Graphics speed issues

Too slow?

from Stardock Forums

Is anyone else having major issues with graphics slooooow downs?

I have played (and replayed) FE several times on my Sony Vaio. It is not a particularly powerful machine, but by turning off a few of the graphic intensive options, I can get very, very smooth graphics most of the time (maybe a bit slow when many units in tactical combat, but very acceptable).

However, when I run Sorcerer King on the same machine, the graphics struggle badly, coming to an utter crawl at times. In tactical combat with more than a couple of units, it's an unacceptable speed. The graphics move, but the sound effects fire then you see a *very* slow motion animation of the attack or death or whatever.

I have turned off *every* option I can find that is said to improve graphics speed. Even at the very basic settings, the game is borderline unplayable.

Am I missing something? I would not call SK graphics significantly better than FE's, and so I'm puzzled why FE plays very acceptably on this Sony Vaio, whereas SK is not really possible. Thoughts?

58,001 views 26 replies
Reply #1 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Same issue when playing on my laptop, but I haven't noticed it on my desktop computer. I suspect it has to do with integrated graphics rather than a dedicated graphics card. The game is essentially unplayable once the slow downs start on the laptop, although it performs well enough for the first 15 or so turns.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I have an intergrated card and a fairly capable laptop but Sorcerer King currently runs at a crawl on my system even using cloth map only.  I can run LH and only have slow down on large and above maps with dense monsters.  And it's still significantly faster than Sorcerer King.  I'm sure it's a BETA issue and I do like what I've seen so far but hope it is resolved sooner than later.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Agreed, same issue.  Also wish we could rotate the camera (not sure whether that's a beta limitation or not).  Would also like to see the city information that's visible on the main screen visible on the cloth map.

Reply #4 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Hmm, I'm thinking that the graphics ARE good enough to warrant some dedicated cards and that would be why you're all having issues. It runs like a champ on my laptop with a dedicated graphics card

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I hear you Werewolf. But in the end they need to cater to a wide range of users. And my Vaio isn't an old "enh" machine. It runs FE almost perfectly, and from what I have seen SK isn't such a step-change in graphics that it should be running like molasses on the same machine. I love the fact that they offer graphic choices that allow you to amp them up if you have a powerful machine with great graphics card, or dial them down if you don't. My problem right now is no amount of dialing-down makes the game reasonably playable. That, IMHO, is a big issue for a game aimed at a large audience.

Anyway, seems like a few of us are facing slowdowns. Hopefully an alpha/beta issue to be resolved. :)

Reply #6 from SorcererKing Forums Top

If the integrated graphics card is the issue (which I believe is at least partially to blame) then someone needs to do some serious work. I can run Civ 5, Endless Legend and other similar games without a hitch while SK is absolutely unplayable after several turns, even when closing and restarting the game. Memory leaks, poor efficiency and sloppy coding even for beta code.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting nim8or, reply 6

If the integrated graphics card is the issue (which I believe is at least partially to blame) then someone needs to do some serious work. I can run Civ 5, Endless Legend and other similar games without a hitch while SK is absolutely unplayable after several turns, even when closing and restarting the game. Memory leaks, poor efficiency and sloppy coding even for beta code.

That's a mighty critical set of assumptions there. 

It sounds like the new lighting we're using isn't working well on the Intel chips. We will look at it. But no, the game isn't full of sloppy code, memory leaks, etc.

Reply #8 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 7


Quoting nim8or,
reply 6

If the integrated graphics card is the issue (which I believe is at least partially to blame) then someone needs to do some serious work. I can run Civ 5, Endless Legend and other similar games without a hitch while SK is absolutely unplayable after several turns, even when closing and restarting the game. Memory leaks, poor efficiency and sloppy coding even for beta code.



That's a mighty critical set of assumptions there. 

It sounds like the new lighting we're using isn't working well on the Intel chips. We will look at it. But no, the game isn't full of sloppy code, memory leaks, etc.

I agree my comment is too harsh. The game is unplayable with integrated graphics however, and that is a major issue if this title hopes to hold up its chops in the marketplace and succeed. Coming from a longtime Stardock supporter, I'm hoping you find success, whatever magic it takes.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks.  I've forwarded it on to QA to find out he specific cause.  We also have contacts at Intel that mig be helpful.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks, Frogboy, for looking into it! I want to like this game (and have enjoyed FE in the past), but the graphics slowdown is a showstopper for me right now.

If it helps, here are the specs on the machine I am using:

Sony Vaio Model #: SVD112290X

Processor: Intel i7-3537U @2.0 GHz

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 @ 1920x1200

Memory: 8GB

It's not a gaming rig, but it's not a total lightweight either. Let me know if I can do anything else to help; love to see this issue resolved!

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Remus, thanks for posting your specs.  We're looking into this now.

Nim8or/Dsag1980/stewapet

It would help us track it down if you could post your specs as well as if you owned FE/FE:LH and it ran well.  Thanks!

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh, and this may be obvious, but have you tried turning dynamic shadows and anti-aliasing off, lowering the world FX, and/or lowering the resolution?  Dynamic shadows are used much more extensively than they were in FE.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cbray, reply 11

Remus, thanks for posting your specs.  We're looking into this now.

Nim8or/Dsag1980/stewapet

It would help us track it down if you could post your specs as well as if you owned FE/FE:LH and it ran well.  Thanks!

