More items lead to performance degradation Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Hi folks,

A bit of advice, please.

I've noticed that my game began performing very poorly, using Fraps I saw I'm only getting 18-20 fps.

I've read somewhere on the internet that selling all accumulated stuff helps. Indeed. I've sold all the stuff that was in my chest in Skadovsk (there were lots), and now I'm getting around 34 fps (which is playable enouch for me).

Fiddling with graphical settings doesn't seem to change much.

Any idea what's going on? Are passive items being processed even as they are lying in the chest? Sounds really crazy. Is there a way to disable this behavior?

My rig is 3Ghz i7, 6 Gb RAM, 1 Gb GeForce GTX 560 SE.

Edited by: CheekySp

Andrei, your rig is good enough to run the game with the right settings, but will be affected more by some things like that. There is a quest to get the Lost Mercs food which was poorly coded originally and once you accept it performance tanks until you complete it. We fixed this for 2.2. For now, once you accept it (I always just kill the arrogant bastards ) you want to do it ASAP. Better yet, if you are playing nice, just wait until you have enough food items (6) before taking it and you can then complete it immediately.

With your rig specs, I suggest limiting at 30 FPS. It will greatly smooth out your overall performance. Keeping your stash inventories down to stuff you really expect to use vs. just hoarding every little thing will keep your pockets better filled with rubles and can't hurt performance. The obvious stuff (AP ammo for weapons you may end up using, grenade launcher ammo, repair kits) only sell if you must.

I have an article in my profile comments with optimizing tips to get your best performance. I also have a tweaked version of game_relations that would really help you.

Wow, thank you, Jasper! Such quick and detailed response, I applaud you!

There are several utilities you can use to limit your FPS. Dxtory is free to try (forever) and works on both AMD and Nvidia cards. You just need to start it once after each system reboot and wait for a 10 second nag screen. Limiting will also keep your system from running wild on the menu screens and giving you that annoying coil whine.

That modified version of game_relations makes a huge difference in performance.

You're welcome

One more question though: if I already accepted the quest, can I kill the mercs (failing the quest) to get rid of this script lag? Or should I revert to the save *before* I accepted the quest and quickly complete it?

Thank you so much for all performance related info,

I've installed your "game relations" file and set Affinity to all CPUs except the first (and Priority to High);

I did found one tweak you discovered some time ago, the "object_per_update = 1", which indeed reduces stutter, however, my Zaton seemed frustratingly empty, I don't know whether it's just a coincidence, but maybe this happens because of this tweak?

I returned the "10" value and life seems back to normal.

That shouldn't happen with the objects_per_update. Maybe you changed another factor by mistake. I've been using 1 for almost a year now. I'm no real fan of Windows 10, but it does use all the cores more or less equally spreading the load. Multicore and Multithread CPU's were the exception rather than the norm when this game engine was developed. So, since moving to 10 I no longer play with the core affinity. If it helps, Great. If nothing is noticeable then just don't bother to do it each time you start the game. Your switch distance will probably be OK at 300, I wouldn't go higher with that CPU speed. Lowering it by 50 meters at a time will help too. The default 300 meters is double the original game's alife setting. That's part of why Misery is more demanding than the original game.

Thank you again! I'm certainly glad to bring "object_per_update" back to 1. Anyway the biggest culprit in FPS drop is the dynamic lightning, as I've just discovered. But in "static" light it's plain ugly, so I guess 30-40fps isn't so bad and so I'll stick with that

Edited by: CheekySp

The files for static lighting are smaller and transferring them to/from the hard drive is faster. I forgot to answer earlier, you can kill the mercs anytime you want including after giving them the food. Mercs already hate everyone, so there is no blowback if you hold out bread in one hand and pop them with the pistol in the other LOL.

After changing renderers to a higher level, the most demanding items which you can turn off or down to improve performance are: Antialiasing, Shadows, Sun rays, Dynamic Lighting in that order. What I dislike the most is slow loading time. Once I bought my first SSD I stopped using static, but some of my old hard drives were painfully slow and I didn't mind it being a little less pretty at all. I honestly limit at 30 FPS even though my system can handle 120. My fans never run, my room stays cool, and I can hear every telltale sound. For those who just want to play at the highest FPS they can manage, I suggest limiting at 5 FPS less than your worst average. So, if when you are running across Jupiter you average around 50 FPS with only some dips lower as things spawn, try limiting at 45 FPS. You get far fewer and shorter dips down into the teens and you will see mostly you are rock solid at 44-45. With limiting you may manage some of the higher level settings that otherwise create slow response at critical moments.