Grimrock

Dr.Disaster wrote:

Thorham wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote: Also make sure by looking into Windows Task Manager that LoG2 does in fact use both(!) your cores and not just one.

It's not using both cores. CPU maxes out at 50%. That's not good.

Just to make this clear:
You have full activity on one core and no or very little activity on the other core?

Seems that's the problem then.
With the game running, right-click it's process "grimrock2.exe" in the list of processes and select "Set Affinity".
Make sure the game is allowed to use both cores.

If both cores are already allowed, try to "trick" the game to switch cores with the affinity setting (deny him the core it's running on now), click ok, wait a tad, then re-allow both cores.

I did a check of 2.1.18's performance on my old P4HT/GF7 combo to compare it to pre-release beta's / original release and can't see a difference. FPS range goes from 5 to 50, depending on map/room/direction looked at. The game still uses both cores by default with the load being spread almost even. Combined CPU utilization ranges from 35 to 50 percent; that's ok here 'cuz the GF7 can't go any faster (95+% almost anywhere).

Rule of thumb:
With GPU maxed out CPU load does not matter -> more fps ain't possible.
With GPU not maxed out CPU load might matter -> spreading CPU load over 2+ cores might deliver higher fps.

Something I noticed was that the fps is stable and high. But stepping is having an effect, and it seems to be less of an fps thing and more of a stuttery movement thing (like the gamespeed is varying, which is wierd). Also ram usage has increased by almost 300mb this patch, so either there is more file corruption going on in my game, or something changed.

Nexus wrote:Also ram usage has increased by almost 300mb this patch, so either there is more file corruption going on in my game, or something changed.

After keeping an eye on the ram usage of the game I agree that there seems to be something fishing going on.

It is normal that the game allocates some ram when something new appears on the screen or map: it grabs some ram and that's it.

Now at times 2.1.18 seems to start allocating ram but does not stop! Right now i'm observing this with a party standing still right after the "X marks the spot" puzzle where the player encounters his first zarchtons. The monsters are all dead and my party just stands there and does nothing because i'm writting this post at the moment but the game keeps allocating ram in small chunks of 120k

I've seen other spots where this happens too and i've also found a way to stop this steady ram allocation: hitting ESC to bring up the menu halts the ram growth until it starts again at the next spot.

(while writting this the game allocated about 50 megs of ram while absolutely nothing happend)

Dr.Disaster wrote:

Nexus wrote:Also ram usage has increased by almost 300mb this patch, so either there is more file corruption going on in my game, or something changed.

After keeping an eye on the ram usage of the game I agree that there seems to be something fishing going on.

It is normal that the game allocates some ram when something new appears on the screen or map: it grabs some ram and that's it.

Now at times 2.1.18 seems to start allocating ram but does not stop! Right now i'm observing this with a party standing still right after the "X marks the spot" puzzle where the player encounters his first zarchtons. The monsters are all dead and my party just stands there and does nothing because i'm writting this post at the moment but the game keeps allocating ram in small chunks of 120k

I've seen other spots where this happens too and i've also found a way to stop this steady ram allocation: hitting ESC to bring up the menu halts the ram growth until it starts again at the next spot.

(while writting this the game allocated about 50 megs of ram while absolutely nothing happend)

This is normal with garbage collection systems like Lua: temporary memory allocations cause the process memory usage to grow, but eventually Lua garbage collector decides to collect the garbage and the memory usage should go down.

Is it possible to use previous patch versions with the Steam version?

Thorham wrote:Is it possible to use previous patch versions with the Steam version?

I think you can opt out of beta in the properties for this game in Steam, so you won't get those. You could then delete local files, and it would download the latest "Release" (not Beta) build of the game.
I think you might have problems with game save files though. I doubt the beta files are backward compatible with old Release builds. However, you could try it and if it doesn't work, just enable Beta again and you're no worse off than when you started.

Thorham wrote:Is it possible to use previous patch versions with the Steam version?

That's the one thing you can't do with games on Steam: go back to a previous version. You can choose between the available regular and beta versions but for LoG2 now both are 2.1.18 (just checked).

To run earlier versions you need a DRM-free installer and then apply the manual patches.

Dr.Disaster wrote:To run earlier versions you need a DRM-free installer and then apply the manual patches.

there's a 2.1.17 to 2.1.18 patch there
is that even official yet?

hansmuff wrote: I think you can opt out of beta in the properties for this game in Steam, so you won't get those.

I already don't get beta versions.

Dr.Disaster wrote:That's the one thing you can't do with games on Steam: go back to a previous version.

Yeah, how could I forget.

I sure hope this gets solved somehow.

Thorham wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:That's the one thing you can't do with games on Steam: go back to a previous version.

Yeah, how could I forget.

I sure hope this gets solved somehow.

The thing with solving a problem it that you need to identify and reproduce it first. I tried it on both my PC's and can't so .. it's tough.

It might help when you could post a similar screenshot. Parameters are 1280x1024, "Borderless" mode, Vsync doesn't matter, Rendering "Low", Textures "High", taken from my P4HT/GF7 combo showing fps, CPU load showing both real and HT core and GPU usage

Main Menu Sitting in the starting cage after "New Game" West Entrance of Forgotten River coming from Twigroot Forest, looking East