Performance Issues With Rain and Auspex Effects

First my specs: 2.5 GHz Intel Quad Core processor, 4 GB RAM, Ati Radeon HD3650 and Win 7 , running game in 1650*1050

Today I installed Bloodlines and CE 1.1 mod (which is great by the way) and the fps drops when it rains or when I activate auspex (or both). Not a huge slowdown but sometimes quite noticeable and kind of irritating. I uninstalled and tried the game vanilla(waited for rain and tried auspex), no performance problems. Installed the mod again, fps drop comes back.

I played the game with the unofficial patch (v 5.x) on this pc a couple of months ago with no performance problems.

I don't know if it's something to do with the 6.x versions of the unofficial patch (as I have not tried it separately) or the CE 1.1 but something is really dropping the performance.

Any ideas?

Hmmm thats an interesting one. Your system specs are more than high enough to play Bloodlines. Are you having any other performance decreases or just when it rains/auspex?

Well I just rolled a Toreador and bumped my Auspex to 5, I ran around Santa Monica with and without Auspex on and couldn't get even the slightest fps/performance change. Do you possibly have things running in the background of your computer that could cause the slowdown? Only other thing I can think of is maybe the bloodtimer firing every 15 seconds in the background but I would think that would affect you whether you had auspex running or not.

I will continue to ponder this...

hedeley wrote:

First my specs: 2.5 GHz Intel Quad Core processor, 4 GB RAM, Ati Radeon HD3650 and Win 7 , running game in 1650*1050

Today I installed Bloodlines and CE 1.1 mod (which is great by the way) and the fps drops when it rains or when I activate auspex (or both). Not a huge slowdown but sometimes quite noticeable and kind of irritating. I uninstalled and tried the game vanilla(waited for rain and tried auspex), no performance problems. Installed the mod again, fps drop comes back.

I played the game with the unofficial patch (v 5.x) on this pc a couple of months ago with no performance problems.

I don't know if it's something to do with the 6.x versions of the unofficial patch (as I have not tried it separately) or the CE 1.1 but something is really dropping the performance.

Any ideas?

Is it an integrated graphics card? Who's the manufacturer of your system? Did you update all of your drivers?

I know personally, I got an Acer Aspire M5201 which came with an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3400 card and I get FPS drops when the rain occurs as well, but I believe that's just because my graphics card is integrated and overall, not the greatest, also, make sure your monitors refresh rate meets the refresh rate of your card etc., generally you don't want a refresh rate above 60mhz, it's known to cause some stability issues.

If all else checks out, you should uninstall (I know, irritating, but bear with me), and delete the actual Troika registry values in your system's registry, I was having a lot of random, and weird issues with CE until Zer0Morph suggested it. Give that a go and hopefully it will correct the issues.

I'm running a much slower system ( going to do a re-build after Christmas ) than you Headly , and I never have experienced the FPS issues your describing. Currently running a Toreador, and running around Hollywood without any FPS drop using Auspex.

Specs:

Athlon 3500+ OC to 2.4 gig
Xp pro
eVGA 8800 GTS 312 meg ( latest driver )
2 gig system ram


Do you have an onboard audio solution, or a dedicated sound card? Might be a sound related issue with Auspex and 1.1...though I can't see how, it's just a thought.

Try this free utility to free up and shutdown unnecessary programs before gaming, it might help ( it gets me 1-3 more FPS in Oblivion ), though with your system you shouldn't need it but it can't hurt. Not positive it works with Win 7 but I can't see why it would not.

Game booster : http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html


Hope that helps you some

I believe I found the problem. I tested all these combinations with the same savegame (standing in rain in santa monica):

vanilla - no problem

official patch - no problem

unofficial patch - fps drop in rain and auspex (did not have this problem when I was running win xp a couple of months ago)

ce 1.1 - fps drop again

So I'm guessing that my problem is with the unofficial patch and/or my system.

Most of the fps drop happens when I look at the sky while it is raining, and I noticed that in vanilla and official patch versions, the sky is much less foggy when it rains, but with the unofficial patch rain effect is more intense (more fog in the sky).

My graphics card is not integrated but my audio is, but since there was no problem when I was running Win XP I don't think that this is a hardware problem. All my drivers are up to date (as I very recently formatted and installed Win 7), and the problem persist even when I set 3D settings to optimal performance using the Catalyst Control Center.

I guess I should head off to the planetvampire tech support board, but still any more solution ideas are welcome

Sounds like it might be an issue with something related to the UOP and Win 7 since you had no issue with XP.

I have to agree, to me it sounds like it must be the fact that you're running it on Windows 7, because you say beforehand you never had such problems when you were running it on XP. And from what I've heard of Windows 7, quite a few games are getting FPS drops.

The strange thing is, without the unofficial patch everything is fine. I posted the same problem in the unofficial patch thread at planetvampire forums, no replies yet.

I'm so glad you posted this, and with your research I think I might know what the problem is.

