Choppy Framerate Issue

[Death Grips]

With Build Engine games being some of my favorite first-person shooters, I decided to pick this game up during the Steam Summer Sale. Unfortunately, I've been having some issues maintaining a smooth framerate, despite having the in-game frame count stay at a perfect 60 or 120, depending on my settings. At certain points throughout a given level, my frame rate will be as smooth as the in-game frame count reflects, but during other parts it will lag behind. Having messed around with the settings for a good portion of time, I've yet to find a solution to this issue. I'm curious to know if anyone else has experienced something similar and can shine some light on what the core of the problem might be. Alternatively, a developer's insight would also be much appreciated.

[Death Grips]

After further testing, I've noticed a sort of pattern to the choppiness. Triggering one of the auto-save locations seems to refresh the game and match the frame rate to what it reads on the counter. Progressing onward seems to lead to a gradual deterioration in the frame rate itself until the next auto save is encountered.

[|---DRIVER---|]

Set Multi-threaded optimizations to "On" in Nvidia control panel.

Also, whats you're monitor hertz rate?

There is a weird fix for this.

Basicaly, you turn on adaptive v-sync from the in-game options.

Then you set the frame limiter to below that to below your monitors refresh rate.

This should mean that v-sync isn't actually on. And yet the game is less choppy.

If your monitor hertz is more that 120 then set the limiter to 120 and turn on adative-vsync.

If your monitor hertz is more that 60 but less than 120 set it to 60 and turn on adative-vsync.

If you're monitor is limited to 60 hertz, then it's a litte more tricky. You'll need to create a custom resolution in Nvida Control Panel of your monitor's native resolution, and then set it to 62, just a little above the limit of 60 the game will be running. Then you turn on adative-v-sync.

Why does this work? No idea.

The OpenGL renderer is a work in progress.

[Death Grips]

Originally posted by 22 DeathGrip:

Set Multi-threaded optimizations to "On" in Nvidia control panel.

Also, whats you're monitor hertz rate?

There is a weird fix for this.

Basicaly, you turn on adaptive v-sync from the in-game options.

Then you set the frame limiter to below that to below your monitors refresh rate.

This should mean that v-sync isn't actually on. And yet the game is less choppy.

If your monitor hertz is more that 120 then set the limiter to 120 and turn on adative-vsync.

If your monitor hertz is more that 60 but less than 120 set it to 60 and turn on adative-vsync.

If you're monitor is limited to 60 hertz, then it's a litte more tricky. You'll need to create a custom resolution in Nvida Control Panel of your monitor's native resolution, and then set it to 62, just a little above the limit of 60 the game will be running. Then you turn on adative-v-sync.

Why does this work? No idea.

The OpenGL renderer is a work in progress.

Have there been any words from the developers as to whether or not they're working on a fix to this specific issue?

[pogokeen]

Thanks for your report, sorry to hear you are running into an issue playing our game!

If you could provide us some additional information, it could help us to narrow down the issue you are running into.

Are you running the game in the GL renderer or Software renderer? Additionally, what hardware (CPU/GPU/amount of RAM) are you running the game with?

If you could share the game's log file with us here after playing and encountering the issue, that would be helpful. You can find the "maiden.log" file in the game's directory, which is accessible by right-clicking on the game in your Steam Library->Selecting "Properties..."->Selecting the "Local Files" Tab->Clicking "Browse Local Files..."
If you could upload the full "maiden.log" file to something like https://pastebin.com/ and link it here, that would be extremely helpful. (alternatively, feel free to paste the full log here in text)

We're working hard to continue to improve performance and fix any bugs players encounter. Currently, we're in the process of finalizing work on a new patch which should be out soon. This patch should improve performance as well as provide various bug fixes. I'll notify this thread when the patch is released.

Thanks,
Alex Dawson

[Death Grips]

Originally posted by pogokeen:

Thanks for your report, sorry to hear you are running into an issue playing our game!

