Periodic Freezes During Gameplay (stuttering ?)

[MozoTyce]

I've seen a few discussions recently about 'stuttering' some of which i have joined but having spent some time over the last few days trying to find a solution to the problem i'm still no closer.

It seems that there are a number of different definitions of 'stuttering'. Some have cited 'micro-stuttering' others call it 'lag spikes' whist still others (me included) refer to it as 'freezes' or perhaps 'micro-freezes' is a better term.

In order to be sure that this discussion is about the same thing i have uploaded a video to demonstrate the specific problem i am refering to:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1469626232

In this five minute fly-about you can see every now and then the screen seems to pause for a fraction of a second and then play 'catch-up' which is seen as a jolt.

It is extremely difficult to make it happen on demand hence the five minute video but it is apparent from the start and seems to get worse towards the end.

The 'jolt' does seem to correspond with 'an item' being loaded onto the display however in my recent tests with MSI Afterburner (with the update interval set to 500ms) i notice it also corresponds to the gpu clock dipping almost to idle speed which is the opposite to what you would expect if something were being loaded (into gpu memory).

I currently have my video settings at maximum, everything set to 'on' and 'far' with my fps set to 60 however despite numerous amounts of playing/changing these freezes do not change in appearance.

I have my desktop set to Performance, my pagefile set to 8192mb/16384mb on my gaming ssd.
I've tried setting 'High' priority on Empyrion.exe.
In fact everything that has been suggested in all the threads i've read i have in one way or another tried.
My latest was to fix my gpu clock frequency at 1000mhz but still the problem remains.

My system specs:
AMD 8350 8 core cpu
Corsair 16gb DDR3 ram
Sapphire R9 290 Tri-x 4gb graphics card
Windows 8.1 64 bit os

If you are experiencing these same 'micro-freezes' or know of a solution i'm all ears

Edit: this is kind of a continuation from this thread https://steamcommunity.com/app/383120/discussions/0/3160848559783185864/
Edit2: apologies i only have a 4gb gpu :(

[MozoTyce]

It's a SanDisk SDSSDXPS240G and it has 101gb free

Not sure what test i could run on it !

[margalus]

I've never used SanDisk, but all of the Samsung, Crucial and Intel ssd's I've used have all come with their own tools to test and tweak them.

There are plenty of free benchmarking tools that can be used also, I just don't currently have links to them. Try looking at some site like www.guru3d.com they have a huge section of diagnostic and benchmarking downloads.

[MozoTyce]

I know it did come with it's own software but when i re-formatted to put Win 8.1 on it refused to load for some reason.
I'll give it another go but in the meantime i'm going to try moving the Empyrion game files onto my d: (more to rule it out than anything else).

[Sinsling]

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SanDisk-Extreme-Pro-240GB/Rating/2356

Maybe I just don't understand what the hard-drive numbers should be, but it would appear this drive is slow as ♥♥♥♥.
ya i dont knwo what they should be. in theory read/write speeds shouldnt be the issue as i have:
http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/975/HGST-HTS721010A9E630

[MozoTyce]

Here's a link to my userbench results, doesn't look too bad to me !

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/10348231

[margalus]

Your random 4k on the ssd looks low, but other than that your pc fared well on that benchmark.

I wonder what that test does exactly? My nvme device performed the same as the sata devices on that particular test.

I also notice the difference in memory speed test between yours and mine, But since I only have mine with quad channel ram to compare too I don't know if that means anything in real world performance. It may not matter one bit.

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/10348559

[MozoTyce]

Ok so i have moved my game over to my HDD using the Steam 'move files' utility, loading is now slower but no difference to the problem.

I installed the Sandisk Dashboard software and checked the drive, no problems detected.

[MozoTyce]

Ok i think i was wrong about the HV not being as bad !
Just done a long excursion to mine deposits and it was very 'sticky', i know it's got something to do with the enemies/animals as it's much worse on a busy playfield. the fps counter never dropped below 58 so it's not that, has to be something to do with cpu/storage but i'm at a loss to figure out what !

Giving up for now, i have some 64bit software arriving soon so will try my other pc.

[RickyRockFish]

I would like to see fix for the freezing\stutter however you want to call it. Some refer to it as lag as well.

I'm 99 percent sure it is not hardware but software. It is common to ALL games that use Unity Voxel engine. I think the unicorn here is the system that is able to overpower the inefficiencies in the unity engine.

If you think that is bad, run 7DTD. Like empyrion it is mostly smooth walking and running around. Soon as you travel at high velocity, in 7dtd that is your mini-bike... It stutters all to hell. Looks and feels identical to empyrion stutter and what is seen in your vid.

