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Author Topic: Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx  (Read 3783 times)

Offline BlakeD

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« on: July 23, 2007, 03:57:12 pm »
Was playing on again / off again some this weekend, and noticed a few bugs (Win32, 2.2 - Dev from 7/11/07)-

1.  In missions when I have a large number of players / models on screen, my FPS drops to the teens, or more often, to the single digits.  System details: Intel E6400, 2Gb Ram @1066, 8800GTS, SB Audiology.

2.  My wife asked me to take her to the ER due to her cold.  I left the game running and came back to it around 18 hours later.  The background music had stopped.  Reentering missions, reloading game wouldn't bring it back... I played a mission anyways.  Loe and behold - My FPS stayed consistently in the upper 60's (usual performance for me).  I exitted the app, restarted it, and loaded my save game.  (I was like 5 minutes game-time from entering a mission.)  When I entered the mission, my FPS was back down to single digits.  To me, this indicates that the FPS drop is somehow related to sound or music playback.  This has happened previously, but I wasn't 100% sure the issues were related.  I'm much more confident they are now.

3.  Inventory at 2nd or 3rd base behaves oddly.  I can assign an object (let's say a particle pistol) to a soldier.  It's the ONLY particle pistol at the base.  Exit the Assign Soldiers / Aircrafts menu completely - go all the way to Base View.  If I re-enter Aircraft -> Assign Soldiers, there is the particle pistol both on the soldier, and I have it still in inventory to assign to another soldier, and can do so.  I can repeat this and assign that single particle pistol (works with other objects, just using it as an example) to all 8 of my squaddies.  If I exit all the way out to Geoscape, re-enter the base view, and go to assign soldiers at this point (having exited base-view out to Geoscape and re-entered Base View) - The application crashes.  I imagine this is caused because of a corrupt inventory count on the object that was 'duped'.

Let me know if you need additional details on my system, or on how to reproduce the bugs.  I am not a coder really, or I'd try and find the problems myself.

Offline Mattn

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2007, 04:12:51 pm »
try to start with snd_init 0

or set this cvar on the game console

please test whether your frames rate stay high

Offline BlakeD

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2007, 02:58:05 am »
Launched app with +set vid_fullscreen 1 + set snd_init 0, entered a mission in map City04N (BTW - There's a bug in this one, previously reported I think, with large orange rectangles appearing in the store).

Ran at a solid 68.4 for pretty much the entire mission.

I'll test some more later tonight, but I think you can call this confirmed.

Offline Mattn

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2007, 08:25:10 am »
please also try different sound renderers - which one are you using at the moment? with windows you have the chance to switch between directX, windowsAPI and SDL for linux it is, ALSA, OSS, SDL

Offline BlakeD

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2007, 09:40:50 pm »
I've been playing the latest Dev build with sound disabled, and I am maintaining a CONSISTENT 65+ FPS.  System Specs:
Intel C2D E6400
2Gb @ 1066MHz
74Gb 10K Raptor (System Drive)
400Gb Sata 3.0Gb/s (Data and Game drive)
Creative SB Audiology (forget the exact model)
WinVista x64 Ultimate (Hey, I got it legal for $45, why not try it?)
 
I tried the different sound renderers, and I can't say as any of them had a major impact.

Offline Destructavator

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Sound / Video Lag, Sound Failures, and Inventory Hijinx
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2007, 12:56:45 am »
It might have something to do with your SB soundcard.  I used to use and work with various Soundblaster hardware, and I hate to tell you this, but they arn't very good cards, and the terrible drivers they make for them typically cause all kinds of problems with various apps, including slowing down the system, crashing, etc.

As a former professional computer technician who even had experience teaching the stuff to students, I just can't recommend Soundblaster hardware for any purpose, whether it is gaming, music/audio design, etc.