Stinkfinger

I was not sure to post this here or not, but I am an ACT newbie. I got a couple of questions
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Does ACT slow up your computer. I turned it on and I seem to lag more, with vent and act and eq running at the same time. Or maybe it was just the zone?
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But I see all that pie chart stuff, and how people broke down their damage and that looks cool I would like to do that, but I don’t have a clue how to. I went to the site when I first downloaded it but there does not seem to be detailed how to instructions.
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I guess I want to be able to break down my damage on a pie chart and stuff how do I do that? And how do you guys get that pie chart to a forum like this?
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Ardain

I think ACT lags you you quite a bit if your PC is not better/high-end (exspecially regarding memory). I can use it during fights though, it shouldn't be so bad with decent hardware.

When you don't use the little monitor thing it lags even less and don't play in window mode.

Usually I don't have it on top but only take a look once in a while, and do the real parsing after raid is finished.

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Steelbadger

I run a dual monitor setup (EQ2 on one, ACT+internet on t'other) and don't notice any lag, but that is because I dial EQ2 all the way back for raids so that everything is silky smooth.

I assume you have got by the first hurdle of turning your log file on (/log)?
You can also parse files after the raid by going to the import/export encounters, select the date ranges you want to search for in the log file, then select the file (it will be in a folder called logs in the eq2 directory or some such)

Once you have the encounters up in ACT there are a couple of ways you can navigate, using using the expandable menu window on the left, or the table on the right. Clicking on someones name in either window will bring up a number of options to look at (all outgoing is probably the one you want); double click that and you'll get a rundown of all the things you did that caused damage to the mob, including a pie chart. You can right click any of the images in ACT to export them to an image file, which can then be hosted somewhere like Imageshack.

Additionally you can go deeper than just looking at rundowns, but can see the individual damage of every skill (by clicking the skill in either the right or left windows). That gives a tabulated view of the statistics concerning every time you used that particular skill, a bar graph below of damages of all the times you used is, light red bars are crit-hits.

You can also change the info displayed in the main views in the table setup tab, options like damage% and to hit% numbers can be selected here and will be shown on the main tab.

Just press stuff that looks interesting till you find your way around Its what I've always done.

timmeh

ACT uses a good amount of disk access (READ), up to 300MB of memory, and is CPU intensive. Especially the last resource usage seems to lag people, as everquest2 is known to be a cpu hog.

Personally in raids I wouldn't run it without 2 gigs of ram and a dual processor.

Krontak

One thing I'd like to test to possibly make this run a bit smoother. The log files eq2 generates are pretty large. I'd assume that if you were to close a log out and start a new one the amount of processor/memory lag might lesson. Just a theory but I'll prob try that 2nite.

Izzdar

I think this is true aswell. You can set your act to split your log every once in a while to prevent this lag.

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LSNNPBTTYDHD &A RA? Who are they?

Pryz

I only ran ACT if there was a big change in my equipment or aas. Or i was trying something new. Use it for a week or so then turn it off so you got an idea of where your dps is coming from and how you can fine tune it. Yeah you will lag if you don't have an awesome computer, make sure it's minimized too so it doesen't live graph while you're playing.

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Vaanir

Using a dual core processor, lots of RAM and a fast access hard drive for running ACT + EQ2 at same will give you a huge peformance boost, did for me atleast.

On my single core, i can remember the times when i had to wait 5/6 seconds to export to game, i miss that now lol

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Raina

you can also actually leave it off and upload the logs later and it will still compile them. It lags my computer heavily so I dont run it, but if I need to check stuff thats what I do. Doesnt work if your trying to run the parser for the whole guild or if you are testing something immediate and want to see the changes in real time, but youll still be able to build your pie charts and stuff.

Jayad

It does lag you a little bit, unless you have a very good PC I think that's unavoidable, but it's not bad. You do want to watch doing several big zones without restart ACT. It can get pretty large with a lot of fights in it.

You get the pie chart by going to a character's parse than clciking on the outgoing damage. If you do it for the 'All' fight at top you get your zone-wide.