Running/walking speed tied to FPS? Need thoughts/opinions? (PC)
8 months ago
New York City, NY, USA

Hey all! I've been asked many times in my youtube videos "How do you run so fast"?

I always chalked it up to the PC version of Zombi just being faster by default. The console ports of Zombi seem to run at 30fps, and the PC version can hit 60. So it might naturally follow that this is the reason. But its not.

Here are my specs for reference:

GPU- Nvidia 3060ti

Monitor- 165hz Acer predator

I did some testing to see how exactly why the running speed varies so much and this is what I've found. Lets call the running speed of your character on Xbox/PS4 "default" run speed. I used a fresh install of Zombi on Steam.

  1. No framerate cap in Nvidia control panel

RESULT: Default running speed

  1. Framerate capped to 60 FPS in Nvidia control panel

RESULT: Default running speed

  1. Framerate capped to 100 FPS in Nvidia control panel

RESULT: Significant running speed increase.

  1. Framerate capped to 165 FPS in Nvidia control panel

RESULT: Even more significant running speed increase.

Evidence: you can test this in the starting area of the game, where you run from the first horde. The moment you can control, start running to the ladder. If you have default running speed, your character will get tired and stop running just before getting on the ladder. Now test again with a higher framerate cap. You will see that you can grab the ladder before your run cycle is depleted.

Conclusion: You can speed up your characters run speed to a significant degree, I'd imagine about 30% faster, by manually setting your FPS cap to your monitors max refresh rate. This will only work on those playing on a high refresh monitor such as 144hz, 165hz, 240hz, etc. I would love for someone with a 240HZ monitor to perhaps test this further, since I dont have one.

On a competitive level, this definitely bends the playing field quite a bit, leaving console players at a significant disadvantage. I am wondering if the leaderboards have to be split up yet again.

Let me know your thoughts on this. And please, if you can verify these tests on your hardware, I'd appreciate it. This is only supported on monitor refresh rates higher than 60 hz. Thanks

EDIT: So Jackyrite tested this out a bunch further for me and found that it DOES NOT matter if you have a high refresh monitor. You only need to set the max fps internally to 165-170 for maximum speed. After that, it seems to have diminishing returns.

Edited by the author 8 months ago
Pennsylvania, USA

Interesting. Yeah I think it's best to split the board, not that it affects me too much as I own the game on every platform so I can play it wherever. But to keep it so console can even try to compete, might have to do it.

I also have a 3060Ti and dual 144hz monitors and yeah it seems like it works pretty well on my system.

Kentucky, USA

Yea I've thinking about trying to speedrun this game at some point it's seems like a very interesting game to run and I'm most likely gonna run off Xbox, I remember this game been very nostalgic for me very underrated game imo