Frequent FPS drop and performance issue

[ntz]

Hi,

sorry if this has been already discussed (many times) ... I didn't find it and I tried before asking here .. I have a problem with very often FPS drop for few seconds and tearing .. It seems to me that the issue happens mainly on zooming in and zooming out and also by dragging a colonist from garrison to his/her assignment .. Otherwise the game runs **absolutely** smoothly so this seems like indeed some kind of buggy behaviour because it happens randomly but pretty often ... I've spent a significant time with trying to debug that and seems to me, that issue can be mitigated by `disabling particles' in Options/Graphics .. Otherwise I am using a `High' preset ..

Is this issue known ? Is there something that I can do with that to fix it ?

I am running civ4 on business class laptop (modern 13th Gen i7 CPU, intel gfx, plenty of memory, m2 ssd) on Linux .. I have latest GOG distribution of the game and up-to-date operating system .. I am running game at non-native resolution, I use 1920x1200 on 2560x1600 display .. Game doesn't support scaling and fonts and everything is otherwise very tiny if I would be using a `full native resolution'


Thanks and regards !!

 

[VegetableRights]

There is too many storms in the current release version.

The storms are unoptimized but they can be modified fairly easily if you know where to look (I don't have access at the moment and I don't remember)
If the screen tearing bothers you enough then one option is to set the game to run at 'adaptive half refresh' - it will be locked at 30fps but it it much better then the awful screen tearing.

The best solution is to pester the developers to release a more current build where the storms are toned down a bit.

 

[raystuttgart]

The best solution is to pester the developers to release a more current build where the storms are toned down a bit.

Maybe the better solution would be to try to improve it yourself and share your work with community.
Why not go and talk to the remaining modders over at discord and offer your support?

 

[ntz]

I was googling a bit and seems that these two options in CivilizationIV.ini improve the performance significantly

DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 1
SetMaxFrameRate = 30

 

[Schmiddie]

I was googling a bit and seems that these two options in CivilizationIV.ini improve the performance significantly

DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 1
SetMaxFrameRate = 30

Hm, I tested these options and they had absolutely no impact on the performance in midgame...

 

[raystuttgart]

I was googling a bit and seems that these two options in CivilizationIV.ini improve the performance significantly

DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 1
SetMaxFrameRate = 30

Nobody in our community reported issues with massive drops in framerates ...
Still good to hear that you found a fix for yourself.

----

The only thing we normally hear is turn times getting very long in endgame.
But those are normally not related.

Framerates ---> GPU (and GPU RAM) ... normally the graphics of Civ4Col should not challenge a modern GPU much
Turn Times ---> CPU (and maybe RAM) ... most of Civ4Col does not support multi-threading / using more than 1 core.

----

Your PC setup sounds definitely strong enough to handle Civ4Col / WTP from a graphical perspective.
But maybe it is a specific issue that only manifests with your graphic card and drivers ...

Otherwise here is no possibility for debugging or systemacitcally analysing stuff like that.
Because we can only debug the logic of the game / mod ... but not hardware related dependencies.

 

[raystuttgart]

Hm, I tested these options and they had absolutely no impact on the performance in midgame...

The original post was more about framedrops ... I also had accidently overlooked that and thought it was generally about performance.
The solution posted might mitigate framedrops in the GPU, but not performance related to CPU like turn times.

Our recommendation:

If somebody has issues with framedrops, maybe give this a try.
(Personally I would use 60 fps, but it is up to you.)

And let us know if it works for you as well.

If it is about turn times ... do not mess with your framerates.
(It might have other side effects that you may not necessarily want.)

 

[ntz]

Hello,

my problem is probably not related to WtP specifically but in general to Colonization and perhaps to that I play the game with wine on Linux ... I was now playing a vanilla Colonization and same issue happens there also after some time but in WtP this problem happens much more often (probably because WtP is much more demanding on memory and resources) .. I am not sure if it is a GPU problem, I don't believe so .. It seems to be somehow related to resources and to memory ... Framerate drop is just one of side-effects of it .. game very often starts to be sluggish and `less responsive' for 5-10 seconds .. I've also found, that restarting the game helps and the issue doesn't happen in next 10-15 minutes ... I was also testing to play with Low graphical settings but it seems to have no impact on it so this is why I doubt that it is GPU related ...

One question - does the vanilla game (when playing with WtP mod unloaded) use a WtP multithreading when both libraries (tbb.dll and tbbmalloc.dll) are available ?

I have absolutely zero problem with performance otherwise .. It works like charm on Linux in wine with intel GPU ... Original CIV4 BTS/Warlods didn't have this issue ... Just Colonization only ..

cheers, ~d

 

[raystuttgart]

One question - does the vanilla game (when playing with WtP mod unloaded) use a WtP multithreading when both libraries (tbb.dll and tbbmalloc.dll) are available ?

No, in Vanilla there is no DLL code that uses Multi-Threading.
WTP DLL actually includes / calls the other 2 DLLs because some of our code was rewritten to use multi-threading.

Simply putting the 2 files into the Vanilla folder will do nothing at all.
But it will also do no damage ... because Vanilla DLL does not even know that they exist.

 

[VegetableRights]

The original post was more about framedrops ... I also had accidently overlooked that and thought it was generally about performance.
The solution posted might mitigate framedrops in the GPU, but not performance related to CPU like turn times.

Our recommendation:

If somebody has issues with framedrops, maybe give this a try.
(Personally I would use 60 fps, but it is up to you.)

And let us know if it works for you as well.

If it is about turn times ... do not mess with your framerates.
(It might have other side effects that you may not necessarily want.)

Depends on the hardware. You won't notice the drops so much with G-sync monitor.

The issue is more that the map lags very badly even on decent hardware. This is due to to excessive amount of storms and winds - make no mistake about it. It is one of the first things people notice with the release version. It is a shame because it really can detract from the experience. Why did you go so crazy on the swirly winds? It doesn't look great, it doesn't add much gameplay, and it ruins performance for what should be a undemanding game.

 

[Nightinggale]

This is due to to excessive amount of storms and winds

If you really believe that, then you can try to edit xml to get rid of them and see if that makes a difference.
Assets/XML/Terrain/CIV4FeatureInfos.xml
For types FEATURE_VENT_DEF, FEATURE_VENT_FAV and FEATURE_STORM, set iAppearance to 0.

The amount of storms has actually been reduced in 4.0 because it competes for space with new features such as reefs.

 

[VegetableRights]

No belief needed. Yes, I have got rid of them in my game.

Are you seriously prepared to die on this hill?

 

[raystuttgart]

Are you seriously prepared to die on this hill?

Relax man, no need to get pissed.
We cannot forsee all different hardware combinations ...

Why did you go so crazy on the swirly winds?

Definitely not because there was bad intentions ... thus no need to get aggressive.
We are modding in our spare time for free ... at least as long it is still fun for us.

----

We will check internally if we have problems with the Winds and Storms Features.
And maybe we will also reduce the amount that is generated by lowering the balancing attributes to spawn them.

But I can tell you that almost nobody complained about them so far ... or about frame drops in general.
In fact most people like the new versions of Winds and Storms a lot better than the old ones of WTP 3.1.

And also as stated the amount of Winds and Storms in WTP 4.0 was actually reduced.
(How it feels may also differ drastically depending on the Map or MapScript you play.)

Yes, I have got rid of them in my game.

Seems like you solved the issue for yourself already.
(At least until we publish a new official public release.)

----

Summary:
Thanks for posting.
We will check it.

Otherwise:
We hope that we will release WTP 4.2 end of the year.
Maybe we will also have changed something considering Winds and Storms then.