25.4 GB update - patch notes?

[Lilly-Cat]

^ What has been changed?

[Wesk89]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1310410/announcements/detail/4176601063676169943

[Mutharex - Allkeyshop]

The patch was 2.2GB, it's patching the whole game, that is 25.4GB, not redownloading it

[Kakella_6630]

STILL FREEZING AND STUTTERING!

[Valentine Kiss]

Originally posted by Kakella_6630:

STILL FREEZING AND STUTTERING!

Yepp, instead of pumping half of the budget into actors to use their faces for characters they should have taken the money for the development.

[NicZerus]

same bad stuttering and freeze .

[Lanani]

Those of you who are still encountering stuttering, please do the following:

1. Make sure you only ticked the precompile option once (it will appear unticked, but upon closing and relaunching the game, you will see that it is activated).
2. This feature is rather heavy on memory usage, so if your GPU has low VRAM, try lowering graphics settings.
3. If none of that helps, please report it as instructed in the following thread, with your dxdiag attached, so the developers/QA can investigate:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1310410/discussions/0/7204143288004688501/

[Valentine Kiss]

What's the reason to make a post on these special site, in the meantime you already know about the problem and how long will they need now to (re)-investigate it. They don't know how to fix it anyway.

[Flappy Pannus]

I tried the patch wrt to hopefully fix the stuttering - does very little, and in fact makes it worse in some cases.

As I suspected, the 'compile shaders on load option simply swaps between
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=True and False in engine.ini. It appears nothing else was really done to properly compile shaders.

True to form, this subsequently has all the hallmarks of just adding that entry yourself and why it's generally a null benefit most often - the result is you just get huge CPU spikes now in the middle of levels and in many cases *more* stuttering as you've upped the CPU load from traversing between these segments. The newly added "Slow HDD" option, which presumably loads in more of the levels at the start to prevent this, does virtually nothing. Hell, in my tests it actually increased traversal stutter.

Even the warning that this 'significantly' increases VRAM usage make no sense, it doesn't - and why would it? The act of compiling shaders isn't a tax on vram, it's CPU speed, and that's what you see when you reach a loading segment in the world now on a first run - a huge CPU spike, which adds to the stutters. There is no difference in vram usage with the shaders option enabled, and there shouldn't be.

The devs clearly don't seem to really understand the issue and how to properly address it. A users DXDIAG report won't help, this is fundamentally an inadequate approach to deal with shader stutter in UE4. This is just changing the compiling of shaders as they're called to now compilie them in large batches in the middle of levels, so you just trade shorter, but more frequent periods of stutter for much longer periods, but with less frequency.

The problem with this ini entry too is that even when the shaders are compiled, the game will check against the cache during these traversal segments, which while far shorter than needing to fully compile the shaders, this check-in process still adds additional time vs. not having it at all.

Compile the shaders for the entire game, *outside of gameplay*. This does not do that.

[Doctor Hades]

I managed to finish the game last night and was very underwhelmed by the final boss, felt very rough with lots of clipping errors and overall the conclusion was just massively disappointing. It felt rushed and unsatisfying. Took me around 11 hours to finish the game.

Anyway, that last section of the game ran smoothly enough up until the final boss cinematic which had a huge frametime stutter (I even repeated the last battle again and the same thing happened again in the same place!). I then restarted the game and ran through the first hour to see if the stutters were fixed. I enabled the Slow HDD setting, which mentions fixes for stuttering, even though the game is running from a Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD and proceeded to walk through several rooms. I noticed that the stutters when approaching doors are still there and often the camera would stutter while panning it around the character. It's better than the launch version, yes, but it is still not completely fixed and does ruin the immersion. The engine is clearly loading data for the next area/room as you walk around and this is what causes the frametime spikes. This same issue also ruined the Dead Space remake from EA and was never fixed either (not sure if the game uses the same engine but the issue is similar, although it is much worse in Alone in the Dark).

I get that this is not a triple A budgeted game but even so having any game stutter just tarnishes it for me because there is nothing that, I, the user can do about it. This issue should have been ironed out early in developer not attempted to be fixed weeks after release. This is a single player game. Most sales will have been at launch and so the majority of people playing this will have experienced the worst version of the game. The fixes are there but they do not remove the stuttering completely because it is caused by the way the game streams data.

