Performance issues

[jjcooke]

I've been having noticeable frame drops in certain areas in the game, mainly open areas with a lot of lighting and combat. The last time I played Black Mesa was when they first released xen and it ran more consistent because of Vsync. Now Vsync doesn't help the way it used to, when it's on the game stutters and looking around feels stiff. Other source engine games like Half Life 2 and L4D2, Vsync always sucked in those games they also feel stiff when playing.

I tried lowering the video settings but that didn't help to the point where I might as well keep it on high settings cause potato mode only gave me 10 extra fps, not a big difference.

Any thoughts?

[CallMeLeonidas]

The Source Engine is extremely CPU-bound, and it suffers the most during the scenes you've mentioned in your post. Unfortunately, there is no fix for it aside from rewriting the entire engine, so we have to live with that. Black Mesa is essentially pushing the engine to its absolute limits.

[jjcooke]

Do you have an idea why Vsync wouldn't be as smooth anymore?

[Deus_nsf]

Originally posted by jjcooke:

Do you have an idea why Vsync wouldn't be as smooth anymore?

You can try your luck with Vulkan, it helps a bit with CPU bound areas, though that might introduce stuttering at some occasions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/362890/discussions/0/3057367211669060391/

[CallMeLeonidas]

Originally posted by Deus:

Originally posted by jjcooke:

Do you have an idea why Vsync wouldn't be as smooth anymore?

You can try your luck with Vulkan, it helps a bit with CPU bound areas, though that might introduce stuttering at some occasions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/362890/discussions/0/3057367211669060391/

I believe the stutter is due to Vulkan compiling shaders. It should stop after playing for a while.

[Turtle]

Horrible optimization, on 3080 and 10900k dropping below 100 frames at times, wonder how they even managed to make it run this bad

[KriKitBoNeZ]

Originally posted by Turtle:

Horrible optimization, on 3080 and 10900k dropping below 100 frames at times, wonder how they even managed to make it run this bad

Your answer is in the first response.

[LenaPrime]

Originally posted by Turtle:

Horrible optimization, on 3080 and 10900k dropping below 100 frames at times, wonder how they even managed to make it run this bad

sorry, below 100fps? Okay sure, that hardware should be capable of that I guess, idk, but are you genuinely complaining about below 100fps? which implies that you're still getting between 90 and 100? Not sure what you consider to be "good" framerate, but down here in reality anything above 60 is just bonus points. My PC is a couple years old now, but it still runs Black Mesa just fine just shy of highest settings, and I literally can't tell whether it's running at 30, 60, whatever. I guess you've been drinking the soda at Black Mesa that makes you see faster, cause if the lowest fps I got was "below 100 at times" I would not be complaining. You're still getting framerates better than most people even dream of, does it really actually matter in the end?

[Turtle]

Originally posted by LenaPrime:

Originally posted by Turtle:

Horrible optimization, on 3080 and 10900k dropping below 100 frames at times, wonder how they even managed to make it run this bad

sorry, below 100fps? Okay sure, that hardware should be capable of that I guess, idk, but are you genuinely complaining about below 100fps? which implies that you're still getting between 90 and 100? Not sure what you consider to be "good" framerate, but down here in reality anything above 60 is just bonus points. My PC is a couple years old now, but it still runs Black Mesa just fine just shy of highest settings, and I literally can't tell whether it's running at 30, 60, whatever. I guess you've been drinking the soda at Black Mesa that makes you see faster, cause if the lowest fps I got was "below 100 at times" I would not be complaining. You're still getting framerates better than most people even dream of, does it really actually matter in the end?

I have 240hz screen so below 100fps is really noticeable, ofcourse it is not unplayable. Just saying it should run better
Edited: got told its running dx9 so they can't really do much about the performance

[gru]

Originally posted by Turtle:

Originally posted by KriKitBoNeZ:

Your answer is in the first response.

Even if it is source engine, no excuse for it to run like this. Titanfall games are made with source engine looking way better and they run so much better than black mesa. There is many great games running source engine and they run completely fine with no issues like this

This is a bit of a straw man argument, and I’ll explain why.

Black Mesa, unlike Titanfall (which is actually running on a modified version of the engine, seemingly more drastic than Black Mesa’s) is running on directx 9, which causes the major performance issues within the game. Titanfall on the other hand, runs on directx 11, which is arguably going to run better as there are no performance limitations.

Your system specifications doesn’t matter at a certain point, the game is just simply limited and they’d have to re-write the engine for 64 bit support so that the performance improves.

[Turtle]

Originally posted by MrZGrumpy:

Originally posted by Turtle:

Even if it is source engine, no excuse for it to run like this. Titanfall games are made with source engine looking way better and they run so much better than black mesa. There is many great games running source engine and they run completely fine with no issues like this

This is a bit of a strawman argument, and I’ll explain why.

Black Mesa, unlike Titanfall (which is actually running on a modified version of the engine, seemingly more drastic than Black Mesa’s) is running on directx 9, which causes the major performance issues within the game. Titanfall on the other hand, runs on directx 11, which is arguably going to run better as there are no performance limitations.

Your system specifications doesn’t matter at a certain point, the game is just simply limited and they’d have to re-write the engine for 64 bit support so that the performance improves.

Didn't realize this games running dx9, yeah now can kinda see the performance of this game