View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0009319Valley 1Gameplay IssueJul 21, 2013 11:05 pm
ReporterPyrrhic Assigned ToChris_McElligottPark  
Status confirmedResolutionopen 
Product Version1.206 
Summary0009319: Game slowdown after exiting lava flats & entering a different-type region
DescriptionI don't know how long this issue has been around, since this was pretty much my first time spending more than 10 seconds in the lava flats. But onto the issue:

Once I enter a lava flats region, the game will only run at normal speed if I keep to either lava flat regions, or the world map. Once I load up a different type of region (Grasslands, Ice Age, etc), the game really starts slowing down. Even if I leave that region immediately, and go back to the world map, main menu, another lava flats region...anything I do AVWW related after loaded up a different-type region will be really slowed down, until I restart AVWW.

I tried reinstalling the game, setting my AVWW graphics settings to their absolute lowest (disabling as much as I could), setting AVWW's graphics compression to its highest, rebooting my system - and yet, this issue persisted.

Note that for purposes of this bug, the region shown on the main menu counts as whatever region it shows. This means that upon starting AVWW, if the region shown is Lava Flats - then if I load a game that takes me anywhere but into another Lava Flats region or the world map, my game will start slowing down.
Likewise, if I've entered a Lava Flats region, then quit to the main menu, with the main menu region being anything but a Lava Flats region- again, the game will start slowing down.

As I mentioned, I found that restarting AVWW fixed the slowdown. However, the issue would return if I replicated this issue (enter a Lava Flats, then enter any other region type, the World Map not counting as a region).

I'm playing the game on a 4 year old Macbook pro - but I suspect that this could be a universal issue. Could others please confirm whether this same issue is happening for them or not, on their surely-different computers?
TagsNo tags attached.
Internal Weight

Relationships

related to 0005445 resolvedChris_McElligottPark Stuttering/dropped frames when entering new chunk 

Activities

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 20, 2012 12:44 pm

administrator   ~0027860

Are any errors being logged in the runtimedata folder when this is happening?

Pyrrhic

Aug 20, 2012 10:33 pm

reporter   ~0027869

I don't know. What file(s) in the runtimedata folder should I be looking for?

Tux

Aug 21, 2012 5:46 am

reporter   ~0027876

C:\A Valley Without Wind\RuntimeData look for anything with "error" in the file name

Pyrrhic

Aug 21, 2012 9:51 am

reporter  

Pyrrhic

Aug 21, 2012 9:52 am

reporter   ~0027877

I don't think so. I've uploaded a screenshot of my RuntimeData folder, in case I'm overlooking something.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 21, 2012 9:56 am

administrator   ~0027878

ArcenDebugLog might have something in there, or might just be info-only stuff. Can you upload that? If you've been playing a lot since the issue occurred, can you do the following?

1. Delete the ArcenDebugLog.
2. Start the game and replicate the issue.
3. Upload the ArcenDebugLog.

That might lead to nothing, but it's the only thing at the moment that has much chance from the look of things. And its quite possible that the slowdown is from log writes, so if it's not the last thing you've done prior to uploading the log file, then likely it wouldn't be in the log at all.

Also, if you can zip and upload your world folder, then I can try looking at that to see if I can replicate it.

Pyrrhic

Aug 21, 2012 10:13 am

reporter  

ArcenDebugLog.txt (794 bytes)   
08/21/2012 07:07:01
GameInit (0 - 08/21/2012 07:07:01)     08/21/2012 07:07:01
GameInit (1 - 08/21/2012 07:07:01)     08/21/2012 07:07:01
GameInit (2 - 08/21/2012 07:07:01)     08/21/2012 07:07:02
audio load: 215     08/21/2012 07:07:02
GameInit (3 - 08/21/2012 07:07:02)     08/21/2012 07:07:02
GameInit (4 - 08/21/2012 07:07:02)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (5 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (6 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (7 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (8 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (9 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:03
GameInit (10 - 08/21/2012 07:07:03)     08/21/2012 07:07:20
No saved chunk to load!     08/21/2012 07:09:17
Saving everything as we exit...     
ArcenDebugLog.txt (794 bytes)   

Pyrrhic

Aug 21, 2012 10:13 am

reporter  

Lavaslow Worldfile.zip (36,525 bytes)

Pyrrhic

Aug 21, 2012 10:17 am

reporter   ~0027879

Ok, done.
I should point out that I've experienced the slowdown in all of the worlds where I've tested it (aka in several worlds), not just this one.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 21, 2012 10:19 am

administrator   ~0027880

Okay, thanks. There's nothing suspicious in the log file, but thanks for verifying that. I'll have to see if I can replicate it with this world, though I understand that's been universal for you.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 24, 2012 3:07 pm

administrator   ~0027946

Well, on windows I definitely cannot replicate the issue at all. Going to test on my 2010 Macbook Pro now.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 24, 2012 3:12 pm

administrator   ~0027947

Wow, okay -- I can totally duplicate this on OSX. However, it's worse even than you reported, for me. I dropped from 60fps to 1fps. Total slideshow. Will see what I can find...

