Creatures freeze-framing NWN

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               No joy. I played the game on a clean install of my NWN diamond on 1.66, and the issue persists. I even put it in a different drive, so as to avoid any disk-related problem. Then I patched the game to 1.69, and the lag continued. Took me about an hour to set everything as I had it before... but I guess it was worth trying.



At this point I'm almost sure the problem lies with the ATI video card. Sadly, I have no money for a new one... and the way things are going, I doubt I'll have it any time soon.



Anyway, I'm still hoping for a tech genius to solve this mysterious mystery...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Inayity]

               

• Create a new 1.69 module, 10 x 10 and use Rural Tileset
• Place a beggar (specifically) in the default area, smack dab in the middle.
• Copy and paste the terrain so there's just plain grass on every square, no trees or rocks.
• Place your player start spot, say, 5 tiles away.
• Load the module.

Walk towards him.  Do you really have lag the first time you see him?

What about if you walk away to the point where he disappears completely off screen and then walk back towards him.  Do you get the lag when you "re-see" him?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Ok, this is weird! I did as you said, Inayity, save for the "only grass" part, since I have no "only grass" tile due to my overriding tileset for rural, but I figured MY "default grass" tile (which has terrain accidents and two types of flowers dotting the tile) would serve the test. So, I started my module, and guess what? Amid a sea of endless, high res, flowers and grass, a single unassuming beggar laid, and HE DIDN'T CAUSE ANY LAG! I ran from the four corners of the area towards the center, several times, to see if there was a micro-framing my eyes didn't perceive, but there was none. No matter how many times he went out of view and came back into view, not once did the game lag.



What that means, I do not know, but I hope it does to you!



I will start adding haks to see if the module lags, but I suspect it won't...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               As expected, neither a 1.3 gigs in my override folder, nor about 20 regular hak packs added changed the fact the beggar in the test module causes no lag when he appears or comes into view.



I'm really praying for this to be a good sign!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_R-TEAM]

               Hi,



have the same problem and have already doing the config file add (maxmemory) and other

tweaks - no one help.It is going a little bit better - but not much ...

Have a thread in the old forum over this ..



IMHO the new creature that come in range is processed by the catalyst-ai .. this is the only thing

that happen if new moddels come in the game .. but disabling the catalyst-ai is no sulotion - the GFX become errors - the PCR and NPC are never visible - only here shadows '>

So i cant disable catalyst-ai full - setting it only at a low level.



Regards

R-TEAM
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Thanks for dropping a line, R-TEAM, I was beginning to think this was a curse from the gods cast solely on me! However, could you please mention what video card you have? Is it a 3870 too?



For those who may not know, the ATI Catalyst center has an option to set its AI behavior, from Standard to Advanced, as well as deactivating it altogether. When one chooses Standard, graphics look a little jagged around the edges, the main movement cursor looks green, and the game runs smoother (though the lag issue persists). While in the Advanced setting the movement cursor turns yellow, graphics look slightly better, but performance slightly decreases (and the lag persists). However, if one deactivates the AI, as R-TEAM mentioned, creatures simply cease to appear, you may only see their shadows... and, guess what!... U-hu, the lag is still there!



I suppose this bears no significance whatsoever regarding the lag, seeing as changing such setting has no effect on it, but thought I should share this info regarding R-TEAM's post.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Inayity]

               

Jedijax wrote...

Ok, this is weird! I did as you said, Inayity, save for the "only grass" part, since I have no "only grass" tile due to my overriding tileset for rural, but I figured MY "default grass" tile (which has terrain accidents and two types of flowers dotting the tile) would serve the test. So, I started my module, and guess what? Amid a sea of endless, high res, flowers and grass, a single unassuming beggar laid, and HE DIDN'T CAUSE ANY LAG! I ran from the four corners of the area towards the center, several times, to see if there was a micro-framing my eyes didn't perceive, but there was none. No matter how many times he went out of view and came back into view, not once did the game lag.

What that means, I do not know, but I hope it does to you!

I will start adding haks to see if the module lags, but I suspect it won't...

Well, if it were me I would add creatures until one of them started causing the problem again.  Then remove it and add some other creature, trying to get a profile of the similarities the lag-inducers have.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Err... actually, every other creature I have tried triggers the lag... It seems you hit the only one that doesn't!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mudeye]

               You mentioned an override tile set for Rural.  Using a bunch of hak paks and custom content might be causing the problem.  I installed on a new computer with an ATI card recently and had problems running NWN.  I downloaded the latest drivers for the ATI chipset and it works great now.



               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Xenovant]

               are you using an override for the animations? If it happens with all the creatures, is the most logical cause
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Inayity]

               Jedijax, heh heh, I don't know what to tell you.  About the lag coming back- specifically try Old Man and Old Woman.  Now, really all of these are the same as far as NWN is concerned.  But Old Man and Old Woman are slightly closer to beggar than the others.  Not really, not in what I think is a meaningful sense, but in the context of the obscurity of your problem give those two a try.

Hopefully MudEye's comments about the ATI drivers will help you and I echo his caution about custom content.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Uhm... thanks for posting Mudeye and Xenovant... but, did you read the whole thread? The whole "override/hak" issue was discarded long ago... If you read the post after the testing module, you would know the beggar character isn't lagging even AFTER adding 1.3 gigs of override and 20 haks.



For everyone reading the thread for the first time, the lag is present EVEN if the override folder is empty, and there is no hak used in a module. The starting area of the official NWN prelude presents the lag in a clean install, without any custom content, so it stands to reason, given all the facts and tests, that custom content simply cannot be the issue.



Custom content was discarded as a possible cause months before I even subscribed to the forums. As for the ATI drivers, yet again, they are something that has been covered even before the whole custom content thing was settled, there is previous mention of going back to older versions, as far as systems would allow (both XP and Windows 7), seeking a solution.



Inayiti, I will try the old people, and update soon.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Inayiti, just to be thorough, I tested the module, using 20 haks, with the 1.3 gigs override folder, in a heavily modified rural landscape that includes high res textures, plenty of high-polygon models (rocks, flowers, trees, bushes, terrain accidents, etc.)



I placed the old woman and old man characters right next to the beggar, and the result was the same as the first test with a hak-less module and no overrides: The three creatures came into view smoothly, without lag.



I don't know what the pattern is... the complexity of animations? It can't be environmental mapping or anything related to graphic options that may be changed by the user, since I have modified/deactivated all of those extensively...



I surely hope you can think of something, seeing as I have no clue as to what is happening! And again, thanks for helping me out!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Xenovant]

               The animations that uses the beggar are the same that most of the models (the ones in the "a_ba" file), so it's discarded. That model hasn't nothing different from the others.  I don't know the possible cause of this.

The only thing that comes to my mind has been said already: use a different version of the graphic drivers :-S
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Xenovant, 13 octobre 2010 - 12:18 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               Thanks, Xenovant!... But, since I have Windows 7, there is not much option here, as there aren't that many versions. Besides, the issue existed in XP, with all versions of the Catalyst drivers as far back as I could go.



It's been a little more than a year now... so, as there doesn't seem to be any other explanation, I guess the problem is the video card itself, as R-TEAM is another person with the same curse, and it is highly improbable that he/she has the same system config as me.