play borderlands 2 on the go.

 

I haven't played any of the DLC yet, as I'm still on the main campaign.

The problem for me only manifests itself in certain locations, and under certain circumstances. For example, playing through the majority of the Bloodshot stronghold is glass smooth, no problems whatsoever.

But when I get to the whirlpool, things go awry. Gameplay remains smooth, until my Commando lays down his turret, then the game starts to stutter.

This tells me that since the game engine doesn't utilize the CPU very well, it either has difficulty generating the amount of objects required from having the PhysX on high with the turret firing a lot of rounds in addition with a high amount of environmental PhysX...

Or, it could be that there is a sync issue between the main game thread and the PhysX thread.

So basically, Gearbox needs to further optimize the game engine so it can better utilize the CPU for greater performance and efficiency, similar to what Bethesda did with Skyrim.

 

yep but they won't do it, they messed the PhysX implant, and as proven in DLC1 it CAN BE FIXED. that what so annoying, it same areas with same fps drops, also i remember when DLC3 released, sir hammerlock, it worked PERFECT with all physx in the world. in fact that was the only DLC that had no fps drop at all

 

LOL, this game is so CPU bound, that even overclocking my CPU from 4.4ghz to 4.5ghz makes a very tangible difference in smoothness! Those weird dips in frame rate are almost completely gone, except in a few trouble spots like the vortex pool in the Bloodshot stronghold.

Checking task manager, one core is always fully loaded during battles, whilst another fluctuates between 75 and 100%.

The rest of my cores have either zero activity, or 10 or 15% or something. Whatever modifications Gearbox did with the Unreal Engine 3, it's clear they screwed something up, because the UE3 usually can scale to four cores.

*Edit* Looks like it was more than the increase in clock speed that did it. After thinking about it, I think the voltage increase helped too. Since one core was always getting maxed out, I think my previous voltage at 1.285vt may have been too low for it. Now my voltage is at 1.295v, which I think has improved clock speed stability..

 

Sorry for the stupid question but I haven't been able to find a definitive answer elsewhere.

Is it necessary to have Physx software installed to use it in this game given my GPU or is the .ini tweak all that it is needed?

 

If you don't have an NVidia card, PhysX will automatically run on the lowest setting in software mode on your CPU..

You have to have an NVidia card to enable higher levels of PhysX. You could get a cheap PhysX card and use it for dedicated PhysX, but you'll have to do some hacking.

 

Gotcha. Thanks for the response. Given how much loot I dropped building this new rig, getting an Nvidia card ain't gonna happen.

Nice rig btw bro.

 

A cpu can run the physx on any level.

Mines runs medium all right, you would be more than fine for medium, give high a go if you want.

 

Your CPU may be able to run physx, but no way is it the same effect as with Nvidia. I tried both ways and Nvidia beats the hell out of a CPU for really nice effects.

 

The CPU holds up pretty well, once that liquid effect starts spraying everywhere though the performance starts dropping significantly.
(I believe that the amount of particles is also lower when not running under GPU mode regardless of the PhysX quality setting but I could be wrong.)

 

This game is so addictive, haven't touched anything else since the end of August, except for BL1, which I'm wrapping up. Played Roland in BL1 and Maya in BL2 and I gotta say that phaselocking those bastardly rabid stalkers, then blasting them in the face with a Torgue shotgun never gets old, ever. Might try Axton in BL2 at some point to be able to use the turret again. I loved the mission where you fought alongside Roland in BL2, and found myself liking him more as a character in BL2. There's only so many times you can hear someone scream "Nailed it!" or "Critical Biatch!" but that's probably my fault for being so 1337, lol. Overall, I think I like BL2 a bit more, probably due to Handsome Jack being a more charismatic antagonist then say Steele from BL1. There, that's my sloppily written stamp of approval for this game franchise.

 

You can disable character callouts in options if you don't like to hear all that any more.

 

So far i maxed out Axton, Maya and Mechro to max and ill say this that Maya and Axton are the most fun to play with. (for me at least)

 

http://www.2kgames.com/blog/borderl...ha-s-bloody-harvest-available-on-october-22nd

 

http://www.shacknews.com/article/82...e-gobbler-headhunter-mission-coming-next-week

Another headhunter mission, they'll probably keep doing these for a while yet.
(I guess it's still profitable for Gearbox to do these smaller missions and the occasional skins/heads pack.)

 

http://steamcommunity.com/games/49520/announcements/detail/1874924279000629146

This could be the final update and I'm fairly certain there's only two more DLC.
(These two - http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=358606 )

 

Bought the game a few days ago. It's good fun. A vast improvement over the original. Are any of the DLC's worth getting?

 

Just the Season Pass. If you really want to play more you can always get the character dlc's later.

 

Are these full sized DLC's like the first 4 or just monster hunt things?

Btw, I would say all the big DLC's are worth getting, especially the tiny tina one, so get the season pass and get them all.

Wait for a sale though, it's on every sale.

 

The headhunter dlcs are fairly small (an area or 2 with few quests and a boss fight or 2), but still worth the asking price.