[MozoTyce]

Ok thanks Ricky, i don't play 7DTD. I have played Hellion which is Unity engine but it's not voxel.
Thanks for the info, i think you're right - despite my trying virtually everything i cannot find a cause.

[Sinsling]

Originally posted by 𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓:

Originally posted by RickyRockFish:

If you think that is bad, run 7DTD. Like empyrion it is mostly smooth walking and running around. Soon as you travel at high velocity, in 7dtd that is your mini-bike... It stutters all to hell. Looks and feels identical to empyrion stutter and what is seen in your vid.

It's completely different. 7DtD is being busy loading stuff as you travel fast. The problem with Empyrion, however, is that it stutters even if you just stand still.

How much ram do you have?

So far Mozo only seems to have the problem when trying to move. In fact most people in this thread seem to be just fine until trying to move.

[MozoTyce]

Yea my rig definately has enough oomph to run the game, when it's not stuttering the game runs sweet. Sure if i hit a busy area with ground troops etc then it gets very framey depending on my in-game settings but generally it's fine.
I tried earlier just run-jumping and it sometimes does it with just that ! Not an enemy in sight (nor even any spiders !) so i think it's just some less-than-optimal coding which will hopefully be addressed as the game gets more detailed. they will need to make a few optimisations to reduce the impact of more stuff (anniversary update included), so it's just a time thing.

I realised earlier, this is the first time i've run a game on hardest settings, one of the major changes as you ramp up the settings is the number of 'troops' on the ground which includes the Talon villagers - game is busier so any hic-ups are bound to show up more. I will be starting a new game soon (tm) so i'll deliberately put it on easy just to see if the problem is less evident.

[RickyRockFish]

Originally posted by 𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓:

Originally posted by MozoTyce:

I realised earlier, this is the first time i've run a game on hardest settings, one of the major changes as you ramp up the settings is the number of 'troops' on the ground which includes the Talon villagers - game is busier so any hic-ups are bound to show up more. I will be starting a new game soon (tm) so i'll deliberately put it on easy just to see if the problem is less evident.

I've maxed out an NPC pop cause I find it fun, so, I followed the campaign story and once I end up in that special place with lot's of NPCs the stuttering got much more frequent and possibly even prolonged. Maybe, it's actually got something to do with how NPCs being handled by the game. If you still feel like testing, a perfectly NPC free run sounds like a good idea.

It may be the NPCs but I'm fairly certain its the block count of the spacestation. Its a biggun. The game by default limits the amount of blocks you place on spacecraft as when you get close to the max count... most systems will stutter. I turned off the block count limiters and built one of the big ships on the workshop. Stuttered so bad I could not really effectively use the ship and it had zero npcs on it.

Perhaps the unity engine will one day be efficient enough to not require limiting blocks.

[Sinsling]

Originally posted by RickyRockFish:

Originally posted by 𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓:

I've maxed out an NPC pop cause I find it fun, so, I followed the campaign story and once I end up in that special place with lot's of NPCs the stuttering got much more frequent and possibly even prolonged. Maybe, it's actually got something to do with how NPCs being handled by the game. If you still feel like testing, a perfectly NPC free run sounds like a good idea.

It may be the NPCs but I'm fairly certain its the block count of the spacestation. Its a biggun. The game by default limits the amount of blocks you place on spacecraft as when you get close to the max count... most systems will stutter. I turned off the block count limiters and built one of the big ships on the workshop. Stuttered so bad I could not really effectively use the ship and it had zero npcs on it.

Perhaps the unity engine will one day be efficient enough to not require limiting blocks.

Unity is just the tool really. It sees 1000 blocks so it tries to process 1000 blocks. The occlusion planes do their best to reduce the graphical aspect of this. Some custom coding could, in theory, reduce the processed blocks by turning an entire face into a single "block" that separates damaged blocks from itself. The more damage a ship takes across more blocks, the more processing work that goes in to it.

That's just a theoretical way of doing it though, sort of like what se does with allowing the player to attach blocks together from what I've heard. Making it an automatic check though... I don't know if I'd go there. Could be a coding nightmare.

[MozoTyce]

Well we can discount npc's :(
Spend some time today in creative mode and altho' less evident i still get the 'pauses', that's on medium settings in-game.
I also watched another of Spanj videos and he definately does not seem to get it in that video. The fight scene video that was linked in this thread i think was caused by the amount of action taking place as you would expect of an un-optimised game.

One thing i did notice for which i must apologise, my gpu only has 4gb not the 8gb that i thought it had so sorry for misleading.

I have now moved the game files back to my SSD and can realtime monitor my vram usage so i've set the game to maintain <4gb (actually it holds around 2.9gb most of the time), just gotta put up with those micro-freezes :(