[Objekt]

Lately, for some reason, SCP performance has really begin to suck.  It doesn't matter what mods I use: Blue Planet, Derelict SCP, or even no mods beyond the mediavps.  Load times, between clicking "continue campaign" and seeing the briefing screen, have gotten so long that I often think my machine's locked up.  During missions it's downright intolerable: random pauses every several seconds, sometimes 10-15 seconds long.  Playing has become a herky-jerky experience; not fun.

I tried turning down detail to merely High from having things cranked up all the way, which was how I always had it in the past.  Didn't help.

I'm running SCP 3.6.9, using Launcher 5.5a.  I'm not pre-caching bitmaps, but have pretty much every graphical prettiness option turned on - which, again, hasn't caused problems in the past.

I also tried the usual Windows XP suspects.  Defragging is no help.  The partition on which I have SCP installed (which isn't the C: drive) is so little fragmented (6%) that Windows defrag doesn't think it needs to be defragged.  It also has 50% free space.

Not sure if it matters, but here's my system configuration:
AMD Athlon XP 3200 CPU
1 GB RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro video card
SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS sound card
Lots o' free hard drive space

I'm running SCP with OpenGL, and have no problems with OpenAL.  So what's going on here?

[DrewToby]

Exactly what you're describing happened to me with BtRL a while ago; at least in my case, my Virus scanner was the problem point. Try turning off/snoozing/etc. your Anti-Virus and see how the game runs then.

[Objekt]

Nope, that wasn't it.  I didn't expect it to be, as I've been running the same AV (Norton Corporate edition) for a couple of years now without it doing anything like that.

I also tried turning the graphics all the way down.  Didn't help one bit.

[Aphil]

Perhaps your computer has a virus thats eating up all your resources. Try doing scans of your computer for Trojans, Virus's, worms, spyware ect.

[Objekt]

It would have to be one Norton AV can't pick up.  I do a complete system scan weekly, and the last several didn't find anything.  NAV is current as of 3 days ago, and I run a hardware firewall that keeps most of the nasties out anyway, so I seriously doubt I have some new mega-ultra-inviso-virus/trojan/what have you.  It's not impossible, but seems extremely unlikely.

Another knock on the virus hypothesis is that other games work just fine.  For instance, the Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line demo runs great.  SCP, however, is pretty much unplayable.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

OK you said lately.  Does that mean you could run the same mods before with no problems?  If so what has changed in that time frame? 

[karajorma]

Another knock on the virus hypothesis is that other games work just fine.  For instance, the Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line demo runs great.  SCP, however, is pretty much unplayable.

Copy the executable from your BtRL folder to your FS2 folder and run it again. That will at least tell us whether your problem is with the build itself.

You may also want to try a 3.6.10 build from the recent builds forum.

[Objekt]

Didn't help, so I don't think it's the build.

It seems to have something to do with the mediavps.  Right now I'm concentrating on Blue Planet, since it's where I first noticed the problem.

BluePlanet must have the usual media .vp files to work.  However, if I start it without using them - for instance, by removing the "secondarylist = mediavps;" statement in Blue Planet's mod.ini file - I get to the mission briefing in a normal amount of time.  The game crashes as soon as I try to do Ship Selection or Loadout, of course, because it doesn't have what it needs from the media vps.

If I start with the media vps, it takes around 1-2 minutes from the time I click "Continue" on the opening menu, until I see the first briefing screen.  Transitions between Briefing and Ship Selection are very sluggish as well.  Again, once actually flying the mission, I see lots of pauses, which pretty much ruins the experience.

I've noticed that during these pauses, including the initial one to get to the mission briefing, there is FURIOUS hard drive activity.  Also, upon exiting SCP, my system is in semi-paralysis for several seconds, again with intense hard drive access.

