Avadon on MacBook Pro Rapidly Draining Battery

[Silent Motion]

It seems to drain about 10% every 15 minutes, plus the machine is very hot & the fan is running, so I'm guessing lots of processing is happening. I never noticed the rapid drain or heat issue in Avernum 4,5, or 6.

 

Is this normal, or should I have the machine checked?

[Niemand]

That's odd, since I've found Avadon to be possibly Spiderweb's most efficient game yet. To get an idea of whether Avadon is really to blame, I'd suggest using Activity Monitor to find out what the processor is up to.

[Randomizer]

I ran it on a iBook and didn't notice it heating up the computer as bad as Avernum 6.

[Silent Motion]

Good idea - the activity monitor is showing 103.7% CPU use. %User - 22

%System - 7.61

%Idle - 70

[Tyranicus]

That's odd. It uses about 65% of the CPU on my MacBook Pro. It does heat it up to 87º C though.

[Osakans]

FWIW, I have the same problem on my Early 2011 MacBook Pro - 100% processor usage, even when the game is sitting on the menu screen right after launch.

[GameJunkie]

I'm having the same issue playing Avadon on my MacBook. It runs extremely hot, and the fan is constantly running after loading the game for a couple of minutes. I just checked Activity Monitor, and it had Avadon at 105.3% of the CPU. This was when I had not been playing, and loaded a saved game just to check. (In other words, I wasn't even playing at the time.) I keep mine plugged in most of the time, but when I unplugged it, the battery was draining quickly.

 

MacBook 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

8 GB RAM

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7

 

I have been playing Avernum 4 for the past few hours and the computer is not hot and the fan has not come on. All that heat can't be good for the computer, and all that fan noise definitely isn't good for my ears.

[Rowen]

This is not a solution to the battery drain or CPU usage, but I always us smcfancontrol on my MBP to try to keep it cooler. It might help a bit with the heat from a CPU running at full but doesn't fix the real issue.

 

I run my fans at 5000rpms due to have burnt out three logic boards due to overheating.

[GameJunkie]

Thanks for the tip. I just installed smcfancontrol, will see if it helps. Although not playing Avadon helps too.

 

I guess I'll just keep playing the Avernums until I run out.

 

ETA: Avernum 6 gives me the same problem(s) as Avadon. A4 and A5 were fine; the processor activity was not abnormally high, the computer didn't heat up and the fans weren't blaring (approximately 6200 rpm). I tried turning the graphics settings for the games as low as possible and it didn't help. I hope whatever this issue is with the newer games cranking up the processor isn't here to stay.