[NWN] MASSIVE FPS drop when Robes/Cloaks/Ranged Weapons are seen

[Legacy_Mudeye]

               Has anyone tried this:
http://nwn.bioware.c...589123&forum=49

Pertinent text shown below:

The_Krit


   
What I find interesting is that someone on a different forum has
reported performance drop with normal settings, and and increase without
cloaks/skins etc on the character.


Shortly after 1.68 came
out, there were similar reports, and those were tracked down to a sound
problem. Does disabling the sound (not turning down the volume, but
opening menu -> Configure -> Change -> Sound: Disabled) help?


    Quote: Is there a way to disable the cloak visual at all?


Yes.
Just set all the models to 0 in cloakmodel.2da and stick the result in
your override directory. It's not hard to do yourself -- the file is
probably in your source directory, and any text editor can edit it --
and the end result can be downloaded from the Vault. (Either search
there, or try with the sound disabled and I'll track down a link.)
_________________
Fix tan cloaks with Cloak Converter, also available for Linux and Macs.

Cloaks are not supposed to be potato sacks!
  Profile: The_Krit   Send Message To: The_Krit
Mardragon7



Disabling sound did not have an increased performance. Fps: 26,1

Edit Cloakmodel 2da to 0.

Bham! We have a winner. FPS at 124-140.

I am now gonna update my 8800GTX to latest driver, and happily play both NwN1 and NwN2.

Still there is issues, but there is now a workaround for performance, as I see it.

Thank you for you aid, The_Krit.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Mudeye, 16 novembre 2010 - 05:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_QlippothVI]

               Yeah, I tried all of those things hoping to be able to post a definitive solution for everyone...

I haven't had any problems with my trusty 8800GTX (aside from issue with NWN letting me play in 1080p, which I've licked for now), just the newer cards and their drivers (400 series). I wept quietly as I removed the Zotac AMP! 460 OC to ship back, and in went my old 8800 gtx.  

I know I can knock out the robes, but I'd have to drop bows, slings, and cloaks, too. And I work on several NWN projects, so I need to be able to play NWN (and who in their right mind would CREATE an NWN module without any of those?).

I'm waiting on the new ATI parts, not sure which to get yet.    I'll try to post a bug report to nVidia, but AFAIK it was a conscious decision on their part. I really dig on the hardware physics of nVidia parts.

EDIT: By "conscious decision" I mean support for OpenGL 1.5 used for NWN, I don't think they made a conscious decision to drop support for NWN _specifically_.

- Qlippoth
               
               

               

                     Modifié par QlippothVI, 20 novembre 2010 - 12:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Chrisman]

               

s0ulrager wrote...

I'm having the same issue, video card is GTX460.

It only started happening when I updated NWN from 1.66 to 1.69

I had a look through the model files in data/xp2patch.bif and  found the models that had been updated for all ranged weapons.

I extracted the original ranged weapon models from data/models_02.bif and dumped them in the override folder. Sure enough.. problem fixed.

I opened both old and new models with an app called nwnexplorer and compared the difference. The only change with all the new models is that they now have a bowstring O.o

The bowstrings texture looks slightly transparent.

No idea why the Geforce 400 series doesn't like the newer model.

With the override fix and setting Visible Cloaks to 0 in nwplayer.ini the game is running at 200fps instead of 20fps. Hope this helps anyone.

Download link: http://rapidshare.co...1/rangedfix.rar
Extract into your override folder

This has helped with my GTX 460! FPS is 200-300.


BUT


It randomly still drops to 20 FPS at some places (IE: Entering a building) Though it seems random right now, sometimes I enter buildings an 200+ FPS sometimes not, most the time though I am at 200+ FPS.


Thus, Id say with  Soulrage's fix it makes it playable, though not perfect something else is buggin.