If you could provide us some additional information, it could help us to narrow down the issue you are running into.

Are you running the game in the GL renderer or Software renderer? Additionally, what hardware (CPU/GPU/amount of RAM) are you running the game with?

If you could share the game's log file with us here after playing and encountering the issue, that would be helpful. You can find the "maiden.log" file in the game's directory, which is accessible by right-clicking on the game in your Steam Library->Selecting "Properties..."->Selecting the "Local Files" Tab->Clicking "Browse Local Files..."
If you could upload the full "maiden.log" file to something like https://pastebin.com/ and link it here, that would be extremely helpful. (alternatively, feel free to paste the full log here in text)

We're working hard to continue to improve performance and fix any bugs players encounter. Currently, we're in the process of finalizing work on a new patch which should be out soon. This patch should improve performance as well as provide various bug fixes. I'll notify this thread when the patch is released.

Thanks,
Alex Dawson

It's nice to hear from a developer, and I'll do my best to provide you with the information you requested.

I've been running the game in the GL renderer since the beginning. My CPU is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.40 GHz, with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M and 12 Mbs of RAM. If I get a chance, I'll try to get the maiden.log to you also.

I greatly appreciate the feedback and look forward to the next update. Hopefully this issue will be an easy fix.

[pogokeen]

No problem :)

It's important to us that players are able to enjoy the game, so we're very focused on finding out if people are having issues on particular hardware and fixing them. These reports help us a lot with that, so we appreciate you taking the time to report this issue!

Thanks for bearing with us! :)

[Imp Regnius]

I've been having framerate issues as well, mainly in large open areas and places with lots of enemies(Queen of the Hill wave 5), but i think it's mostly because of my outdated rig. I'm probably the only one who still has an Athlon II X4 640 CPU. It runs the older Build engine games just fine, but Ion Maiden is clearly on a different level.

[Lunick]

Originally posted by Imp Regnius:

I've been having framerate issues as well, mainly in large open areas and places with lots of enemies(Queen of the Hill wave 5), but i think it's mostly because of my outdated rig. I'm probably the only one who still has an Athlon II X4 640 CPU. It runs the older Build engine games just fine, but Ion Maiden is clearly on a different level.

Yeah, that CPU fits the Minimum requirement but not the Recommended requirement the Steam Page says. Ion Maiden is a much more advanced beast than other Build games for sure.

[mblackwell]

Under the Betas tab on Steam for Ion Maiden you should be able to access a testing branch for our Update 3 release candidate. This was just updated today and you should see a significant performance improvement I hope.

[Death Grips]

Originally posted by mblackwell:

Under the Betas tab on Steam for Ion Maiden you should be able to access a testing branch for our Update 3 release candidate. This was just updated today and you should see a significant performance improvement I hope.

Thank you for the update, and I'll be sure to give it a try when I get the chance. Also, if it isn't too much to inquire, do you have any plans to implement a low-spec option in the final release?

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by Death Grips:

After further testing, I've noticed a sort of pattern to the choppiness. Triggering one of the auto-save locations seems to refresh the game and match the frame rate to what it reads on the counter. Progressing onward seems to lead to a gradual deterioration in the frame rate itself until the next auto save is encountered.

I'm having the same issue and it wasn't solved by the latest beta. Did it fix it for you?

[Death Grips]

Originally posted by mblackwell:

Under the Betas tab on Steam for Ion Maiden you should be able to access a testing branch for our Update 3 release candidate. This was just updated today and you should see a significant performance improvement I hope.

I recently had the chance to try the game out again today with the newest update. Playing through the Mansion level ran smooth as butter at 60 fps, but I noticed that issues arose after triggering an auto-save. Doing so caused the same frame-rate issue that I was talking about in the OP. However, I seemed to have resolved the problem after turning off auto-saves and manually saving over the auto-save that previously existed. I honestly believe this may have been the source of the problem from the beginning. In the meantime, I'll run through the rest of the preview content and see how it performs.