Jump to content


Photo

Game Stuttering/Lagging

Started by baalorlord, Jul 25 2011 01:58 PM

  • Please log in to reply
8 replies to this topic

#1 baalorlord

baalorlord
  • Member
  • 4 posts

Posted 25 July 2011 - 01:58 PM

Hi,

My BWP install (customized tactics) has been suffering from minor slowdowns recently. Every few moments the game pauses briefly, affecting everything on-screen including my cursor. This stuttering effect is identical to that described by others in threads such as http://www.shsforums...rs-gate-bwp-8/. The stutter is not severe, but it is slowly driving me insane.

I am in chapter 2 of BG2, having played through all of BG1 already. I have gone through the full recommendation list at http://www.shsforums...47 and discovered that the only thing that puts a complete halt to the stuttering is to kill Haer'Dalis. However, the stuttering is removed if he is ever resurrected or kicked from the party (alive or dead). Kicking him and then killing him does not help either. I have tried every method of removing him that I could think of (petrification, imprisonment, etc) but the stuttering only halts if he is both dead and in the party. The other solutions help to varying degrees but do not stop the stuttering; it is still slightly noticable if I kick all NPCs, drop all items and bags, turn of scripts, and put my charname in a small area with no other creatures. The only thing I have yet to do is try LStest, which I have so far avoided because I have no experience with such matters.

So it's clear to me that something Haer'Dalis is doing is causing my troubles, but I'm not sure what it could be. Does anyone know what might be causing this? I know others have had similar troubles with NPCs that caused stuttering except when dead and in the party - has anyone found a solution to this (even if it means losing the NPC forever)?

Aside from that, I have a few options left before me:
-I have a save from before I recruited Haer'Dalis, which I could load and play and avoid recruiting him. This means losing almost 10 hours of gameplay however, so I am very reluctant. The save is so far back that I may want to just restart BG2, even.
-Play through as far as I can with the stutter in the hopes that something I do fixes it. I fear burning out on the game if I have to force myself to play it though.
-Play with 5 characters and a dead Haer'Dalis.
None of these options are very appealing to me, so I am really hoping I can find some way to fix this.

A summary of the things I have tried:
-Dropping all items in Haer'Dalis' inventory.
-Dropping all items in everyone's inventory.
-Removing each character one at a time and resting.
-Killing each character one at a time and resting.
-Setting everyone's scripts to none and turning off AI.
-Dropping all my bags of any sort.
-Mucking around with saves; loading an earlier save and then loading the affected save without returning to main menu. Also importing an affected save to ToB and then loading the affected save again. Neither helped.

At this point I am tired and out of ideas so I turn to you gents for help. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

#2 Jarno Mikkola

Jarno Mikkola

    The Imp in his pink raincoat.

  • Member
  • 10911 posts

Posted 26 July 2011 - 06:27 AM

...

Well, the only thing I can suggest you to do, if you are unwilling to do the LStest'ing is open the WeiDU.log, and copy paste the text in 
[spoiler]text[/spoiler]
and attach a save game to the post, so others can see if they are able to replicate the lag and see what's causing it.

Uuh, also open the "baldur.ini" and copy paste it in the 
[spoiler]text[/spoiler]

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 26 July 2011 - 06:32 AM.

Deactivated account. The user today is known as The Imp.

#3 baalorlord

baalorlord
  • Member
  • 4 posts

Posted 26 July 2011 - 12:53 PM

Thanks for the reply,

I'm not unwilling to run LStest if there's an easy way to make sure that it doesn't bork up my game - I understand that LStest can mess up an installation so it is reccomended to create a backup copy of BG2 with all the same mods. However, I'm not entirely sure how to create such a backup without running the entire BiG world setup again. If there's an easy route here that I am missing, please let me know.

Here are my Weidu log and baldur.ini files, as well as an attached save for anyone who'd like to look into this personally.



Spoiler

Spoiler

Attached Files


#4 Jarno Mikkola

Jarno Mikkola

    The Imp in his pink raincoat.

  • Member
  • 10911 posts

Posted 26 July 2011 - 01:08 PM

I'm not unwilling to run LStest if there's an easy way to make sure that it doesn't bork up my game - I understand that LStest can mess up an installation so it is reccomended to create a backup copy of BG2 with all the same mods. However, I'm not entirely sure how to create such a backup without running the entire BiG world setup again. If there's an easy route here that I am missing, please let me know.

Easy, you copy the game directory.
and the LStest only borks the game while it's installed, as the cut scenes don't work... but when you uninstall the mod, everything that was modified by the LStest mod is removed, including the faulty cut scenes... which makes the game work again.

Low Mem Sounds 1=1
Low Mem Sounds 2=1

You haven't disabled the ambient sounds, you have turned the volume down(to zero)... but that doesn't help like the correct way does... at least to my understanding.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 26 July 2011 - 01:17 PM.

