SH5 Performance/CTDs

[0rpheus]

Ahoy subsim captains!

Wow, where to start... Made the move to 5 from SH4. Initial thoughts were:

'Wow. Looks gorgeous. Hang on, framerate.. Shadows medium, AA lower, particles lower... Still no good. 50 fps and still stuttering?! Ah, antilag.. that'll do it... Framelimit 35, render ahead 3.. perfect, runs like a dream.'

Played tutorial, started thinking about mods. Game updated to latest (I assume) via the auto updater, disc install. Current mod soup as follows:

Magnum Opus_0_0_1
MO v0_0_1
MO Patch 2
Shadow Improvement ModLR
Arclight MRP
Critical Hits 1.1 Torpedos
Reduced Mission Tonnage v02

Also antilag & SH5 patcher (hydrophone fix only so far).

Got these set up, very happy, started campaign and off I sail to the Coastal Waters of Britain...

boom -CTD. Seems to happen quite a lot - when approaching ships, sometimes just at random, even once when I tried to end patrol at Kiel. I'm now saving it as often as possible so I can restart close to the crash point, but is this really the way SH5 runs? Most of you chaps seem to have much longer mod lists than me, do you guys get CTDs quite a lot too?

Framerate is pretty poor in places even with just these mods, and with the LR shadow improvement - Kiel's fine, but passing through a convoy at night (with explosions, hehe) really brought the stutter back.

My rig is as follows:

Core i5 @ 3.6g o/c
4Gig DDR3 @ 1333 Mhz
ATI 5770 x2 (only single GPU used so far, not tried Xfire)
Win 7 64

Bit stunned that my pc would even have trouble with a 2009 game, runs Arma2 fine and many other high-power games with no difficulty at all. I've tried the Large Address Aware software fix from SH4 and that seemed to reduce CTDs, but I can't be certain as what will crash one minute (say approaching a ship), will, upon reload of the save be fine so it could just be a placebo.

It makes no sense! I knew coming from SH4 that I'd have to mod 5 to get it truly playable, but I've now spent 3 days straight modding it and still CTD/low performance. I've tried adding OHII (with 50% harbour fix & 20% mines fix) to the existing list and that made it even worse in terms of both frames and CTD, even dropping to OHII Lite (which was way better for framerate) still CTDs so I dropped back to the list above... still CTDs. Starting to wonder if the CTDs aren't related to the mods at all - and I really would like to use both OM & OHII!

I know my way around JSGME etc and I'm sure there must be captains out there with similar systems that have managed to get their game playable? Can anyone help... or should I shelve it and go back to SH4?

Thanks to anyone who reads/replies, and sorry for what must be the millionth post on this topic!

[Trevally.]

When I add a mod using jsgme, I always watch out for a message at the top "not responding".
This happens a lot with large mods. (MO OH II)
When I see this happen - I reject the mod.
Then try it again, until it loads without the "not responding".

You should try Sobers mod list.
He has been at this a long time and tests every one.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/album.php?u=223410

You PC lookd good. Im sure its not it

[0rpheus]

Hmm might investigate that then, I do see 'not responding' sometimes when installing mods but after a while it rights itself and installs, so I just figured it was eating a lot of CPU during the install. I'm sure it did this with one or two of the larger SH4 mods, but have never had any trouble with those. I've seen sober's list but I don't want to install any more mods until I can get the CTD's fixed, or I'll never know what's causing it! I see things like the latest FX Update mod fixing some CTDs but one version is (I think) already included in OM so I didn't get it.

I thought my pc would be up to scratch as I'm sure I saw someone mention they were running OHII full on a 5770 GPU... could it be the mod installs that are making OM (& OHII) run so poorly? I couldn't believe it stuttered so heavily without any mods on my system that I had to get antilag before I could play it - maybe there's something in the game stock performance that is still broken and that performance drag is what's making MO/OH so slow? Should it run without stutter at stock (no antilag) on my system? I had 50-60 fps, even with the stutter! Turning off 3D clouds and dropping particles to min killed the stutter at stock almost completely, but it looks bad... so I got antilag... but it still seems silly for my system to stutter at all!

Thanks Trevallly.

Any other thoughts anyone? Gonna go back to stock tonight and see if I can get it playable, then start again with mods.