I suspect this also has something to do with virtual RAM.  Upon exiting SCP last time, Windows told me my virtual memory was too low.  It shouldn't be, as I've had it set to be the same as or bigger than physical RAM (1000-1500 MB) from the beginning, and this has never been an issue before.  Anyway, it shouldn't be USING virtual RAM hardly at all, as I have plenty of physical RAM free (around 700 MB out of 1GB) before running SCP.

Here's a list of what's in my mediavps folder:

 Directory of D:\freespace2_retail&open\mediavps

27-Nov-07  06:57    <DIR>          .
27-Nov-07  06:57    <DIR>          ..
02-Apr-06  05:30        45,120,578  aaNebulae.vp
12-May-07  15:28         2,485,263 Apollo_HTL.vp
24-Nov-07  22:19    <DIR>            data
17-Feb-07  16:37        87,080,647 mp-710_adveffects.vp
17-Feb-07  16:26         3,112,274  mp-710_effects.vp
17-Feb-07  16:26         2,640,833  mp-710_models.vp
17-Feb-07  16:34       255,954,351 mv_adveffects.vp
17-Feb-07  16:05         9,692,874 mv_core.vp
17-Feb-07  16:08        93,891,138 mv_effects.vp
17-Feb-07  16:15       191,554,534 mv_models.vp
17-Feb-07  16:16        12,109,934 mv_music.vp
17-Feb-07  16:26       188,368,097 mv_textures.vp
17-Feb-07  16:05             8,027 readme.txt
17-Feb-07  17:10        54,152,632 sparky_hi_fs1.vp
17-Feb-07  17:25        98,908,888 stu_fs1.vp
17-Feb-07  17:18       159,327,089 tango_fs1.vp
17-Feb-07  17:29        49,155,280 warble_fs1.vp
              16 File(s)  1,253,562,439 bytes
               3 Dir(s)  19,639,431,168 bytes free

See anything that shouldn't be there, or is something missing that should be there?

I installed SCP on top of FS2 Retail way back when, and have been considering just reinstalling the whole shebang with e.g. Turey's installer.  It would be annoying to have to re-download a lot of stuff, but maybe it would fix this performance problem.

[Jeff Vader]

Try removing mv_adveffects.vp and mp-710_adveffects.vp from the folder, then test again. The adv. effects are something that'll really bring a computer to its knees, in most cases.

[karajorma]

More importantly why do you have FS1 VPs in your media VPs folder?

[Aphil]

Aha! The fs1 VP's might be the problem... They shouldn't be used unless your playing the Fs1port...

[taylor]

There is a known bug with animated cursors which would likely create what you are seeing.  That bug has since been fixed, but it can easily kill performance for most builds.  And BluePlanet was the first mod that I noticed this with as well.

Check whether you are using an animated cursor when not playing BluePlanet, and if so then get rid of it.  If the problem is fixed then we have the answer.  Also, you can give my 1028 build a try if you want, since it has the bug fix in it.

[Objekt]

I have a Logitech MX310 mouse, and have been using one of the Schemes provided by Logitech's Mouseware.  I'll turn it off & see whether that helps.  I imagine a restart will be necessary to be sure.

[Objekt]

That wasn't it either.

I also created a new pilot (which I do for all mods; trying to use a pilot in a different mod often makes SCP Very Angry), and re-played some of the earlier missions.  ALL of them have the performance problem.

FWIW, it seems that ALL mods are now screwed, as long as I use the media vps (which is practically always).  I just played Just Another Day for the first time, and it's got the same issues with long load times and jerkiness in-mission.  Auggh.

I'll post about this in the main Blue Planet thread over in the Campaigns subforum & see whether we can get any help there.

[Herra Tohtori]

I don't think posting in specific campaign subforums would be of any help, the problem seems to be more of a global sort (as in, effects all the mods likewise).

-Do you experience same problems even without ANY mods, including MediaVP's? As in, retail media with FS2_Open engine? Also, try that without any command line options at all. That should tell if it's more of a media problem or code/system related problem.

-Does the problem affect any other games at all?


