[0.9.0]Small stutter every few seconds

[Gammro]

I've been busy building up a larger and more permanent base. Just starting on the train stations for delivery of goods. First, my game crashed for some reason. Then after I restarted I noticed a small stutter every once in a while. What also happened after that, my game would fall to 30 FPS while zoomed out.

I checked with process explorer to check GPU load to see if something was up:

As you can see, the system GPU memory sometimes just spikes to nothing. I'm not entirely sure, but I think there's a correlation(couldn't time it exactly). And that the GPU just doesn't even try to draw for a moment, causing a stutter. Also, you can see that my GPU isn't on 100% load at any time, making the drop to 30FPS strange.

Also, when going back to menu, it's even more clear that GPU load just drops when the memory spikes happen:

[Marqee]

same here.
thought it was the 2 mins autosave timeout.
But then i set autosave to 30 mis , and the shutter still remains.

[CherryKiss]

yep, the stutter is for real! got it also.

[SilverWarior]

Hmm
I'm noticing some strange thing here. For some reason your system stores most graphic data in System GPU memory (this is part of RAM which was made available to your graphic card to increase its available memory).
Normaly Dedicated GPU Memory (this is graphical memory of your graphic card) should always be more utilized than System GPU Memory as dedicated GPU Memory is much faster.

Can you please use Process Explorer to test your system with only windows runnig and then while running some other game which doesn't cause you any problems and post the results here.

[Gammro]

Can you please use Process Explorer to test your system with only windows runnig and then while running some other game which doesn't cause you any problems and post the results here.

But... that means I have to play something else!

Ok, here's a screen of me playing Rising storm for a small while:

The memory usage is how it's supposed to be in this graph: dedicated GPU memory used more than system GPU memory.

[Gammro]

Everything seems fine again after a reboot. The GPU load for zooming out went from 70% to less than 20%, and it can now keep up again with 60FPS.

The dedicated GPU memory went up to 500MB, my System GPU memory is ~395MB

[Marqee]

There must be something wrong or too heavy with the graphich engine.
cause i asked me , why in 0.8.8 all was smooth and in 0.9.0 there is this shuttering every 30-50 sec ?
And then i tought that all the new items insered in 0.9.0 maybe where too "big"
In reality the items themself are not big but 2000-3000 trees to draw could be.
So i took all the tree graphics and compressed the .png
The dimension of trees was at the end nearly 1/3 of the original, with no quality loss...
And Ta Daaaa! The shuttering is disappaired =).

I'm going to compress all the game images cause i have seen that some are very heavy ( cargo trains an locomotive are 1Mb+ each )

If some one is interested i can upload the "compressed" trees in a .rar file.
And when i'm finished , the whole graphic package.

=)

[FrozenOne]

Wow, devs should be interested!

[Marqee]

Here is the link to get the compressed trees.
(If it is a problem to post it i'll remove it )

1) Uncompress the folder with winrar o similar software.
2) Copy the uncompressed folder in the subfolder of your game installation located in :

\Factorio\data\base\graphics\entity

Overwriting the files.

Tell me if you solved the stutter =)

My 2 Cents.



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/557 ... 0/tree.rar

[SilverWarior]

Everything seems fine again after a reboot. The GPU load for zooming out went from 70% to less than 20%, and it can now keep up again with 60FPS.

I'm glad that system restart fixed the problem. But we still have to find a way to reproduce this. So I would need some more information:
When the stuttering apeared the first time did you do any swithing between Factorio and other programs or maybe even switch to another game. Also were you running Factorio in full screen mode or in windowed mode?
It is posible that by switching to other applications Windows moves dedicated GPU memory used by that application to System GPU memory to free up more dedicated GPU memory for other active application. Normally that memorywould be moved back to dedicated GPU memory but it is posible that application must make a special request for this from Windows. I'm not sure as I haven't encountered such problem before.

[kovarex]

By the way, the engine now generates one chunk of map around the player (up to distance of 20 chunks) every 10 seconds.
Couldn't this be related?

[DRBLN]

I think, that is related.
I had a similar issue in 0.8.0

[kovarex]

I think, that is related.
I had a similar issue in 0.8.0

But this was introduced in 0.9.

Anyway, the way to test it would be to force the engine to generate the map with something like (copy paste to console)

Code: Select all

local radius = 21*32; local position = game.player.character.position; game.player.force.chart{{position.x - radius, position.y - radius}, {position.x + radius, position.y + radius}}

Open the map and wait until it charts the square.
When it is finished, the stutter should no longer be there if the reason was this.

[AlexPhoenix]

Gammro, can you please provide specs of your PC(RAM, 32/64 bit, GPU RAM, OS ver) and factorio version(did you try 0.9.2?), i will try to reproduce slutter via virtual machine.

[james123212]

my game stutters about every 11 seconds can someone help me?
(I actually used my ipods stopwatch to count the time between stutters)

[kovarex]

my game stutters about every 11 seconds can someone help me?
(I actually used my ipods stopwatch to count the time between stutters)

That is definitelly the world generation (every second 1 chunk is generated).

Try this:

Anyway, the way to test it would be to force the engine to generate the map with something like (copy paste to console)

Code: Select all

local radius = 21*32; local position = game.player.character.position; game.player.force.chart{{position.x - radius, position.y - radius}, {position.x + radius, position.y + radius}}

Open the map and wait until it charts the square.
When it is finished, the stutter should no longer be there if the reason was this.

[Marqee]

Gammro, can you please provide specs of your PC(RAM, 32/64 bit, GPU RAM, OS ver) and factorio version(did you try 0.9.2?), i will try to reproduce slutter via virtual machine.

0.9.2 ?
Where ?

[slpwnd]

Kovarex fixed this for the 0.10. The world will be generated in a different thread.