Stuttering, Small freezes and framerate Issues

[jens]

oh nm saw the other thread.

Am I seriously the only one who's having this mouse issue after I installed the patch? Everyone else's mouse input settings work in the menus?

The framerate is damn fine now but I can't play the game if every time I have to read a note or am in the menu I have to deal with this frustration of having such a slow mouse pointer.

[spidernetlabs]

@Jens: is there a way to test the patch on a Mac?

[jens]

At the moment no, we want to try and investigate the radeon HD 5000 issue a bit more before we ask the porter to do his mac/linux magic.

Or actually, you can try most of it without the new exe. Because the new exe mainly fixes a problem with the saving and cached sounds. So if you play the game, without using saves, then it should work better if you only edit the main_settings.cfg file in ~/Library/Application Support/Frictional Games/Amnesia/Pig/

So if you save a game at the end of a level when you want to take a break it should work OK. Because then when you resume and load the next level it should cache the sounds needed, and keep it cached until you decide to quit and save again.

[spidernetlabs]

Or actually, you can try most of it without the new exe. Because the new exe mainly fixes a problem with the saving and cached sounds. So if you play the game, without using saves, then it should work better if you only edit the main_settings.cfg file in ~/Library/Application Support/Frictional Games/Amnesia/Pig/

MaxChannels="48" StreamBuffers="6" StreamBufferSize="32768" ?
I will try to start a new game, and report back as soon as I can.

EDIT: I have a Radeon HD 4670 (iMac model).

[plutomaniac]

At the moment no, we want to try and investigate the radeon HD 5000 issue a bit more before we ask the porter to do his mac/linux magic.

What issue is that?

[spidernetlabs]

Test #1: default .cfg - new profile - new game - auto detected settings ➝ lot of stutters;
Test #2: modified .cfg - existing profile - existing game - auto detected settings ➝ improved, still lot of stutters;
Test #3: modified .cfg - new profile - new game - auto detected settings ➝ same as #2;
Test #4: modified .cfg - new profile - new game - everything on low (native resolution) ➝ same as #2;
Test #5: modified .cfg - new profile - new game - medium-high settings (trilinear textures, SSAO On, Parallax On, native resolution) ➝ same as #2;
Test #6: modified .cfg - existing profile - existing game - everything on low (native resolution) ➝ same as #2;
Test #7: modified .cfg - existing profile - existing game - medium-high settings (trilinear textures, SSAO On, Parallax On, native resolution) ➝ same as #2.

[w1cked313]

You have to either start a new game with the new main_settings. Or you have to play the game with your old profile but main settings modified in My Documents AND to complete the current level (with stutter) and have the next level load before the stutter will go away. The problem fixed is related to saved games, where cache sounds would be "uncached" when loading a save. The new exe fixes this issue, but for it to work you can not load a saved game and get the improvement.

What I do is uninstall the game each time. These are the steps I follow:

- I uninstall the game, delete the amnesia folder in My Documents, I even delete lingering files in the Registry.

- Re install the game through Steam, a main_settings.cfg file isn't generated until I run the game, so I do that, and exit at the profile screen without creating a profile.

- Apply the patch 4, copy, merge, and replace the files and folder in the main machine for pigs folder. If I do this with patch 5, I get stuttering at first run of the game

- Delete the main_settings.cfg file from the My Documents folder

- Run game using settings launcher, it doesn't detect my graphics card so defaults to medium.

- The game will run very smooth. I'll save the game and exit. I can load the save and play smoothly as well, until I restart the computer where everything reverts back to stuttering.

It looks as if after I restart, if reverts some of the settings back to the original in the main_settings.cfg. Max Channels will be back to 64, Streambuffers back to 8.

Is there something I am doing wrong? Should the game be launched from the detect settings launcher every time?

[plutomaniac]

You don't really have to do all these things, especially registry cleaning and stuff. Just follow these steps no matter what you have done to the game and the latest stutterfix will be applied correctly.

Oh and stutter5_fix is really stutter4_fix with the final .cfg file changes Jens mentioned. It's not something I made myself. It is what Jens said to do bundled together in a .rar file. What I'm trying to say is guys you don't have to be "afraid" of the file I uploaded just because it's not from Jens.

[lovebunny]

Test #1: default .cfg - new profile - new game - auto detected settings ➝ lot of stutters;
[...]

If you have real stutters (not only low fps) like 1/2 second freeze and it happens just before a sound starts to play, you can be quite shure it's not a graphics problem. So changing the graphics settings won't help.

Try lower values of "StreamBufferSize" in your main_settings.cfg. I can go as low as "4096" without having crackeling sounds. I currently play at "8192" and it definitly runs smoother on my PC than with the "32768" from the patch.

[spidernetlabs]

If you have real stutters (not only low fps) like 1/2 second freeze and it happens just before a sound starts to play ...

Exactly! :-)
Thank you for the advice I will give it a shot tomorrow and report back.