PC: i5-13600KF, 32 GB, RTX 4080, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD for games.

[nigel.ward200]

I found the shader cache option weird how it disappeared when applying but was set on reboot.
I expected the pc to say building when launching like several other titles I have do.
So in effect the shader cache option isn’t working.
I have 3060ti with Ryzen 7 5800x3d. I have to say I noticed stutter in mid section with patch.
I will turn it off and see how it is with out.

[Lanani]

Originally posted by El Scootero:

What's the reason to make a post on these special site, in the meantime you already know about the problem and how long will they need now to (re)-investigate it. They don't know how to fix it anyway.

I am neither a developer nor QA, so reporting issues to me only helps in so far as I can forward the general information that issues are occurring, but that is not helpful for bug fixing. On the other hand, bug reports in the community database go directly to the devs and QA, which makes it easier 1) for them to get the information they need to fix the bug and 2) have a way to reach out to specific users if more/specific information is required.

[Doctor Hades]

So is the Pre Shader Cache option actually broken because I do not see any indication that shaders are being compiled when I toggle the option on, even if I exit to the title screen, which is when it usually works in other games. Also, I am still encountering huge frametime spikes and stutters when approaching doors to new areas/rooms, just like before, but this may be traversal stuttering rather than shader related stuttering.

Personally, I really hate Unreal Engine 4 on PC. It's such a mess despite being positively ancient at this point (v4.27) and replaced by UE5. If games aren't stuttering due to shader compilation then they typically have traversal stutter.

[Lilly-Cat]

@Doctor Hades: Do NOT use the setting for slow HDDs for any kind of SSD.

UE used to be one of the best game engines but the shader issues in recent years with newer UE4 games have really been a shame. In UE5 traversal stuttering is still an engine issue that causes issues - even with the latest version.

[RodroG]

Originally posted by Flappy Pannus:

I tried the patch wrt to hopefully fix the stuttering - does very little, and in fact makes it worse in some cases.

As I suspected, the 'compile shaders on load option simply swaps between
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=True and False in engine.ini. It appears nothing else was really done to properly compile shaders.

True to form, this subsequently has all the hallmarks of just adding that entry yourself and why it's generally a null benefit most often - the result is you just get huge CPU spikes now in the middle of levels and in many cases *more* stuttering as you've upped the CPU load from traversing between these segments. The newly added "Slow HDD" option, which presumably loads in more of the levels at the start to prevent this, does virtually nothing. Hell, in my tests it actually increased traversal stutter.

Even the warning that this 'significantly' increases VRAM usage make no sense, it doesn't - and why would it? The act of compiling shaders isn't a tax on vram, it's CPU speed, and that's what you see when you reach a loading segment in the world now on a first run - a huge CPU spike, which adds to the stutters. There is no difference in vram usage with the shaders option enabled, and there shouldn't be.

The devs clearly don't seem to really understand the issue and how to properly address it. A users DXDIAG report won't help, this is fundamentally an inadequate approach to deal with shader stutter in UE4. This is just changing the compiling of shaders as they're called to now compilie them in large batches in the middle of levels, so you just trade shorter, but more frequent periods of stutter for much longer periods, but with less frequency.

The problem with this ini entry too is that even when the shaders are compiled, the game will check against the cache during these traversal segments, which while far shorter than needing to fully compile the shaders, this check-in process still adds additional time vs. not having it at all.

Compile the shaders for the entire game, *outside of gameplay*. This does not do that.

Agree. It seems the dev team has little experience dealing with Unreal Engine. Any quality Unreal Engine game project should consider hiring some C++ experts to properly tweak and adapt the engine source code for specific game project needs.

[Doctor Hades]

How old is Unreal Engine 4 at this point? A decade? The last version 4.27 hasn't been updated in at least 12 months, possibly 18 months.

Yet we still have PC developers that are creating games using this engine that have basic issues such as shader compilation and traversal stuttering. It is not just the developers of this game but also EA too who released EA WRC, which also runs on UE4, in a shockingly poor state that took them *months* to fix and we all know how poorly optimised the otherwise excellent Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is on PC, again another UE4 game.

If I was Epic I would be seriously embarrassed at the state of PC games that are using their engine. It makes it appear broken/unfinished in my opinion.