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Author Topic: Constant stuttering in game with mods  (Read 4295 times)

apotheos

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Constant stuttering in game with mods
« on: February 08, 2020, 02:27:59 PM »

Hey y'all.

Running a fair amount of mods (30, about 4-5 faction mods) and in the later game I now get stuttering every 4-5 seconds. I've tried upping the allocation of RAM by editing the vprams file as suggested in the other thread. A fresh start with the same mods installed no longer stutters. Any suggestions on how to keep the save file alive?

Cheers.
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korqi

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2020, 10:26:19 PM »

I have the same problem. I have allocated 4gbs of ram out of total 8 but in late games it gets  unplayable  :'(
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Vind

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2020, 05:20:32 AM »

Im getting stutter then GPU dedicated VRAM runs out due to many mods. Game will not crash but resources will be moved to system ram after playing some time with severe penalty to speed once it happens fully. Solution is to not load too many mods so game will not exceed GPU dedicated VRAM during play session. You can use nvidia-smi program to check VRAM status on NVIDIA cards. If you will get like 0 VRAM used by java process this is it - VRAM was full and textures relocated to system ram bringing game to a slow crawl.
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apotheos

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2020, 08:04:39 AM »

Thanks for the tip!

Doesn't seem to be the issue for me though. Using the nvidia-smi, it shows me at 2g out 6g usage while starsector is running, which should be plenty of vram room, no?
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Alex

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #4 on: February 12, 2020, 08:37:11 AM »

How high is your ram allocation? If it's too high, that can actually cause stuttering; I'd make sure it's no more than 4 to 6 gb.

Otherwise, this is likely to be a problem with one of the mods, then, but it'll be tricky to figure out which one - basically no other way than turning them off a few at a time to narrow it down. And since this only happens in the later game, that'd really take a while.
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apotheos

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #5 on: February 12, 2020, 09:51:21 AM »

Ram allocation is just 5 gigs, which seems like more than enough.

And darn, yeah, guess it prolly is one of the mods but would be impossible to narrow down, can't play the save trying to tick one off at a time either. Ah well, thanks!
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Alex

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #6 on: February 12, 2020, 09:12:08 PM »

Hmm - do you happen to have the "More Officers" mod enabled? Someone mentioned it causing... not exactly the same issue, but also to do with a slowdown, here. So it might be worth looking at, just on the off chance.
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apotheos

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #7 on: February 14, 2020, 06:59:56 AM »

No sir, just regular amounts of officers! I've noticed that it seems to lag as well from the beginning with more mods added. Seems to be something related to usage of mods but my comp specs should be able to handle it.
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Vind

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #8 on: February 14, 2020, 03:06:55 PM »

     I got 2 types of weird behavior with modded gameplay. First is random stutter then new debris field spawns after big battle - stutter is not eliminated even then you leave star system and present until game fully restarted and save reloaded - cant be reproduced reliably - it can be hours until it happens. Second one is - my jumps into the system got 1-2-3 sec delay every time regardless of situation - restart fixes this too - this also triggers randomly. Adding memory resolves nothing i got 8Gb allocated but these glitches is the same at 4-6-8Gb allocated.
     After reloading save file game uses around 2Gb memory less than before so it seems some mods leak memory.
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Alex

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2020, 03:45:07 PM »

     After reloading save file game uses around 2Gb memory less than before so it seems some mods leak memory.

That's probably the most likely culprit for other issues, too, then...

As far as in-system jumps, if the star system background is different than for the previous star system you were in, it will load the new background from disk. Why that would suddenly take much longer is unclear.
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apotheos

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2020, 07:02:31 PM »

Just another poke on this topic, after more playing around it seems like while hyper space my fps drops and I get stuttering while still having plenty of VRAM and RAm not utilized. Battles and in-system isn't as bad, with objects/fleets being more taxing, obviously. Without holding the speedup button it's pretty reasonable, while holding the speed-up button it drops down to as low as 30 fps and starts noticeably stuttering.

Cheers!
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Vind

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #11 on: February 17, 2020, 01:15:50 PM »

After setting forceNoVBO:false in settings.json and using latest free oracle java 1.8.0.202 game suddenly works much better. My idle score in overworld map gained almost ~30% on average.
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Alex

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #12 on: February 17, 2020, 01:23:51 PM »

(Just FYI, forceNoVBO affects only damage decal rendering on ships - i.e. mostly combat, but also in the fleet/refit screens. It should not affect anything in the campaign map at all. It can also lead to very rare crashes in at least some NVIDIA drivers, which is why it's disabled by default.)
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Vind

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #13 on: February 17, 2020, 01:47:03 PM »

Ive noticed game uses a bit less VRAM now with same mods. Im at 1657Mb of VRAM usage by java process and previously with bundled java it was 1786Mb. Regardless of reasons game runs much faster now - i hope it will not crash and burn due to unsupported java version or NVIDIA card.
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apotheos

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Re: Constant stuttering in game with mods
« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2020, 06:42:24 PM »

Hey all, just wanted to follow up with thanks for the attention. Alex, the game does seem to run better with six as opposed to five gigs of ram allocated, and my current suspicion as to the lag in hyper space is the spam of legio fleets from the Tahlan Shipworks mod, in addition of course to all the other stuff. A dozen massive fleets cruising multiple systems at a time may do that apparently.

Cheers all!
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