Weird lag in the menus.

[Hariq Jahim]

Has anyone else been experiencing this? It happens when saving, shopping, or just using the standard menu to change equipment and stuff. Sometimes it doesn't let me confirm an option or back out for a few seconds. I messed around with the settings as much as I could but it still happens.

[Lexomatico]

Same here

[0x57A1CFA117]

I sort've get this when playing on my Linux workstation (my laptop has the hardware to run it, but isn't on Win10, and I won't be putting it on 10 or 11 or 12 lol). All menus EXCEPT the merchant ones run perfectly fine and smooth, but the very second a store-npc opens their mouth and the "greeting" dialog box shows at the bottom of the screen, the games fps tank HARD (like 0.5 fps if I had to guess). The second I exit out, everything's smooth as butter again. I can even go into the character screen, adjust gear, add some points in element plots, etc. and all that's fine, but store-npcs? FORGET it lol which is a pretty huge problem because buying and selling is half of the game by implicit nature of needing to upgrade equipment or buy restoratives.


I've tried soooo many options in SteamTinkererLaunch too, nothing seems to help. I've even hand-modified some of the ini files (under the c/user/steamuser/AppData/Local/VisionsofMana/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor in the Steam compatdata's pfx directory) to attempt to disable things like TAA, and no joy. It's so weird because it only happens, for me, when interacting when a store-npc. The graphical effects, at least visually, appear to be the same exact graphical effects as when going into the party screen (the gameworld's frames are painted to a surface and that surface is heavily blurred and darkened behind a blue tinted backdrop). My instinct tells me it's some form of anti-aliasing or texture sampling that is running a crazy amount of times per frame either for each shader or just in general, but like I said, it only seems to happen, for me, when interacting with a store-npc so I have no idea :/

[Honorable_D]

Once or twice, if I open a menu and instantly try to confirm something it won't take it, but you just press it again and it always does.

[0x57A1CFA117]

Using a controller, if I listen for the sound I'll know the game took the input, but it's REALLY painfully slow when this issue is occurring.

[timecatalyst]

Same problem here. I was experiencing it in both the demo and full game. Definitely feels like something strange is happening in the render loop when you're navigating menus.

As you mentioned, it way more noticeable at vendors, but I've experienced it within certain sub menu screens as well.

EDIT: It doesn't seem limited to just controller input. KB navigation in menus has the same problem.

[Hariq Jahim]

I found out the issue. It seems to be tied to the controller used. When using my XBox Elite 2 controller I get the lag. Switched over to a Dual Sense and it's gone.

[thejuiceweasel]

Originally posted by Hariq Jahim:

Has anyone else been experiencing this? It happens when saving, shopping, or just using the standard menu to change equipment and stuff. Sometimes it doesn't let me confirm an option or back out for a few seconds. I messed around with the settings as much as I could but it still happens.

Pretty sure it's not lag, but the menus and some other UI parts are rendered at a different framerate (yeah, that's possible, it's weird).

Might be the same weird bug that causes some cutscenes to run at 30 fps, but not *consistent* 30 fps but with frametime all over the place.

[0x57A1CFA117]

I just unplugged my controller, started the game, loaded my save and tried interacting with a vendor, and it's still the same effect. I also don't think it's just input either, because the menus slide in skipping over large swaths of x coordinates into their locked in positions, and the corner-borders that grow and shrink as your selection cursor grow and shrink skipping over large amounts of frames as well. Additionally, the game still slightly visible in the background is also skipping over large amounts of frames (I used a flower bed as a visual reference). So the slow menu navigation speed and the often missing sound indicating recognition that I hit a button (unless I either repeatedly tap the button or I hold the button down for longer periods instead of just single tapping the button) is all due to frame rates, but why those frame rates are tanking I don't know.

It feels like some sort of anti-aliasing gone extreme. I say this because AA requires having a game render the same frame multiple times per frame (hence why it has a direct impact on FPS). It's not like the frame rates eventually tank, it's literally the instant I press the button to begin interacting with the vendor. It tanks hard, and thanks hard FAST. From a behavioral standpoint, the only kind of stuff I can think of that could cause a performance issue to behave like that so easily would be if I cranked AA or Anisotropic filtering way up.

Imagine like a main-game render loop that ordinary handles drawing all the stuff that eventually gets pushed to the screen, re-run the same drawing stuff multiple subsequent times before the end result for that single frame is pushed to the screen. Like an O^2 operation. But I'm not sure this is quite right either, because it would mean anti-aliasing (or similar performance affecting post-processing effects) would be getting turned on and then back off again for just the vendor screen, and that doesn't seem likely. I thought it might have been some weird shader issue but the character screen looks like it's using the exact same types of shaders the vendor screens do and the party screens work just fine.

[0x57A1CFA117]

Boy it sure seems like people are having fun playing this game... Do you think I could play some too?

