Lots of lag + heavy stuttering

Sqiurmo

8 years ago
Views 18,368
updated 4 years ago
Completed - Resolved

Nutter666 suggested I make a ticket here.

After ~50 units or so in my dungeon, I get pretty bad lag, and the FPS drops to <30. In addition, after 100+ units are in my dungeon, stuttering happens every 10 or 15 seconds. This happens in campaign or skirmish. The output log is from a large (largest possible map size), 4-player skirmish that was ~5 hours long before it crashed when I ordered all of my minions to attack. The lag was present throughout most of the the skirmish though.

Loading the game seems to alleviate the problem temporarily, but it returns pretty quickly.

output_log.txt

Specs are:

Windows 10 64-bit

16 gigs of ram (Corsair)

Intel i5-4670 @ 3.4 GHz

GTX 780

Game Version:

Steam Public

Platform:

Windows

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Replies 17

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Andrew "Nutter" Jaggar

8 years ago
Accepted

Thanks for the report Squirmo, i'll pass it through for the code team to take a look at and see if there's anything odd about the output log to cause the lagging.

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[Dev] Nanorock

8 years ago

There is nothing odd in the output log. I'm afraid it just hit the limit of what's the game is able to handle on your specs I'm afraid : / 5h+ on a 4p map, big map, lots of units. All those parameters affects performances a lot ^^"

8 years ago
Completed - Next Patch

Lee "Noontide" Moon Designer & Community Manager

8 years ago
Completed - Resolved

Ævar Örn Guðmundsson

Running this game on a GTX 1080Ti backed by 32gb of ram and a 5820k and the game drops to about 20 fps or lower with the gpu and cpu not even breaking a sweat ;/ not gonna lie i built a pretty heavy duty dungen ^^ but is there any plans on patching this or is it simply the game will never handle it :P i love this game btw.

anonymous

8 years ago
Pending Customer

Hey Ævar,

That sounds pretty awful, it's rare to hear such damning performance drops on such a high end system.

What is the average FPS the game runs at for you?

Do you have Vsync enabled?

Ultralazuli

I don't have lag, per se, but I do have significant and consistent stutters. They usually start up once I've played for about 1 hour on a map, sometimes sooner. They usually occur when I move my camera, panning to different parts of my dungeon, but it doesn't seem to do it when I click on the map, only when I Edge Scroll. It usually hitches for about .6 to 1.2 seconds, then resumes normal speed, then pauses again about 5-8 seconds later.
Windows 7 64bit
32 GB DDR3 RAM
CPU: AMD A8 6600k Quad Core @ 4.2 GHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce 1070 @ 8 GB GDDR5 VRAM

Hey Ultralazuli,

It sounds like you're suffering from the dreaded Unity Garbage Collection stutters. Basically Unity will clear out the memory that is being used for the game periodically when it is no longer needed. However, their method for doing this isn't the best and results in a small stutter every time it happens. This wouldn't normally be noticeable, the problem arises with systems that have large amounts(over 16GB) of RAM. Every single time it happens it has to search and reorder ALL of the RAM, including currently inactive portions, so even if you are only using 10GB total of RAM the other 22GB will still have an impact on each GC step.

It's not all doom and gloom, Unity are working on a solution right now that will negate this issue and as soon as it is released will upgrade to that version of Unity engine.

This is going to sound painful, and I'm sorry that you'll have to do this but the best way to negate this issue is to temporarily remove most of the sticks of RAM from your system. Going down to 16GB or even 8GB will really improve your experience. I know this is a total hack of a workaround but it should improve your experience.

If you do attempt the above then please get back to us and let us know how you fair.

Well, at least the problem is being addressed.

I'm currently unwilling to try that kind of "hack" right now though, It would limit my ability to play several other games installed on my machine, and frankly, I paid buku bucks for this kind of upgrade, so it feels like a slap in the face to have to tone down my awesome system to meet the limitations of the Unity engine.

Not that I'm saying you're slapping me in the face or that Brightrock is either. I guess I'll have to wait out this update to Unity and perhaps try exiting and re-entering the game after long periods of play. Thank you for answering.

No worries, I know it's a big ask. Saving and reloading the game may also help but not to the same extent