Game Freezing : Bug in Particle System?

[devnull]

I've been noticing that my game will freeze / lock up a lot lately. It always happens in the middle of combat, almost always as some massive particle system effect is starting while a bunch of others are already going. A normal scenario is I crit something and it starts to explode while mobs are letting off auras, pretty-sparkly attack particle effects, etc. everywhere at the same time. It almost always happens in NON-turn-based mode (which would make sense if it's a particle system bug...) and generally only in larger combats with a lot of auras and sparkly effects. My theory is that the game has a bug in it's particle system

When the crash happens, the game freezes and stops accepting input, but the mouse still moves, etc. Music still happens and combat sounds still happen for a bit as well, though they soon stop (I suspect these are happening on other threads). But the game basically hard-locks and has to be manually killed via process explorer or ctrl-alt-delete, etc.

Obviously, since I don't have access to the code, I can't verify any of this, but based on when the freeze is happening (and ~20 years of game programming experience on my end), my bet is a bug in the particle system getting overloaded. Hopefully that helps the devs track down this extremely annoying bug.

[アンジェル]

To me it definitely sounds you are on the right track. Make sure to report it via the ingame tool, regardless whether you can "caught the bug in the act" or not. You can open the reporting tool by pressing ALT+B ingame.

[devnull]

In-game bug sent - thanks for the advice!

[zaroua]

There 100% is an issue with fog type spells. Game runs fine for hours. I run into a single enemy that does a fog spell (Coloxus usually) and then I drop down to 15 fps until I restart the game. Mind Fog and Polar Midnight are the worst offenders.

[devnull]

Fog can (and likely is based on the visual effects I've seen) be implemented as a particle effect. What you're describing sounds like maybe a memory leak somewhere? Or maybe it's not cleaning up some rendering state like it should? Don't know. But may or may not be related to the freezing issue I'm experiencing. I don't typically notice any slowdowns from particle effects (I have a beefy system), it just suddenly freezes for me.

[SneakyFoodThief]

considering the game was in early access one would expect the game to come out a bit crisper. i wonder if the deves are lazy as a culture or they just need a bit more time to fix the game with all the mass bugg reports after the launch of the game in this particular case.
hope baldurs gate wont suffer same issues.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by SneakyFoodThief:

considering the game was in early access one would expect the game to come out a bit crisper. i wonder if the deves are lazy as a culture or they just need a bit more time to fix the game with all the mass bugg reports after the launch of the game in this particular case.
hope baldurs gate wont suffer same issues.

It is rarely the developers who pushes a game out to be released. More a matter of the publisher who wants to see their investment back and running out of budget. There are more than often enough cases were small developers team ended up running out of money due to... capitalistic planning.

What I do mean with that: think of all the moments when one said "it takes 10 days to finish X", or "it would cost us only 50 USD for Y", just to have those anticipations blown up with much much higher need than actually "anticipated". Not expected or anticipated - more planned lean on purpose to attract investors in the first place.

[devnull]

I would say the devs are extremely passionate and hardworking. Unusually so - this game is a labor of love and they've put their hearts and souls into it. This is an extremely complex game and engine - what they've made Unity do blows my mind, honestly. Yeah, there's lots of bugs still, some of which crept back in after being fixed for Kingmaker, but that's to be expected after heavy development of a new game.

Yes, I believe they could have used another 6 months of polish and bug-fix time to make the game solid, but there are TONS of reasons why that can't happen sometimes. From publishers pushing a company to get SOMETHING out the door because they want their money to the dev company itself needing money and having to release early in order to keep their doors open. Not publishing in either case can shut a company down.

Which is better, in your opinion - to get a 99% working game with some bugs that still needs some polish and a dev team that is working their asses off to fix those bugs, or a closed studio that never gets a chance to fix those bugs and a possibly never-released game?

The answer, to me, is obvious. Big AAA studios have the luxury of taking that extra 6 months of polish and bug-fix time. Smaller studios often do not. It's not a perfect world, but the choices here are pretty stark, so I'm willing to forgive a smaller studio (especially one that is so obviously producing a labor of love that they are as passionate about as the fans) a buggy release as long as I know they are continuing to work on it.

I may have to just wait that 6 months before I play the game, but I know I'll be able to eventually. Better that than a studio that is too stupid to release early with some bugs and gets shut down. That's no good for them, the game, or the fans.

So, yeah, I'm totally down with helping them fix their bugs if I can. I love this game almost as much as they do and I'm positive they want it perfect even more than I do. That seems a lot more productive than whining about a buggy release and flaming the devs (to me, that's like kicking a puppy, honestly).

[SneakyFoodThief]

Originally posted by devnull:

I would say the devs are extremely passionate and hardworking. Unusually so - this game is a labor of love and they've put their hearts and souls into it. This is an extremely complex game and engine - what they've made Unity do blows my mind, honestly. Yeah, there's lots of bugs still, some of which crept back in after being fixed for Kingmaker, but that's to be expected after heavy development of a new game.

Yes, I believe they could have used another 6 months of polish and bug-fix time to make the game solid, but there are TONS of reasons why that can't happen sometimes. From publishers pushing a company to get SOMETHING out the door because they want their money to the dev company itself needing money and having to release early in order to keep their doors open. Not publishing in either case can shut a company down.

Which is better, in your opinion - to get a 99% working game with some bugs that still needs some polish and a dev team that is working their asses off to fix those bugs, or a closed studio that never gets a chance to fix those bugs and a possibly never-released game?

The answer, to me, is obvious. Big AAA studios have the luxury of taking that extra 6 months of polish and bug-fix time. Smaller studios often do not. It's not a perfect world, but the choices here are pretty stark, so I'm willing to forgive a smaller studio (especially one that is so obviously producing a labor of love that they are as passionate about as the fans) a buggy release as long as I know they are continuing to work on it.

I may have to just wait that 6 months before I play the game, but I know I'll be able to eventually. Better that than a studio that is too stupid to release early with some bugs and gets shut down. That's no good for them, the game, or the fans.

So, yeah, I'm totally down with helping them fix their bugs if I can. I love this game almost as much as they do and I'm positive they want it perfect even more than I do. That seems a lot more productive than whining about a buggy release and flaming the devs (to me, that's like kicking a puppy, honestly).

I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs just some performance issues. so the game is solid, just when a game is launched after an early access i think its understandable to expect a flawless performance. well at least that is my consumer opinion, not saying im not satisfied with the end product (like i said the game is solid) and im having a lot of fun with it (die a lot though). I just think that as consumers we should rise our standards when it comes to early access games post launch.

[Wisedude]

Im having stuttering issues related to buffs that get worst over time until I restart which come back when I re-apply buffs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpQv16FyA0
This is my 2nd playtrough (first was angel path) and didn't have this obvious issue with buffs so I im wondering if its related to me being an azata.

I already tried re-installing/deleting the files in the appdata folder and Stripping said character naked, saving in that state, and then restarting the game but no luck.

I'm wondering if its the effects of buffs that are causing them.You mentioned you only get them in combat while mine still linger outside of combat.