In Patch 6.5 (which is what CE 1.1 was built upon) you will find that the rain/fog emitters were changed. I'm not sure what the changes were but I can tell you how to change them to possibly fix your problem.

I'm not sure what the file structure looks like on Win7 but in Windows XP you would want to open up explorer and head to \Activision\Vampire - Bloodlines\Vampire\Particles\

Inside this folder you will find such files as...

rain_follow_emitter.txt
raindrops2.txt
rainfog.txt
rainsplash_new.txt
rainstain.txt
smoke2.txt

Now you mentioned the fog was much thicker in the version you found the problem in. So lets first open up the file called rainfog.txt.

You will find an entry at the top called "sprite" "furball", just below that should be the frame count of 300. Change the 300 to a 100 and save the file, what this will do will cut the furball sprite down by 2/3rds of what it's set to now. Go back into Bloodlines and play in the rain and see what effect that has.

You can also effect the raindrops by opening rain_follow_emitter.txt. Find the particle called "raindrops2" and reduce the rate from 1000 to 500 or even lower. What this does is shrink the size of the raindrops, in fact just below that is the spawn particle for "rainfog", you can reduce the rate and radius of this as well.

Just experiment and let me know what you find. Report back and let me know if this helps increase FPS and I will change the numbers to what you found for CE 1.2.

I'd do this myself but I can't replicate the problem. Goodluck!

Thanks a lot, I'll try this tonight and report back.

Done with my testing now.

The values in the rain_follow_emitter.txt file don't seem to do much for me. I tried halving all the values you suggested in this file, and could not find any noticeable change in performance.

However, in the rainfog.txt file, lowering the frames variable seems to do the trick. I first tried 100 as you suggested, while it got better I still could feel the performance drop, but once I got below 50 it is significantly better; I found 40 to be the best value for my system.

Although it is quite playable and the problem is unnoticeable unless you are looking for it at this value, it still is not silky smooth like in the vanilla where there is no fog (or very little?). It could be a problem with DirectX11 having difficulty drawing that fog for some reason.

Here is my rainfog.txt content for reference:

Particle
{
sprite "furball"
frames "40"
movealign "0"
x_speed "0"
y_speed "0"
z_speed "0"
size "500"
rotation "180,140~220"
color "0,6,0"
mask "0,6,0"
precipitation "1"
}

Thanks for reporting back. Ok so 40 seemed to help a little but it's still not like vanilla. You mentioned DX11, I'm still using DX 9.0c for Bloodlines and everything is running great. I wonder if DX11 isnt backwards compatible w/ Bloodlines.

Either way, I like the fog but if you think changing it from 300 down to 40 would help alot of other systems we can do that. You're the first to mention this issue but others could be having the problem too without reporting it.

What do you think?

It would actually be a more accurate conclusion if a couple more people using Windows 7 and DirectX 11 could test this, of course the same problem may not occur in all graphics cards, but my prime suspect would be DirectX 11 as it seems to be the only difference between the time I played on Win XP and Win 7. I'm guessing not many people use Win 7 or DX 11 yet so they may have not ran across this problem.

Taking the fog from 300 to 40 pretty much eliminates the problem, but the vanilla frame rate is still smoother compared to it. But I'd rather play with the uo patch and CE mod sacrificing 1-2 fps.

Visually, I did not see much difference between the 300 and the 40 fogs, only the 40 fog's animation (the moving around in itself) seems to be faster; but it is not anything really noticeable or displeasing to the eye.

Additionaly, I'm not sure but it could also help people playing with lower specs when it rains in hubs.

hedeley wrote:

Taking the fog from 300 to 40 pretty much eliminates the problem, but the vanilla frame rate is still smoother compared to it. But I'd rather play with the uo patch and CE mod sacrificing 1-2 fps.

Visually, I did not see much difference between the 300 and the 40 fogs, only the 40 fog's animation (the moving around in itself) seems to be faster; but it is not anything really noticeable or displeasing to the eye.

Additionaly, I'm not sure but it could also help people playing with lower specs when it rains in hubs.

Well I took a look at the differences with rainfog vanilla, rainfog reduced, and rainfog eliminated entirely. Honestly I think it looks just as good without rainfog period, I mean the clouds are already moving quickly like a storm, the rain comes down in high quantities and the street is all splish splashy (like that word? HAHA).

I'm thinking about just eliminating rainfog altogether. I actually noticed a minor increase in smooth gameplay with it gone on my system which I didn't think was possible.

What do you guys think?

I vote yes

Well I have officially set CE 1.2 to not use rainfog when it rains. It's amazing how cleaned up the sky looks but sitll has the dark clouds moving ahead and now you can see flickers of lightning.

Also I have created a new sound for the rain which includes rolling thunder along with the rain. This change majorily enhances the ambience in Santa Monica while it rains. I can't wait to have you guys listen to it in game.

Sweet Z