Easy fix to FPS lag and frame rate issues

[ihaveamo]

So I've been playing OOLITE on and off for years, with bad lag. Put it down to poor PC, video card etc.

I was very wrong.

Call me a newbie, but I only just realized the LATEST.LOG file under the logs folder is your best friend to find issues. Any OXP that's causing bad lag is clearly shown there... you will see stuff like this:


22:40:13.218 [script.javaScript.timeLimit]: ***** ERROR: Script "(nil)" ran for 1.04505 seconds and has been terminated.
22:40:13.218 [script.javaScript.stackTrace]: 0 (customshieldsplayershieldflash.js:47) <anonymous function>
22:40:13.218 [script.javaScript.stackTrace]: this: [Script "customshieldsplayershieldflash" version 0.83]

Clearly showing that the "custom shield flash" oxp is causing OOLITE to lag for a whole second. Not great during fights!

The other two causing absolute horror FPS drops and general havok were the "laserific crosshairs" and "Sheildtastic crosshairs"

All of these OXPS haven't been updated for years... so maybe that's part of it.

My question to the devs - should known bad laggy expansion packs that are many years old with no updates start to be REMOVED from the list? Having crashy/laggy OXPS will put a lot of newbies off playing the game. I came close to giving up.


Anyways, back to silky smooth playing now. I can't believe it's taken me so long to fix something so simple.

TL;DR - Search for the word "Terminated" in the latest.log file and remove any OXPs that are shown to be lagging.

[another_commander]

My question to the devs - should known bad laggy expansion packs that are many years old with no updates start to be REMOVED from the list? Having crashy/laggy OXPS will put a lot of newbies off playing the game. I came close to giving up.

OXPs are not under the developers' control. We do not normally interfere with their distribution, so I don't think there is anything we can or should do about it.

More often than not lag problems appear because players go about installing OXPs without restraint and many times without realizing that each OXP is an additional resource (small, but adding up quickly) load for the game. Eventually things come to a crawl and then we find out that someone had installed 400 OXPs and had performance issues. The best advice I can offer is to only install what one really wants/needs in their game and do so gradually and not all in one go..

[Norby]

About CustomShields.oxz there is a line in Scripts/customshields.js where you can turn off the effects and keep the functionality:

Code: Select all

this.customshieldsdamageeffects = "sparks";     //choices: "damage" , "blownpanels" , "sparks" , "off"

[ihaveamo]

My question to the devs - should known bad laggy expansion packs that are many years old with no updates start to be REMOVED from the list? Having crashy/laggy OXPS will put a lot of newbies off playing the game. I came close to giving up.

OXPs are not under the developers' control. We do not normally interfere with their distribution, so I don't think there is anything we can or should do about it.

More often than not lag problems appear because players go about installing OXPs without restraint and many times without realizing that each OXP is an additional resource (small, but adding up quickly) load for the game. Eventually things come to a crawl and then we find out that someone had installed 400 OXPs and had performance issues. The best advice I can offer is to only install what one really wants/needs in their game and do so gradually and not all in one go..

Yep, I run a significant amount of expansion packs, (It's just too tempting!) and yes I've heard that many times having "too many causes performance issues". I'm sure that's some people's problems... That's why I never bothered to look further.

But!!! -

In this case, it wasn't just "heaps of OXP's adding up on load" - removing just the three OXP's that were terminating due to running too long (as shown in the log file) ...and the difference was night and day!! . Suddenly my performance was absolutely perfect. So the issue wasn't "too many OXP's"... it was three specific ones causing issues. (I'm not blaming the authors - It might not even be issues with these "specific" expansion packs - it could obviously be some sort of clash/interaction between certain OXP's - but, at least in my case, removing these specific 3 means perfect responsiveness for the rest. A small price to pay, and better than just limiting myself to only the ones I really want or need. I can have my cake and eat it too! )

I understand the having something as wonderful as OOLITE totally open sourced, and no control over OXP's makes sense, but what happens as the engine moves forward and older OXP's start breaking gameplay? I understand removing other people's hard work is not in the spirit of open source, but possibly a comments field or a compatibility rating for each one, viewable from the expansion pack selector? Currently for each one you'd have to trawl through the forums to find if others are having issues. Of course none of this helps if it's simply a comparability issue between two expansion packs.

I just want to spread the word that log file clearly shows when a specific expansion packs are timing out / lagging your game, makes it much, much easier to remove only "culprit" packs. Again, a "culprit" for me may be different to someone else - all depends on what you have installed

[ihaveamo]

About CustomShields.oxz there is a line in Scripts/customshields.js where you can turn off the effects and keep the functionality:

Code: Select all

this.customshieldsdamageeffects = "sparks";     //choices: "damage" , "blownpanels" , "sparks" , "off"

Thanks, Norby - I'll give it a go when I have a spare moment, and see if it helps.

[ihaveamo]

About CustomShields.oxz there is a line in Scripts/customshields.js where you can turn off the effects and keep the functionality:

Code: Select all

this.customshieldsdamageeffects = "sparks";     //choices: "damage" , "blownpanels" , "sparks" , "off"

Thanks, Norby - I'll give it a go when I have a spare moment, and see if it helps.

About CustomShields.oxz there is a line in Scripts/customshields.js where you can turn off the effects and keep the functionality:

Code: Select all

this.customshieldsdamageeffects = "sparks";     //choices: "damage" , "blownpanels" , "sparks" , "off"

Thanks, Norby - I'll give it a go when I have a spare moment, and see if it helps.

Hi Norby

Re-installed custom shields OXP
Changed to "off" - all perfect.
Changed "blownpanels" - all perfect. (nice with fuel scoops ! A bit of extra $$ )
Changed to anything at all - all perfect!!?!!?!
Huh? Wasn't expecting that.
No lag with this OXP now. And no alerts in the log file regarding this OXP timing out and being terminated.

I'm putting it down to interactions with one of the others that were showing termination in the log.. Good to have custom shields rocking again