If the problem affects all other games:

First thing that comes to mind is that you have gotten some malware/spyware on your machine, since the slowdown seems to be recent. However, that would likely also affect all other games or at least most. Can you play other games without reduced performance? If other games as well are hindered by something, then it's not FS2_Open related but instead something in your system doing it.

If you're using Internet Exploder as a browser, then the mal/spyware is the most likely culprit... According to my experience, all the King's firewalls and all the King's antivirus-programs can't keep mal/spyware out of a PC whose user willingly exploits it by using IE. If you're using anything else but IE(6), then it's much less likely, but you should nevertheless regularly run some of the mal/spyware detection tools like Ad-Aware or Ewido, if you don't already do so.

Other possibility is that you have some application open that has a huge memory hole or is getting stuck to 99% CPU use wither continuously or during playing FS2_Open. These should be easily detected via good ol' Ctrl+Alt+Del from the processes tab. Simply check that there's no process that uses huge amount of memory or most of the CPU resources all the time or during playing FS2.


If the problem only affects FS2_Open and not any other games, then the only suggestion I can offer is to tell what exact build you're using, post your command line options, then run debug build and post the debug log, it might tell something or not.

Have you recently changed your display drivers? Or have you changed the FS2_Open build you're running? Try to think of all the things you've changed in your PC recently, as in at the time when the problem started to manifest itself. By common sense there should be something that triggered it, but common sense doesn't exactly always apply with computers (Windoze computers sometimes do things by themselves according to my experience)...

[Whitelight]

I`ve had problems of such, and found that defragmenting the harddrive helped improve preformance. May not be your problem, but figured i`d give additional advice.

[Objekt]

I did a fresh install (via Turey's Java tool) and ran with that.  In addition to FS2 3.6.9, it downloaded an experimental 3.6.10 build (fs2_open_3_6_10-20071007T.exe).

My machine no likey.  3.6.10 runs like a slug; it's a real slideshow in the first Destiny of Peace mission, for example, when I'm flying near the GTVA platform, Flagstaff.

Under 3.6.9 it's no problem.

Performance with BluePlanet seems to be vastly improved, but I can't really tell until I get to the 13th mission with my new pilot.  It seems to put the biggest burden on the system of all the missions so far.

[RazorsKiss]

Sounds like a hard drive issue.  I had a HD starting to go bad, and it slowed everything to a crawl.  Unplugged it, and everything went like a dream.

I've also had slowdown issues with video cards starting to go, or bad drivers.

[MP-Ryan]

You haven't recently toyed with overclocking your video card, have you?

Here's what I'd suggest to try resolving the problem:

Create a new MINIMAL FreeSpace install manually using the files you already have.

1.  Create a folder, FreeSpace, anywhere you like (root C is best for the test).
2.  Copy your 3.6.9.exe file, launcher.exe, and the retail VPs into that folder.
3.  Run the launcher, and set for all options off.  Then go to the troubleshooting (or dev, can't recall for the moment) options and enable the FPS meter.  Then run the game and test performance (it'll make you create a new pilot).
*Results:  If performance is NOT improved, there is a system configuration problem.  If performance IS improved, there's a conflict in your existing install.
4.  Create a mediavps folder in your root Freespace minimal install folder, and copy mv_effects, mv_models, mv_music, mv_textures, Mv_core, and the patches for everything but adveffects.
5.  In the launcher, add a -mod mediavps flag, then run the game again.  Test performance.
6.  If that still shows no drop, now you can start turning on features.  Start with glowmaps, specular lighting, and JPG/TGA textures.

I'm betting your problem is one of two things:
1.  An improperly configured or set-up install of SCP, OR
2.  A video card/driver problem.

Interesting that 3.6.10 is slow - I have a 9500Pro (essentially a lower-clocked 9700) and 3.6.10 did nothing but boost performance.  What graphics driverset are you running?

[jr2]

Here, try defragging your hard disk... use the tool in my siggy, under "Optimize".