Constant framerate skips

[Fair Warning]

I played the regular game along with some fan-made chapters a while ago and experienced very little to no problems at all regarding the framerate or game speed.

Now that I've installed the DLC, I'm seeing quite a bit of framerate issues and yesterday my game crashed while playing the first Arctic Cruise chapter. I haven't had any other game crashes so far, but my framerate is still lagging every now and then, constantly skipping frames, and refusing to stick to the 60 fps that it's been fully able to play at before. Lowering the graphic settings has not improved things either, and again, why should I when it's been working just fine when playing the regular game?

Here is my PC's specs:

OS: Microsoft Windows 10

System Manufacturer: Dell

System Model: Inspiron 7577

System Type: 64-bit

RAM: 8 GB

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7300HQ

CPU: 2.50GHz, 2496 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Graphics cards: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the DLC or if there is something wrong with my settings or the way my computer is set up right now. I could really use some assistance because I very much want to play through the DLC without having to suffer through frequent lagging and framerate skips. Thank you.

[Rezilia]

Install your most recent graphics driver update.

Verify game files.

[Fair Warning]

Originally posted by Rezilia:

Install your most recent graphics driver update.

Verify game files.

I did both things and it hasn't changed anything.

I also noticed that when I tried to play as Mustache Girl (a mod you can download), it immediately caused the game to crash. I'm starting to wonder if it may be the Seal the Deal DLC causing these problems and not my PC.

In any case, I'm open to more suggestions to improve my framerate and prevent more crashes.

[coggy9]

It might be an issue with enabling mods. I can usually get 60FPS, but when some 2D elements appear, like the Death Wish map/effects overlay ingame, or act selection, I get anywhere from 10 to 25 FPS. It makes Death Wish unplayable. With mods disabled, I can get 55-60 FPS.

[Fair Warning]

Originally posted by coggy9:

It might be an issue with enabling mods. I can usually get 60FPS, but when some 2D elements appear, like the Death Wish map/effects overlay ingame, or act selection, I get anywhere from 10 to 25 FPS. It makes Death Wish unplayable. With mods disabled, I can get 55-60 FPS.

I have disabled mods and yet the framerate skips continue, unfortunately.

[Fair Warning]

I also just noticed that after disabling mods, I lost my weapon for some reason. I had to go back to the first chapter of Mafia Town to get it back. Weird.

[ValentineBrother]

The problem is, that the game is constantly compiling shaders on all cores, but one (which has the game thread). This causes the high CPU load the game causes – especially in coop. Also the game eats up RAM. It uses more than 4GB (!) on it's own. I know, my CPU is ancient compared to others, but it runs other taxing games just fine @60fps.

The only "solution" I found was tweaking the INI files of the game.
There I disabled FrameRateSmoothing and set OnlyStreamInTextures to true. Also there was a setting MinimumDesiredFrameRate, which I have set to my display refresh rate. I also tweaked some other settings, but this where the one's from which gave me the best boost. By boost I mean, that these settings prevented the game from stuttering constantly and also prevented the drops in framerate (in combination with disabling the dynamic shadows in the in game settings). Other than that … all other settings from the game didn't help with these drops, except disabling shadows entirely ... but disabling shadows is not what I want.

Also it's only using a small amount of my GPU's memory, but enormous amount of RAM.
Like in other UE3 games, I also considered increasing the pool size, but I was so happy I found a config, which let's me play the game in coop @60fps on highest setting (but I had to disable "dynamic shadows", as they seem to be extremely taxing in some situations), that I didn't feel like spending my time with more adjustments. I wanted to play x'D

Btw.: The game itself is simply great!

---

My system:

CPU: Core i5-760 OC@4x3,66GHz
RAM: 4x2GB DDR3 @1666MHz
Mainboard: ASUS P7P55D EVO
GPU: GTX1060 6GB OC

[Fair Warning]

Originally posted by ValentineBrother:

The only "solution" I found was tweaking the INI files of the game. There I disabled FrameRateSmoothing and set OnlyStreamInTextures to true. Also there was a setting MinimumDesiredFrameRate, which I have set to my display refresh rate. I also tweaked some other settings, but this where the one's from which gave me the best boost. By boost I mean, that these settings prevented the game from stuttering constantly and also prevented the drops in framerate (in combination with disabling the dynamic shadows in the in game settings). Other than that … all other settings from the game didn't help with these drops, except disabling shadows entirely ... but disabling shadows is not what I want.