EDIT: Just did a full wipe/reinstall. Stock game with all settings maxed gives 60 fps solid. In the boat is fine, but on deck camera stutter is horrendous. Weirdly moving about without moving the camera is perfectly smooth - it's only when you move the camera. Only thing of note is that as with the first install, the update to patch 1.2 seemed to freeze the updater after it said complete. I had to click the quit button to get to the launcher and it said 'aborting'.. but it had already said patch complete, then dropped me out to the game launcher.

[THE_MASK]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=2793

[THE_MASK]

The sub ctd fix is also available in the latest UI mod by TDW .

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=166093

[0rpheus]

Thanks sober, would that mean it's already included in OM? Assume I shouldn't patch it twice if so.

I just don't understand how I can have rock solid 60fps when standing on the conning tower but utterly unplayable camera lag. No wonder the mods are slowing it down if this is the base state of the game? I thought I could tweak it to run without antilag but it's just not possible! And yet I see posts from other players, some of which have far less powerful systems who say they run it fine? What gives?

[THE_MASK]

I use multi sample AA on the CCC
What do you use ?

[0rpheus]

Same here, MSAA though CCC is checked for application controlled.

Gone for yet another fresh install and left the updater to do it's thing for 15 minutes, seems to have made a difference (no 'aborting'.. message this time). Shadows to medium, particles to lowest setting and I've lost most of the stutter (along with the nice fog effects, which is a disappointment, but oh well) and kept my 50-60 fps. Antilag at limit 60, render ahead 2 has smoothed it right out once more.

Reinstalled OM up to patch 2 again, tested, worked fine with no fps hit at all, even with the improved shadows which I had to remove before. Sunk a ship with no CTD. Put my minor addins like Torp Criticals and seems fine too.

Getting a good, smooth 50-60 in all environments so far, looks like this may have fixed it.

Did go back after all this and tried OHII again... it works ok, but the framerate drop is way too high even with 50% port ships & 20% mines - goes from aforementioned 50-60 right to down to mid 20's with OHII full! Smoother than before but the pc just can't hack the extra traffic, you can see the drop when using time compression, even in empty ocean.

Dropped that and tried OHII light - straight back up to 50+ fps again, so sticking with that for now barring no obvious difficulties. Think something must have gone wrong with the install or the modding process.

Thanks for all your help chaps!

[Targor Avelany]

one thing i don't get is - why do you need 50-60 fps?? Can't see the difference anyway

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

one thing i don't get is - why do you need 50-60 fps?? Can't see the difference anyway

Don't 'need' it at all, just don't get how my GPU can cope with rendering it at that level of fps, but still stutter over what I assume to be appallingly optimised particle effects.

[0rpheus]

One more question: one of my officers has come up to me and complained that the crew are talking about him behind his back!?

My options roughly equated to 'stop being a big girl' or 'I'll give them a flogging so they stop' - what's all that about?

[Targor Avelany]

Career and character development.
I haven't played with it too much (continuously testing and tweaking my mod list - haven't inished the first compaign yet, hehe)

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Targor Avelany

Career and character development.
I haven't played with it too much (continuously testing and tweaking my mod list - haven't inished the first compaign yet, hehe)

Ah ok, wasn't sure if it was something that affected crew morale or whether it was just character development. I'm in the same boat (hur hur) as you, keep restarting due to new mod installs!

One odd thing I have noticed is that sunk enemy ships seem to come to rest way above the actual sea-floor level, often metres above it so it looks like they're hanging there! I take it this isn't normal - bit concerned that I'm going to scrape the boat on a 'sea floor' that doesn't correspond to the visual depth

[Targor Avelany]

Originally Posted by 0rpheus

Ah ok, wasn't sure if it was something that affected crew morale or whether it was just character development. I'm in the same boat (hur hur) as you, keep restarting due to new mod installs!

One odd thing I have noticed is that sunk enemy ships seem to come to rest way above the actual sea-floor level, often metres above it so it looks like they're hanging there! I take it this isn't normal - bit concerned that I'm going to scrape the boat on a 'sea floor' that doesn't correspond to the visual depth

it does affect the morale. And raises points for leadership for you, but I have no idea yet how exactly that all works out later.

Can't really say in regards to the sea floor. I think there is mention about it somewhere, but I have not run into that problem myself yet.

[THE_MASK]

Buy a better graphics card . I am not trying to be funny but i think this game is not user friendly . I use a 5870 which is a lot diffrent than a 5770 .