Ridiculously laggy mouse and frame rate

[bastardog]

From the second the game loads into the title screen the mouse lags heavily, about 0.5 fps or less. Swapping from windowed to full screen mode doesn't help. I hope there's an update to this bug soon, whether it needs to install new DX drivers or some code tweaks, because all other steam games run at top res for me without a problem.

Having just bought the game on the strength of a number of online articles, I must say I'm very disappointed with this. Should I have bought it straight from the dev instead? Is this the issue?

[Bribe Guntails]

I think this is a problem on your computer. Try reinstalling the game, update EVERYTHING, oh and check what is running with the game in taskmanager; maybe some other program is using up your resources

[spartan7-11]

Same issue here, nothing else is hogging resources, besides I can play ARMA2:OA on absolute maximum with no lag at all. I am running an ATI 6990, 16gb of ram etc etc monster gaming rig.

I assume this is some werid conflict issue going on. Avocado, are you running windows 8 as well?

[spartan7-11]

Update your drivers, worked for me. I was only one version off

[bastardog]

I'll do the video drivers and let you guys know. Just seems odd that other higher-res games are happy, that's why i thought it may be a direct X issue as I know steam games like to install their own bundled drivers.

[Reactive]

on the main website there are several of these kinds of problems being reported--- and it seems to be primarily ATI/AMD that are having the trouble. They say they're not sure what the problem is, but drivers don't seem to fix it in a lot of cases... they're working on it.

[bastardog]

Yeah, I should've mentioned that's what I have. That makes sense and I'm happy to see they're trying to fix it. Thanks Reactive.

[Andytizer]

Try this fix and see if it works: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/FTL:_Faster_Than_Light#Low_Performance

[Bubbles]

Originally posted by Reactive:

on the main website there are several of these kinds of problems being reported--- and it seems to be primarily ATI/AMD that are having the trouble.

Just to clarify for people who might read this while thinking about buying:
I'm running an AMD Phenom II x6 and Radeon HD5750 without any problems. So it's not a universal problem even with AMD setup

[BeenieWeenie]

Probably a problem with a specific AMD chipset. What kind of card are you using Avocado? I'm using a Phenom x4 965 BE and an AMD Radeon 6750.

[Harmonica]

Bizarrely I had this problem too but on only one other game - Borderlands. 0.5fps in the game when my computer is more than capable of playing it. (apparently only one other person on the entire internet also had this problem with Borderlands. Never found a fix).

I don't know if it's related, but I assume FTL runs at max possible frames - I had to force vsync through nVidia panel when I first got it because otherwise it ran my GPU up to max, which also gives me a weird electronic feedback through the audio ports (I have this problem in a few other games like Minecraft).

Obviously with vsync you get that characteristic smoothing effect on the framerate, but it ensures the game uses way less CPU/GPU power to run.

[vittau]

No problems here, AMD 6870, Catalyst 12.8.

Let's see if we can track this down to a specific chipset and/or drivers...

[bucciarati the rock]

Getting the issue with a fully up-to-date Radeon X1600 512MB. It's not much, I know, but come on, I can run Bioshock and Half-Life 2 at least.

[bastardog]

From this thread: https://getsatisfaction.com/ftlgame/topics/mouse_in_game_seems_floaty_and_slightly_delayed
it seems the problem could be that the legacy 12.6 drivers don't play well in windows 8 and direct X for this game. I have a pair of HD4770s on an Athlon X2-250, it's rather last-gen but so far most games I've thrown at it in win 8 haven't had issues when I pump up the quality with in-game settings. CPU utilization is 50% across both cores, so it's not like FTL is falling back on CPU rendering for whatever reason.

Time to dual boot windows 7. I'll fire it up and report back if that OS is happy running the game, everything else being equal.

BTW, and this is probably related to the legacy drivers, the catalyst center doesn't give me any options for changing graphics settings in windows 8, even after reinstalling the drivers a few times with reboots in between. Nothing from screen res and gamma, to V-sync and overclocking. Looks like a permanent video upgrade or an OS downgrade is in the cards.

[Harmonica]

Oh, you're running Windows 8. Well then. Yeah...

[bastardog]

Originally posted by Harmonica:

Oh, you're running Windows 8. Well then. Yeah...

I understand where you're coming from, but this is the first issue I've come across on it.

It is a rather ghastly OS, the design decisions they've taken are silly IMO and for something which has been completely re-coded from the ground up they have left way too many old way of doing things (really, search function, >128MB file size is considered "huge"?).

But this argument is outside the scope of this discussion. AMD are not contemplating releasing updated drivers for legacy 4000 series cards and lower, which I can understand without being happy about it.

I don't know if installing the 12.8 drivers for my card may also solve the issue since I have to lie to the website for it to let me download them, but I'm gonna give them a try too.

Edit: 12.8 drivers have not helped, must be a legacy card thing. Windows 7 test will come soon