Extreme lag and low FPS in hilly/forested scenes (Fix)

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Myrkabah

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I ran into this problem and was about to post here looking for a solution, but a little bit of searching found one for me in the support thread. Since this is an issue that has been driving me nutty since PoP 2.5, I thought I would post the solution in a more visible place than page 18 of a sticky that very few people will probably read. It's really a big help.

Note that this is meddling with the occult! You may break your game. Back up all files before changing them, and please tell us if you did this before reporting any possible bugs.

Problem: Extremely low FPS and extremely high lag in hilly and wooded battle scenes. I was seeing framerates as low as 3.0 FPS on settings that usually produce framerates of 30-60+ with my rig, making effective combat nearly impossible.

Solution: (Courtesy of Lord Kinlar)

First, rename or delete the following files in SceneObj folder, these are the bugged files and you won't need them.

scn_random_scene_plain_forest.sco (906 KB)
scn_random_scene_snow_forest.sco (906 KB)
scn_random_scene_steppe_forest.sco (906 KB)

Now create a copy of the following files:

scn_random_scene_plain.sco (1 KB)
scn_random_scene_snow.sco (1 KB)
scn_random_scene_steppe.sco (1 KB)

Now rename them as the first three above by adding _forest before the .sco extension. Ultimately, you should have the following files in that directory:

scn_random_scene_plain.sco (1 KB) (Original)
scn_random_scene_snow.sco (1 KB) (Original)
scn_random_scene_steppe.sco (1 KB) (Original)
scn_random_scene_plain_forest.sco (1 KB)  (Copy)
scn_random_scene_snow_forest.sco (1 KB) (Copy)
scn_random_scene_steppe_forest.sco (1 KB) (Copy)

What we need is to get rid of those 906 KB files and use copies of 1 KB ones instead of them.

These files can be found in c:\Program Files\Mount&Blade\Modules\Prophesy of Pendor 3.01\SceneObj

This fix immediately produced a nice, crisp 60+ FPS for me in the same scenes that nearly ground to a halt before. Needless to say, it's a major relief.

Hope this helps some other people, because it certainly did me.

Original link: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,53320.msg2967971.html#msg2967971
 
Yes... that would be nice. I haven't tried that particular fix. Usually in those battle terrain I just relay on my army to win and focus on hiding. Usually I am between 50-80 fps but those hill forest make me vary from 8 to 25 but never higher than 30. The random lurches in the fps almost worse than simply low fps. I can play at 20 fps but when it varies between 8 and 30 with every swing its impossible.
 
i also hate those hilly dense forest battles...
usually when i stumble on this kind of battefield i flee the battle, reload from the save game and either lure the enemy party to a different terrain type before engaging in battle or chase them for same result

I remember i found a fix that supposed to lower the probability of getting this hilly forrest terrains in battles, but unfortunatelly that never really worked for me (that fix i'm talking about was changing one of the *.txt script files

I never found out this fix before so big thanks for you...
 
I play with 1 type of trees(changed in module.ini), but it doesn't look nice.

I have a question about this solution:

Will replacement of this files totally erase forests from the battle scenes?
 
HUtH said:
Will replacement of this files totally erase forests from the battle scenes?

No. The only difference I've noticed is that the forests don't seem to be quite as thick, but truth be told that could just be my imagination. If there's a difference, it's not an extremely noticeable one.
 
Myrkabah said:
No. The only difference I've noticed is that the forests don't seem to be quite as thick, but truth be told that could just be my imagination. If there's a difference, it's not an extremely noticeable one.
I allways thought that it was rather insane number of hills that caused lag issues (due to too many waypoints and vectors to handle for AI)
 
Yes- I have fought in several hill/forest battles now and 0 FPS drop with this fix. WTH... playing M&B for a long time and never heard about this simple fix before. Instead of messing with removing trees and turning down all options. Now I can turn up all my options again and POP looks much prettier.
 
Qnevven Zolond said:
I allways thought that it was rather insane number of hills that caused lag issues (due to too many waypoints and vectors to handle for AI)

I thought the exact same thing. What really supported this for me was the fact that my FPS immediately returned to normal once the last enemy was killed. It turns out that those particular scene files are just bugged, though. I suppose it's possible that they're related to pathing, somehow - I don't know. But if it gives the computer a tactical disadvantage, well, better them than me!

Yes- I have fought in several hill/forest battles now and 0 FPS drop with this fix. WTH... playing M&B for a long time and never heard about this simple fix before. Instead of messing with removing trees and turning down all options. Now I can turn up all my options again and POP looks much prettier.

Same here - I had put all my settings in such a way as to try to leave those battles at least marginally playable. Now I can jack my battlesizer back up and go crazy with that.

I'm really surprised that this fix isn't better known - it's a native bug, so it affects vanilla users and presumably any mod that includes those particular scene files. That's why I made a topic for it, because it's oddly obscure.
 
Myrkabah said:
I'm really surprised that this fix isn't better known - it's a native bug, so it affects vanilla users and presumably any mod that includes those particular scene files. That's why I made a topic for it, because it's oddly obscure.

I wonder if that was addressed and fixed for Warband... I havn't really played warband since i got it in the box... i just installed it and once i realized that you can't play PoP in warband it just collects dust on my shelf :wink:
 
Sigil Runestone said:
Anyone observe if this reduced rgl errors?

I have observed that the RGL errors are not affected by this otherwise excellent fix. The first thing I did was to put back Textures to 100% and Ragdolls to 5 and Corpses to 20. Unfortunately very shortly after the game crashed with the RGL vertex buffer error in  Muqaddas Pani while speaking to my seneschal.

(The only way to minimize/eliminate the vertex errors for me is to drag down Texture detail to 88% and put the corpses and rag dolls to 0. At least those are the settings that work best for my HD5770, AMD Phenom II x4 925 and 4GB RAM, Win 7 64-bit Pro).
 
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,77442.msg2025532/topicseen.html#msg2025532 - for vertex rgl errors.
 
HUtH said:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,77442.msg2025532/topicseen.html#msg2025532 - for vertex rgl errors.

Thank you sir. I will look into that info and see if it works. Appreciate the help on this annoying vertex error.


Edit/Update: Well, so far (about 1 hour of play) I have not had the RGL Unable to Restore Vertex Buffer Error (- using 100% textures, 20 corpses and 3 rag dolls). All I did was to increase the page file to about 150% of my RAM. Letting the system control it is out of the question from now on. I don't know why the article writes that you need to go to regedit in order to up the Page file though. It's more convenient to go to advanced system properties and do it from the advanced tab (performance settings). Perhaps Windows 7 64 bit does not have the page file limitations that was outlined in the first post.

Edit2: Unfortunately I got a new Unable to Restore Vertex Buffer Error after another hour. At least it took longer for it to occur. Oh well, back to lowering the textures.
 
Myrkabah said:
HUtH said:
Will replacement of this files totally erase forests from the battle scenes?

No. The only difference I've noticed is that the forests don't seem to be quite as thick, but truth be told that could just be my imagination. If there's a difference, it's not an extremely noticeable one.

I don't seem to notice any difference at all, except for the complete lack of lag!  Just simply amazing!  Thank you!  And Lord Kinlar! 
 
Thank you so much for the fix, I don't need the stability pack anymore!  Not sure if my lack of RGL errors was due to my system specs.  2.6 quad intel, 4gigs ddr2, 8800gtx card.

CHEERS!!!
 
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