Stuttering Scuttle Town

[NurseJoy]

Hello my game is stuttering out of nowhere at random times at Scuttle town and I have no idea why. My specs are pretty Decent 4790K @ 4.8ghz/16gb ram/GTX 1080 Ti I have no idea why I am getting these sutters. Any help will be greatly appreciated

[660bryan]

same here. my game is laggier than usual.

[CrunchyBiscuit]

Has this been fixed? Because I also suffer from slight frame skipping problems here and there, most noticeable in Scuttle Town when walking from left to right and back again.

Trying out different drivers, enabling/disabling v-sync, forcing triple buffering or capping the fps using RTSS, Dxtory or RadeonPro does not solve the issue, although it does have an effect.

Refunded because of this. Bummer.

[Sorsha WF]

I know some of you have refunded because of this, but just in case someone else runs into the same issue I wanted to point to our support team! ([e-mail]) They can forward it to the right internal team members for review and give you a more in depth answers to your questions.

[CrunchyBiscuit]

Originally posted by Sorsha WF:

I know some of you have refunded because of this, but just in case someone else runs into the same issue I wanted to point to our support team! ([e-mail]) They can forward it to the right internal team members for review and give you a more in depth answers to your questions.

Thanks for your suggestion. I sent the following (somewhat elaborate) email:

Originally posted by CrunchyBiscuit:

To: [e-mail]
Subject: Frame skipping in Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

Hey there people from WayForward!

I was looking forward to the release of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero for a long time.

Unfortunately, the game seems to suffer from slight frame skipping issues here and there, most noticeable in Scuttle Town while walking from left to right and back again (between the Workshop and the Bath House), but also in some other levels/areas. The problem doesn't always occur, I can sometimes walk left/right ten times in a row without the issue occuring, then it starts to stutter, sometimes only once or twice and other times continuously for about 5 seconds, and then it's smooth again.

Trying out different drivers, enabling/disabling v-sync, forcing triple buffering or capping the fps using RTSS, Dxtory, RadeonPro or NVIDIA Inspector (v1 and v2) does not solve the issue, although it does have an effect.

With v-sync disabled (desktop composition/Aero disabled), the tear line (which is usually extremely stable) seems to fluctuate up and down wildly in the affected areas, while with v-sync enabled (desktop composition/Aero enabled), there is a stutter/frame skip instead. I think I also tested this in exclusive fullscreen mode instead of borderless windowed mode, but I can't remember.

Tested this on two very different systems, on both Win7 and Win10 (clean systems without any background applications/unnecessary services/browsers/recording software/virus scanners running):

Specs system 1 (my current system, old):
Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 3800MHz
RAM: 4GB Kingston HyperX 1333MHz 7-7-7-20
Videocard: AMD Radeon HD6950 2GB (tried out every Catalyst driver from version 13.4 - 15.7 with *.dll swapping)
Motherboard: Asus M4A88T-M
Sound: Onboard VIA HD Audio
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Display: Dell 2209WA
Input: Logitech G400s mouse (1000Hz), generic keyboard
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB

Specs system 2 (my brother's system, new):
Processor: Intel Core i7-5930K
RAM: 16GB 2400MHz
Videocard: MSI GeForce GTX 980Ti OC Gamer Edition (using driver version 391.24)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X99-UD3-CF
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit & Windows 10
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB & Samsung SSD (not sure what model)

The skips/stutters are harder to notice on the second system, probably because it's much faster overall, but they're still noticeable and distracting.

I also experimented with enabling/disabling HPET and Windows' internal multimedia timers, to no avail.

I'm pretty sure it's the game causing this behaviour; it doesn't matter if it's installed on an SSD or on a regular HDD, and while the second system does suffer less, the issue seems largely unrelated to the operating system or other hardware.

The skips/stutters, although subtle, really bothered me and I refunded the game because of this. A real shame, 'cause it looks absolutely gorgeous otherwise. Bummer.

Is there any chance a future patch might address this issue?

Thanks for reading and I hope to be able to play this game at a solid 60fps@60Hz soon!

Let's see what happens.

[CrunchyBiscuit]

Hmmm, I just noticed there's also an Ultimate Edition available, separate from this game.

Did they update the engine and fix several technical problems, or is it basically just a combopack (game+DLC+extras)?

Maybe the Ultimate Edition doesn't suffer from these frame pacing/skipping/stutter issues, but if they didn't really update anything technical related, it probably will.

I might wanna try it out. Any insights, Sorsha WF?

[Sorsha WF]

The Ultimate Edition is a combo pack, with an updated title menu and a 3 new skins. Because of these few differences they are different skus, however they both get updates to fix any bugs found.

[CrunchyBiscuit]

Thanks for your reply.

Seems like it's no use trying out the Ultimate Edition, since it will most likely suffer from the same issue.

[CrunchyBiscuit]

WayForward replied:

Originally posted by WayForward:

From: Aaron (WayForward)
Subject: Frame skipping in Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

Hello,

Thanks for writing in, though I'm sorry to hear you're running into some frame skips. Thanks as well for the incredible amount of detail you included in your message. It sounds like you've troubleshot just about everything you possibly could, to no avail. Sadly that also means that I don't think I can offer any possible fixes that you haven't already tried. I passed your message along to our QA manager so he can take a look at it. At the very least this might make it possible for us to eliminate such problems in the future. I hope it's not impacting your experience TOO much, and you're able to continue playing the game to the end. If I'm able to find out any information for you in the meantime, I'll be sure to report back.

Thanks again for passing this information along to us. It's very much appreciated.

Best regards,

-Aaron

Unfortunately, no solution.