Also it's only using a small amount of my GPU's memory, but enormous amount of RAM.
Like in other UE3 games, I also considered increasing the pool size, but I was so happy I found a config, which let's me play the game in coop @60fps on highest setting (but I had to disable "dynamic shadows", as they seem to be extremely taxing in some situations), that I didn't feel like spending my time with more adjustments. I wanted to play x'D

How exactly do I tweak the INI files of the game or make any of the other changes that you've suggested here? I'm not really tech-savvy enough to know how to make advanced adjustments to my game files. So I would greatly appreciate it if you could help guide me through that process as I would definitely like to try it out to resolve the framerate issue. Thanks.

[ValentineBrother]

Okay, what to do:

1. Go to the games installation folder, which should be something like: X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime
2. There go into the "HatinTimeGame\Config" folder where you should find a bunch of INI files
3. Backup the following files (in order you want to reset the configuration):
- HatinTimeEngine.ini
- HatinTimeSystemSettings.ini
4. Now open the "HatinTimeEngine.ini" in the editor of your choice and try changing the following options:

[Engine.Engine]
bSmoothFrameRate=False

[Engine.ISVHacks]
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False

[Engine.Client]
MinDesiredFrameRate=60

[WinDrv.WindowsClient]
MinDesiredFrameRate=60

If your GPU has a fair amount of memory, you can also try this:

[TextureStreaming]
PoolSize=768
bAllowSwitchingStreamingSystem=True
bEnableAsyncDefrag=True
bEnableAsyncReallocation=True

5. Now open the "HatinTimeSystemSettings.ini" in the editor of your choice and try changing the following options:

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True
bAllowHardwareShadowFiltering=True

NVidia only (should affect PhysX):

bEnableParallelAPEXClothingFetch=True
bApexClothingAsyncFetchResults=True
ApexClothingAvgSimFrequencyWindow=60
ApexClothingAllowAsyncCooking=True
ApexClothingAllowApexWorkBetweenSubsteps=True

If you experience stutters nonetheless (especially in the final level and/or in coop mode) also try these settings in "HatinTimeSystemSettings.ini" (They can also be set in-game, but the PPDownSampleFactor sometimes won't show up, so setting it via INI works):

PPDownSampleFactor=1
bAllowDetailShadows=False

6. Set up a profile for the game in your NVidia system settings and set the "Maximum prerendered frames" to 3.

7. Boot up the game

I do not guarantee, that any of these settings work for you or that every single option makes sense. This is only, what helped me to get a smoother experience of the game.

[Fair Warning]

I tried everything you suggested, Valentine Brother. I'm not 100% sure if it worked or not. The first time I tried playing the game with the new settings, the framerate issue seemed to persist. I lowered the graphics settings to high performance mode and I think that smoothed things out a bit. Then when I tried to play a random level (Mail Delivery in Subcon Forest), the game crashed because of "insufficient memory". Then I tried booting up the game again and it caused Steam to completely freeze up and then I had to restart the computer to get it working again. Afterwards I booted the game again and while I still noticed a few lags and framerate skips here and there, it seemed to be somewhat better than previously. At the very least I didn't have any more game crashes or other bugs. So it's honestly really hard to tell if this solution actually helped or not. I may have to play a bit more later to determine with certainty. In any case, thank you very much for your help and hopefully I'll be able to play the DLC now without too much performance problems.

[Fair Warning]

I have just tested the game again and unfortunately it looks like the changes I made as suggested by ValentineBrother haven't improved things all that much. There's still quite a bit of framerate skips and occasional lagging, albeit a tiny bit less frequent than earlier. In addition, I think the changes may or may not have brought on some more issues such as the camera stuttering and going crazy in various situations - especially in narrow areas with walls and items close together. I'm going to try reversing the changes made to my .ini files and see if those issues persist.

At this point I'm not sure if it's possible to make my computer run this game smoothly. This really frustrates me because, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't have any of these performance issues with this game before downloading the DLC. I can't prove that the DLC is the cause of these problems though since I haven't seen too many people voice similar complaints. Hopefully at some point I'll figure out a solution that will allow me to enjoy the game at a consistent 60fps without any lags or camera problems.

[DreamerDream]

You are not the only one. There are more people (like me) you have same problems. I think there is no fix to that because is game fault and there is no way to fix it just by changing game options.

[ValentineBrother]

I know the game is running bad; at least on my fairly old device.
I actually overclocked it a bit further to 3.86GHz, which didn't really help though.
Well ... the game works, it's playable. But sometimes it's running so bad - especially in multiplayer -, that I started messing with the game's config files.

What I can provide are a copy of my settings for the game. For me, the game is running really well with this config. If I use the default config, the game sets the game is unplayable in some situations - especially in coop.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fn8dxlcqoli3z54/Config.zip?dl=1

Maybe it helps, maybe not. For me they work.