~ Chris
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Chrisman, 28 novembre 2010 - 08:23 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_s0ulrager]

               The robes are still causing a slow down, though you can choose to disable displaying your own robe I can't find any way to change NPC robes yet. Think I might try playing around with opengl dll files from older nvidia drivers...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Chrisman]

               Just to confirm, It seems the only thing left that brings it to 20FPS is the robes, I haven't notice anything else that does. So, with cloaks disabled (Tho it sucks), the override Soulrage has made for the bows, crossbows ect, and something to alter the robes would make the game fully playable with 400 Series cards,



Well at least GTX 460.





~ Chris
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MazzoniM]

               What about ATI's new cards? Do they share this problem as well? I was going to buy a 460, but now I am reconsidering that idea.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MazzoniM, 02 décembre 2010 - 10:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_QlippothVI]

               Nobody? I have not heard of any issues, but nor have I done any exhaustive searching on the web yet.
I just found this, not sure the issue was resolved or how many are affected (aside from this guy): http://www.gog.com/e...l_not_run/page2

I heard they are working on a driver fix at nVidia, but no delivery date is posted. So it could be a few driver versions (if they can fix it). I'm stuck waiting to see which part (ATI or nVidia) I can get to play NWN and new games, myself. I'll try to update here when I can learn something definitive.

- Qlippoth
               
               

               

                     Modifié par QlippothVI, 14 janvier 2011 - 07:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               As far as I know, ATI does not suffer from that issue. ATI only suffers from not rendering shiny water

properly anymore which I find to kind of suck, but at least the game is fine in all other areas.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NorthWolf]

               Someone's probably already suggested this, but it never hurts to double check you haven't missed something simple, so... make sure you've disabled visual themes and desktop composition.



The obvious solution to this to let you all bide your time until/if nVidia makes a fix is to enable all parts visible in parts_robe.2da and then override all robe models with a blank model. I would gladly do so but I've never fidgeted with models for NWN.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               This is related to a game compatibility issue (which I posted about on a similar thread) with the 400+ series of NVIDIA cards in general. The video card on my gaming rig died a couple of months ago and I replaced it with a GTX 470, which is displaying all of the symptoms described here.  Fortunately my laptop runs a 9800M GS that handles NWN pretty smoothly, so I've been able to continue my development work on it.

What's happening is that rendering is going choppy whenever animation of certain models comes into the field of view. The worst cases of it are happening with the wing beating animations of my ridable pegasi. Interestingly enough The Witcher (which I think uses the Aurora engine and which I finally got around to starting just after the replacement) doesn't seem to have any problems, so I'm guessing it's mainly an issue with existing NWN models and animations rather than the engine itself.

I opened a ticket with NVIDIA on the issue, sent them links to the forum threads here about it and to the ridable pegasus model, and even provided video clips illustrating the rendering difference between the GTX 470 and the 9800M GS. Their last message said it was being escalated to their Level 2 Technical Support group, but that a resolution might take some time.

One other thing that may be worth noting is that when I first got my (Vista) laptop, I had the exact same FPS drop problem until I switched sound into safe mode. Unfortunately that fix no longer works for the problem with the 400+ series cards.

EDIT: There are a couple of open threads on the NVIDIA forums about this here and here. It looks like others have complained about it and opened tickets as well.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 15 janvier 2011 - 03:59 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Tehori]

               

AndarianTD wrote...
I opened a ticket with NVIDIA on the issue, sent them links to the forum threads here about it and to the ridable pegasus model, and even provided video clips illustrating the rendering difference between the GTX 470 and the 9800M GS. Their last message said it was being escalated to their Level 2 Technical Support group, but that a resolution might take some time.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think the L2 tech support is real. I had a support ticket for my motherboard's network controller from a few years ago "elevated to L2", and I still haven't heard from them. I think it's Nvidia's "we don't care about this anymore" bin.

If you do hear back from them, please tell me, I would like to know if they do exist for future reference.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tehori, 23 janvier 2011 - 02:45 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Calvinthesneak]

               Pretty sure Nvidia already responded and said check their driver patch come february, that they might have something in their new beta driver then to help.

Linkagehttp://forums.nvidia...2
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 23 janvier 2011 - 09:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_virusman]

               Let's hope so.. Last time it took them 1 year to fix the bug.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Calvinthesneak]

               Yeah crossing fingers.