 

 

Similar rig to remus611.  I've also turned off all the above settings, and still run into the issue about 20 turns in.  Ran FE fine, would typically turn off the shadows, to make it run really well.

Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top

As mentioned earlier, I do not experience the extreme slowdown on my desktop with a dedicated graphics card, only on the laptop that has integrated graphics. Laptop specs:

HP ProBook 6470b

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3110M CPU @ 2.40 GHz

4.00 GB RAM

Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000

I've turned off every available graphics feature to make it as bare-bones as possible, without any noticeable improvement when it comes to the slowdown described.

Reply #15 from SorcererKing Forums Top

It crawls on mine takes several minutes between turns etc even on lowest setting cloth map only.  I have an ASUS I7, 8GB Ram, and a NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 860m.

 

Do WN FE and FE:LH not problems except some slow downs on LArge/HUge  Maps if I run full graphics and Dense monsters.

Reply #16 from SorcererKing Forums Top

I have an update on this issue that I thought I'd pass along since it's fairly interesting.

It turns out that maps that have a tile that have >2 edges with different terrain really mess up the graphics shader.  

In FE/LH, this was never an issue since tiles were blended into one another.  But it is here.

 

The maps are being fixed for this Thursday to avoid this.

There is one map that is relatively free of this issue called Aereon.  The worst one, by far, is Oasis.

 

 

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Dsag1980, reply 15

It crawls on mine takes several minutes between turns etc even on lowest setting cloth map only.  I have an ASUS I7, 8GB Ram, and a NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 860m.

 

Do WN FE and FE:LH not problems except some slow downs on LArge/HUge  Maps if I run full graphics and Dense monsters.

Several MINUTES between turns? There's something really seriously wrong then.  Which map is this on?

Reply #18 from SorcererKing Forums Top

I hope this info doesn't bore people, I really like sharing this kind of stuff with you guys.

Anyway, thanks to our friends at Intel I am able to look deeply at the code.

Check this out:

 

For SK, I wrote, what I thought, was a clever function which lets monsters be placed NEAR someone's territory.  I had no idea how horrible the underlying code was until I started getting feedback like what Dsag reported above.  

What you should get out of the screenshot is this: ONE function by itself was using 30% of the overall CPU of the game.  Sadly, I wrote this function. So it's my fault.  It used over 30 seconds of CPU time (and this is on a Core I7-5960x monster) and I was only running the game for about a minute and a half.

So you guys keep kicking me in the ass to optimize.  

Reply #19 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Yes it starts out taking roughly 10-20 seconds between turns and by the time I'm more than a 15 turns in it's at probably close to two minutes between turns (I apologize for the several I was guilty of a bit of hyperbole).  It may well be an additional issue on my end but everything runs very slow.  Battle loading, even just running over a chest.  It was the Aereon map I believe but every map has been the same way.  My laptop is obviously a laptop and while not absolutely top end is hardly a low end model as well.  I figure this is why you run early access to find these things out.

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Dsag, curious, how many CPU cores are on your machine? 

I just checked in a ton of optimizations this evening (as in, moments ago) based on a quick perusal.  The biggest difference will boil down to cores.  The game must have been absolutely horrible for people with only 1 or 2 cores. 

The Thursday update should be massively better.

Now, however, I am feeling pretty terrible for LH as I really need to look at some of this stuff for that too. Maybe this weekend.

If you guys haven't heard of Vtune 2015, it just came out and it's far better than the older editions.   

When it comes to perf, be LOUD.  I work for you guys.  

 

Reply #21 from SorcererKing Forums Top

It's a quad core.  I7 not sure what variant of the top my head it's running much better now.  Not quite perfect but completely playable as of this evening.

Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks, Frogboy, for digging this one out! I look forward to the update and will look for (and report on) improvement! :-)

I've tinkered in code before... it's always the clever bits that bite you! ;-)

Reply #23 from SorcererKing Forums Top

I run LH with few graphics issues (I turn off shadows). Yet I can only enjoy playing SK in cloth-map only due to incredible slowdown, and even some tactical battles chug.

Here's my rig:

Dell Inspiron 3521

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3217U CPU @ 1.80 GHz

4.00 GB RAM

Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000

 

Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 18

I hope this info doesn't bore people, I really like sharing this kind of stuff with you guys.

Anyway, thanks to our friends at Intel I am able to look deeply at the code.

Check this out:

...


For SK, I wrote, what I thought, was a clever function which lets monsters be placed NEAR someone's territory.  I had no idea how horrible the underlying code was until I started getting feedback like what Dsag reported above.  

What you should get out of the screenshot is this: ONE function by itself was using 30% of the overall CPU of the game.  Sadly, I wrote this function. So it's my fault.  It used over 30 seconds of CPU time (and this is on a Core I7-5960x monster) and I was only running the game for about a minute and a half.

So you guys keep kicking me in the ass to optimize.  

 

Not boring at all IMO, I'm pleased to learn there are solvable solutions to the major performance issues we're experiencing. Thanks for the update. 

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Hello folks. I'm one of the guys responsible for performance, particularly with terrain rendering. Some of the issues I'm hearing about in here sound, to me, to be the terrain rendering issue mentioned earlier. There is a fix for this coming soon. After the update, I would love to hear whether performance is boosted or not. Sorry, and thanks to all of you for your patience.