It would be nice if those of us with this menu lag ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ could get a fix; for me, I haven't been able to play the game in a close to two weeks (popped in every now and then to see if there was a silent update maybe that fixed it but nope.)

[0x57A1CFA117]

There is something really REALLY wacky going on with the game's resolution code. It seems like going from fullscreen (not borderless-fullscreen but actual fullscreen) to windowed, my framerates go way up (they weren't overly bad before, but it's VERY noticeable going to windowed). So I had thought, GREAT maybe I figured out a way around dealing with whatever ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the vendor menus are doing that causes my game to tank. Nope. So then I thought maybe it was some shader that was being used to render some object near me so I tried looking directly at the ground... Nope. I then tried looking directly at the sky without any clouds in view of the camera, nope. Then I started monkeying around with fullscreen / windowed mode setting and resolution settings again. The game eventually had a solid black square (I'm guessing the fullscreen texture quad that would ordinarily be painted to the canvas of the window) and it never re-painted itself, yet I could hear the game's music, and it reacting to keyboard input, etc.... Wonderful, so now I had to go back to GameSettings.ini and figure out how the values for the fullscreen options work. For example, FullScreenMode=<integer value) is not a 1 or 0 boolean type of value, it's a 0, 1, 2 kind of value I think. So I made these changes to the fullscreen settings (in the GameSettings.ini):
FullscreenMode=2
LastConfirmedFullscreenMode=2
PreferredFullscreenMode=2

Then I made the following changes to the resolution:


Loaded the game, ok back to being in windowed mode again. So I kept fiddiling around trying various camera angles, hitting F11 to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode again. So I was like ok, lemme try going into the display settings and see what it displayed as my resolution since I manually edited the value to something that the game wouldn't let me set in the display settings in game. As soon as I went into the character screen (as part of getting to the display settings), the game did a weird little graphical "shuffling" thing. I exited out and tried going to a vendor and BAM all of a sudden, the vendor menus worked as fluid as everything else. I don't know what the hell kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is going on, but there's definitely something NOT right about the fullscreen and borderless-fullscreen code, or the painting to the window canvas itself code because I have over 33 hours playing the game (granted on Linux using Proton, but 33 hours of no problems at all speaks to the compatibility of it) and once I got to Chapter 2 Illystana, Capital of the Deep, the vendor menu lag became absolutely unplayable. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere in the ballpark of 0.25 fps. But whatever this weird little graphical-"shuffling" effect was, it cleared it up (at least for this play session... I guess this means, I gotta leave the game running now until I finish it or hope I hit the same "rotor-rooter" sewage pipe clean-out it did this time around. It's SERIOUSLY not ideal since playing in the window is somewhat distracting with my desktop visible around the edges of the window, but at least I might... I stress MIGHT be able to finish it (maybe I'll throw a black background up for desktop and move the icons out of view). Anyhow, here's my GameSettings.ini file for anyone that's curious:

[ScalabilityGroups]
sg.ResolutionQuality=100.000000
sg.ViewDistanceQuality=3
sg.AntiAliasingQuality=1
sg.ShadowQuality=2
sg.PostProcessQuality=1
sg.TextureQuality=3
sg.EffectsQuality=2
sg.FoliageQuality=3
sg.ShadingQuality=2

[/script/engine.gameusersettings]
bUseVSync=False
bUseDynamicResolution=False
ResolutionSizeX=1280
ResolutionSizeY=720
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeX=1280
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeY=720
WindowPosX=-1
WindowPosY=-1
FullscreenMode=2
LastConfirmedFullscreenMode=2
PreferredFullscreenMode=1
Version=5
AudioQualityLevel=0
LastConfirmedAudioQualityLevel=0
FrameRateLimit=0.000000
DesiredScreenWidth=1440
bUseDesiredScreenHeight=False
DesiredScreenHeight=900
LastUserConfirmedDesiredScreenWidth=1440
LastUserConfirmedDesiredScreenHeight=900
LastRecommendedScreenWidth=-1.000000
LastRecommendedScreenHeight=-1.000000
LastCPUBenchmarkResult=-1.000000
LastGPUBenchmarkResult=-1.000000
LastGPUBenchmarkMultiplier=1.000000
bUseHDRDisplayOutput=False
HDRDisplayOutputNits=1000
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
niagara.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
r.MaxAnisotropy=4
r.VSync=0

[SystemSettings]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.MaxAnisotropy=4
r.VSync=0

[ShaderPipelineCache.CacheFile]
LastOpened=VisionsofMana

It did take me a few entries into the vendor menu (entering into the menu and exiting back out) and then one more time looking at the sky with no clouds in visibility before entering the menu, before it started acting fluid. I don't know what the exact steps are to getting it to clear itself, but it was some form of those steps.