june gloom on 18/3/2008 at 07:32
So I'm futzing around in Wild Territory when I notice a problem- my game likes to hang for a second quite frequently. As I continue to futz around, the problem grows progressively worse, to the point where the screen actually blacks out for a second. Eventually it gets to the point where it blacks out for a full 10 seconds, then returns, only to be slideshow city. The blackouts are somewhat common- sometimes they happen, usually they don't, though the game does pause from time to time. I've had a slideshow (but no blackout) in the arena as well (in fact, in order for me to be able to fight at all I had to run to the far end of the arena until the game stopped chugging and went back to normal, then stay there... not easy when you've got a bunch of guys playing cat and mouse with you!)
Absolutely no amount of fucking around with the video settings solves the problem.
What's the deal?
[edit] Oh, right, system specs:
2gb RAM
3gHz Pentium D
Geforce 7600GT 256mb onboard
Windows XP
D'Arcy on 18/3/2008 at 09:33
Never seen that before...
I've always thought that the problem in the Arena was caused by that steam coming out of the overhead pipe. The game seemed to slow down as the camera got closer to it, and got faster at the far end of the arena, where one couldn't see it.
242 on 18/3/2008 at 09:39
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Absolutely no amount of fucking around with the video settings solves the problem.
Set all settings to min and restart the game, some settings won't be applied if you change them without restart. Quality of textures for example. See if that helps.
Have or
had you any mods installed?
Perhaps you should try different video drivers too...
EvaUnit02 on 18/3/2008 at 11:16
Use nothing more than Object dynamic lighting and drop your resolution to 1280x960 (if you have a 4:3 or 5:4 AR monitor), or 1280x800 (if the screen is 16:10).
EDIT: Have a play around with this (
http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_7.html) tweak guide.
Briareos H on 18/3/2008 at 11:46
Sounds like a video card overheating / driver bug and its subsequent recovery.
Bjossi on 18/3/2008 at 12:11
I suspect drivers or GPU trouble as well. This is definitely not caused by hardware limitations or anything in that category, seeing how the game worked fine for you to begin with.
I might as well say the game runs pretty crappy for me. I have seen people with much slower computers get higher framerates at max settings. But until I start seeing funny colors or artifacts I ain't gonna worry much. ;)
Muzman on 18/3/2008 at 13:00
Mine did things like that, but only when I had aliVe on. It seemed to be associated with a big spawn, usually a pack of dogs, and hung around until they dispersed or died. So I guess it could happen in the vanilla game.
Oddly enough most big hitches for me seem to have nothing to do with graphics, but are CPU overloads from AIs, as above, or caching sounds.
ZylonBane on 18/3/2008 at 17:54
STALKER seems to be bottlenecked primarily by rendering and caching. My system has a CPU that's almost five years old, but 2GB of RAM and a recent video card (ATI X1950), and I get perfectly smooth frame rates at 1024x768 with full dynamic lighting. But there are certain places on certain maps where it will *always* pause to load more data (for example, approaching the large hangar in the Garbage), and these delays can take up to 30 seconds sometimes.
I really wonder WTF STALKER needs all that memory for, because games like Painkiller and Far Cry have levels that are just as large and detailed, but run smooth as silk with no hiccups on machines with a quarter the RAM.
GRRRR on 18/3/2008 at 18:20
Long pauses near the Garbage hangar? Do you have lotsa stuff in the blue box there by chance? My old system nearly croaked everytime i came close to one of my bigger stashes. Made a habit of putting stuff into perma-corpses instead of the Blue Lagboxes of Death. :p
june gloom on 18/3/2008 at 19:57
The problem does seem to be exacerbated by lots of AI spawning, and this is on the trip back from Yantar so there's AI everywhere- Merc snipers, rats, dogs, a few wolves running around by the chopper ruins (never fought them myself, they usually got owned by the two (well, now one- alas, poor Scarecrow) stalkers hanging out in a shelter nearby), the occasional bloodsucker (it's really satisfying to plug a bloodsucker with a scoped ZM and watch him die in one hit), a bunch of snorks, and as it grows dark, a mess of Duty troops making a sweep for all of the above plus the bandits who keep moving in...