Deactivated account. The user today is known as The Imp.

#5 baalorlord

baalorlord
  • Member
  • 4 posts

Posted 26 July 2011 - 01:53 PM

Ah, a simple Ctrl-C Ctrl-V of the entire game directory will work then? In that case I'll give LStest a try and see what I can learn.

I have correctly disabled ambient sounds this time and retried the ToB import trick, still didn't work I am afraid.

Edited by baalorlord, 26 July 2011 - 02:24 PM.

#6 baalorlord

baalorlord
  • Member
  • 4 posts

Posted 28 July 2011 - 04:50 PM

Alright, I installed LStest successfully, with interesting results.

It seems that the only script that consistently fires no matter what zone I am in is BPTHIEF.BCS block 5. If I kill Haer'Dalis, this script continues to run, but two others join it: Blocks 447 and 451 of BALDUR.BCS

EDIT: I have an earlier save where this script is not present, but the stuttering is still there. Now I'm really not sure what to think.

This block is:
IF
!Allegiance(Myself,EVILCUTOFF)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
ActionOverride(Player1,DisplayString(Myself,400123)) // Running block 5 of BPTHIEF.BCS
END

At this point I think two things are relevant:
-My protagonist is Evil.
-Haer'Dalis is my thief (Fighter/mage/thief in my game)

Mucking around with shadowkeeper I discovered a couple things.
-Changing my protagonist's alignment to neutral doesn't change the stuttering in any way.
-Changing Haer'Dalis' class to anything other than F/M/T (including single-class thief) causes the stuttering to continue even when he is dead and in the party. I have no idea what this means.

I have no idea what all of this means for my game, so I was hoping someone here can help interpret this info. I don't currently know how to changelog scripts to find out how they were added, if that is necessary.

Here is the entire BPTHIEF.BCS of my game from NearInfinity
Spoiler


And here is my BALDUR.BCS
Spoiler

Edited by baalorlord, 28 July 2011 - 04:59 PM.

#7 Bloodtitan

Bloodtitan
  • Member
  • 406 posts

Posted 29 July 2011 - 09:19 AM

you would need to know who the owner of the USSCBloc2 variable is. i do not know but it does not look like a core game variable.

#8 Enforcer

Enforcer
  • Member
  • 6 posts

Posted 27 June 2014 - 01:55 PM

There is another problem you may face. In megamod you often find a lot of containers and staff a lot of magical items in them. Who knows when you ought to use them, right?

It becomes an issue because baldur.bcs uses many PartyHasItem(...) constructs. It slows performance immensely in case of many containers and lots of items in them

There are 2 solutions:

1. DONT carry many containers with lots of items. Stash them in some static containers like tables, wardrobes etc

Easy but tedious

2. Modify baldur.bcs and all your npc bcs scripts using near infinity. Replace PartyHasItem(...) with HasItem(...,Player1). and NEVER give containers to player1, your pc that is.

Hard to do but after you done this once, you forget about such problems whole playthrough

Be careful with this tactics. Some mods and areas depends on your party having some item. eg it was given to you moment ago. If you hide that item on other than player1 chars, area/mod might become broken

 

Although you still have to do something with scripts like HasItem(...,Player2). If player 2 has containers (someone has to carry them you know...) then this script also has a huge impact on speed.

Same for Player3 - Player5.

I personally moved all blocks with "HasItem(..., Player2)"  (block starts with "IF" and ends with "END") in a separate script to be called manually via character("R")/customize/script.

You just need to turn this script on for a while when needed to do its work, then return back your favorite player script


Edited by Enforcer, 27 June 2014 - 02:35 PM.

#9 The Imp

The Imp

    Not good, see EVIL is better. You'll LIVE.

  • Member
  • 5155 posts

Posted 27 June 2014 - 11:58 PM

There is another problem ..
That's:  
17. Inventory management(no stacks that have more than about 200 items, in a bag, arrows etc.), -might also help, as in if you drop an item to the ground and or store it in a stash the stuttering might go away in a few seconds there after. And do not carry too many bags of holding and the like storage_items, or give into the your greed and use the moving bag of holding in the donkey mod(W_mule).

Besides, this topic is from 2011, hello man.

Edited by The Imp, 28 June 2014 - 10:37 AM.

Yep, Jarno Mikkola. my Mega Mod FAQ. Use of the BWS, and how to use it(scroll down that post a bit). 
OK, desert dweller, welcome to the sanity, you are free to search for the limit, it's out there, we drew it in the sand. Ouh, actually it was still snow then.. but anyways.

Back to Mega Mod Help


  1. Spellhold Studios
  2. → Modding
  3. → Mega Modifications
  4. → Mega Mod Help
  5. Guidelines