[Rseding91] [1.1.1] Stuttering and big UPS drop when biters attack

[smooth_mcdouglette]

Whenever biters attack, the game stutters quite badly and UPS dips fairly dramatically for me.

I was playing stable 1.0.0 just yesterday and I never encountered any such UPS or FPS drop, so I believe it's related to 1.1.0 experimental.

The dip seems to only occur when biters attack. It doesn't matter if they are on screen or not, or what my zoom level is.

My system specs are:
- Ryzen 7 2700
- GTX 1070
- 16 GB DDR4 RAM
- Game is installed on SSD

I was using nvidia's support for my freesync monitor, but disabling this did not have any effect. Disabling vsync in the in-game settings, and in the Nvidia control panel likewise did not have any effect.

Here are the debug numbers for when the game is running fine:

20201125150838_1.jpg (1.24 MiB) Viewed 7504 times

Here is what it looks like when biters attack:

20201125152200_1.jpg (984.46 KiB) Viewed 7504 times

Here is my log file:

factorio-current.log

(6.84 KiB) Downloaded 152 times

And my save game:

Goodbus.zip

(5.64 MiB) Downloaded 146 times

[smooth_mcdouglette]

I have also just now noticed that the stuttering goes away immediately after the alert icon in the bottom right disappears. Perhaps it's related to drawing the arrows?

[Rseding91]

Can you post a save where it's running slow? When I test it - even in debug mode - I get zero slowdown.

[Jap2.0]

There's a just over tenth of a second spike in "Gui update", do you see that when hovering over the alert or something, or is it just generally stuttery?

[HunD34TH]

Same issue here, stuttering only, when alert icon is showed

[Rseding91]

I can't reproduce any slowdown when I load the saves. Can you post your config.ini file as well? Maybe it's realted to some setting you have different from me.

[steinio]

@OP do you use Steelseries keyboard or mouse?

I have the described lags with it enabled.

[smooth_mcdouglette]

I can't reproduce any slowdown when I load the saves. Can you post your config.ini file as well? Maybe it's realted to some setting you have different from me.

Here:

config.ini

(27.28 KiB) Downloaded 159 times

@OP do you use Steelseries keyboard or mouse?

I have the described lags with it enabled.

I do have a Steelseries mouse, and in fact I did just get it very recently, but this issue was not occurring prior to updating to the experimental 1.1.0 branch, even with the Steelseries mouse.

There's a just over tenth of a second spike in "Gui update", do you see that when hovering over the alert or something, or is it just generally stuttery?

It seems that this occurs often when I get gui alerts, although not always. It does, however, always occur when biters attack. Basically what happens is the game drops a bunch of frames every half a second or so in a repeating pattern. It's sort of a 'lurching' behavior, where I will get consistent 60fps for about 0.5 seconds and then it will hang for about 0.5 seconds and so on. This occurs for around 30 seconds or so (I will record hard numbers and post them this evening) before the game switches back to butter smooth 60 seconds. It seems the transition occurs when the alert icon disappears from the GUI.

I will continue paying attention to the behavior and see if I can notice anything else that could be the culprit.

[smooth_mcdouglette]

Can you post a save where it's running slow? When I test it - even in debug mode - I get zero slowdown.

Here is a save where the slowdown is currently occurring for me

Goodbus.zip

(5.84 MiB) Downloaded 164 times

[robot256]

Steinio asked about the Steelseries devices because Factorio 1.1.0 was the first version with "Steelseries Gamesense support" built in. So it would make sense that if a bug in their GameSense usage was slowing it down (perhaps trying to illuminate the kb with an alert) that it would only happen in 1.1.0. You might try messing with that part of your setup to see if anything alters the game behavior.

[HunD34TH]

I have a SteelSeries keyboard and mouse too, disabling this feature (ingame, other settings menu) resolves the problem (for me)

[smooth_mcdouglette]

Disabling the Steelseries integration did indeed resolve the issue.

Additional details: I do have a razer blackwidow chroma as well. Perhaps the integrations are competing? But disabling the razer chroma integration did not solve the issue. Only disabling Steelseries did.

[Rseding91]

Hmm ok I'll connect the steelseries keyboard I have and see what I can find.

[Rseding91]

I loaded it up and tested and was able to reproduce some slowdown. Nothing like the FPS drop shown in the first screenshots but still some.

It might be fixed for the next release now. I'll have to wait and see what everyone here experiences when it's out.

[Squelch]

A couple of observations that may be related:

The app does not appear to be fully implemented for me. I have an older three zone rgb keyboard on an MSI laptop. Attempting to configure it for "dynamic colors" results in a crash of the Steel Series process.

Steelseries app.PNG (2.35 MiB) Viewed 7222 times

It would seem that the feature is enabled by default - detected by the driver?, but final control being given to the game settings. Could this feature also be made opt in for Factorio instead please?

Personally, this is something that I'd prefer to explore in my own time instead of having the colours suddenly change on me or performance impacting whistles and bells as it seems here. (I haven't had chance to confirm the latter yet)

[posila]

Personally, this is something that I'd prefer to explore in my own time instead of having the colours suddenly change on me or performance impacting whistles and bells as it seems here. (I haven't had chance to confirm the latter yet)

If it is opt-in (instead of opt-out), we won't get nice "OMG, my keyboard changes lights when I start Factorio" reddit posts, which are whole point of this.

[Squelch]

If it is opt-in (instead of opt-out), we won't get nice "OMG, my keyboard changes lights when I start Factorio" reddit posts, which are whole point of this.

You speak the truth

I was disappointed to find that what I thought was per key rgb was in fact just three blocks on this machine, so I haven't given it much love. However, although it's 4 years old now, there does appear to be some issues with SS in general- either due to older hardware, or something else, and not for something that is really imperative to playing the game. I'll do some more testing in the name of "OMG RGB!" and keep an eye on this issue anyway.

[jagholin]

might be related, when I was observing biters today(version 1.1.1) I also noticed something strange: just before launching an attack, the biter group will freeze on the spot for a couple of seconds. It's very noticeable, because the biters in the attacking group usually move around all the time.

I don't know whether it coincides with game freezes/ups drops, as i don't think I have any(and my base is not that large for now).

I don't have any fancy keyboards, only a razer mouse.

[invisus]

I'll do some more testing in the name of "OMG RGB!" and keep an eye on this issue anyway.

[Rseding91]

Note that the other two keyboard RGB implementations have zero issues with performance. It's the REST API that SteelSeries provides that's an issue; it's just a slow way to do it over a DLL like the others.

I had to do a bunch of work-arounds to keep all of the slow API calls in another thread to not block the main game logic. Normally that isn't an issue... but I guess it is for SteelSeries stuff.