[HOW-TO] Running two clients on one PC

[nillian]

This is a how-to guide on running two Ryzom clients on the same PC. As you can imagine, having a dual-core CPU helps performance quite a lot when doing this, and a good 2gb of RAM is almost essential to decent performance. The only slowdown I ever notice when running two clients at once is longer teleport/loading times, but that's a minor issue really.


EDIT: The following is now out-of-date, and now that I'm finally resubbed I can actually edit it!

See posts further down - you now only need to add a simple switch to a Ryzom shortcut and all should work. Again, keep reading later posts for more detailed instructions.

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These instructions are for running two clients under Windows XP only, I have no idea about Linux so perhaps one of our Linux users (katriell?) can modify this to work on Linux. Ok so here goes....

1. Create a new Windows user (I called mine 'ryzomalt' for simplicity) and make sure to give it a password.
2. Copy your Ryzom install directory to another location and give it a different name (like 'Ryzom Alt'.)
3. Create a new shortcut either on your desktop or your Start Menu or anywhere you please, right-click on it and hit properties, and add this to the 'Target' field :

   C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /user:ryzomalt /savecred "C:\Games\Ryzom Alt\client_ryzom_rd.exe"

   Naturally, replace my windows system32 path with your own, and replace your new Ryzom install directory too, including the quotes.
4. Open the 'client.cfg' file in your new Ryzom directory, and make the following change:

   DisableDirectInput = 1;

   Then add this line to the end of the file:

   BackgroundDownloader = 0;

5. That's it! You should now be able to click on the new shortcut you made, and Windows should bring up a console asking you for the password to the Windows account you made earlier. Type this password in and your second client should load!

NOTES:

You won't be able to use mouselook on your second client, since DirectInput is disabled. No known workaround for this AFAIK.

If you do have a dual-core CPU, open up your Task Manager and right-click on your primary copy of ryzom_client_rd.exe in the processes window, and set it's Affinity to CPU 1. This should help performance a great deal, and will do even if you're not running a second client, as Windows uses CPU 0 for it's background processes.

Personally, I run both copies in Windowed mode to make switching between the two clients easier, and I have dual-monitors so that works quite well. Mileage may vary for others. I reduced the graphics settings on my second client to almost the lowest as I found it boosted performance a fair bit, and had no real impact on my gameplay since I still have max settings on my primary client.

If there are any fatal flaws in the above How-To please let me know......

Much love,

Nilly *hugs*