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 24, 2012 3:16 pm

administrator   ~0027948

Added details:

1. Pausing the game did not help this at all. So it's definitely not simulation-related, it's something in the graphics loop.

2. Painstakingly moving to the settings screen and then moving out of fullscreen into windowed mode fixes the issue without an application restart. Then moving back into fullscreen works just fine.

Based on these two things, I'm thinking that this is something to do with some textures not invalidating properly in unity on OSX. This may not be a bug that I can fix, but I'll look and see if I can isolate it more at the very least.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 24, 2012 3:58 pm

administrator   ~0027949

Well... it's definitely not related to the unloading of assets, unlike what I thought. I disabled that outright, and it still had the problem. I also disabled the heat haze, which I thought for sure then must be the issue, but that wasn't it either.

Given that the problem goes away when changing from fullscreen to windowed and back, this is some sort of in-engine bug (since none of our code gets reset by that operation). I'm going to experiment around with a few more things, but this isn't looking promising.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 24, 2012 4:43 pm

administrator   ~0027951

Sigh. Well, this hasn't been my day. I went and upgraded the game to unity 3.5 (normally we've been running on 3.3) to see if that would fix it. No dice. So I'm not really sure what to do about this. Everything that I can think of that is unique about the lava flats has been disabled, and it still does it. For now it looks like I'm going to have to set this one aside. :/

Pyrrhic

Aug 24, 2012 9:43 pm

reporter   ~0027961

Last edited: Aug 25, 2012 11:15 am

For now, could you disable lava flats from showing up on the main menu?

Edit: The main menu no longer shows chunks, so nevermind the above sentence.

As for the bug itself - I guess there's reporting it on a/the Unity bug reporting forum, and/or painstakingly rebuilding lava flats, testing it periodically to see if the slowdown has started yet.

Chris_McElligottPark

Aug 27, 2012 9:40 am

administrator   ~0028003

Yep, I figured that the main menu shifts would help with the issue in general.

As for the bug, there's not really anything to report on the unity forums yet because there's not an isolated root cause yet. It definitely seems to be some sort of bug in unity in the sense of the memory handling, but it could be triggered by something wrong that we are doing.

In terms of finding the root of the issue, indeed I would have to go through and just keep removing parts of the lava flats and then see when the problem gets isolated.

yesdaniel

Jun 30, 2013 6:20 pm

reporter   ~0033040

I have a somewhat similar problem - When I enter dungeon lvl 5+, with the red glow (similar to Lava Flats, still in continent 1), everything slows down to a crawl. From 60 frames it drops to 0000064:0000010 u.u

Chris_McElligottPark

Jul 1, 2013 8:35 am

administrator  

CloudsLava.png (2,823 bytes)   
CloudsLava.png (2,823 bytes)   

Chris_McElligottPark

Jul 1, 2013 8:37 am

administrator   ~0033044

@yesdaniel: If you're having a lot of trouble while it is actively showing, it's most likely due to pixel fill rate. Fortunately, there is a simple way around that in this case. I've uploaded a file called CloudsLava.png to this issue. If you download that and put it in your AValleyWithoutWind/RuntimeData/Images/FloatingDecorations/Clouds folder, you should be all set. (This will replace the existing file and get rid of the glow).

Thanks!

yesdaniel

Jul 21, 2013 11:05 pm

reporter   ~0033159

Awesome! Thank you ='D Going to play now ^^

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Aug 20, 2012 12:41 pm Pyrrhic New Issue
Aug 20, 2012 12:44 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027860
Aug 20, 2012 10:33 pm Pyrrhic Note Added: 0027869
Aug 21, 2012 5:46 am Tux Note Added: 0027876
Aug 21, 2012 9:51 am Pyrrhic File Added: Pyrrhic runtimedata post lavaslow.png
Aug 21, 2012 9:52 am Pyrrhic Note Added: 0027877
Aug 21, 2012 9:56 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027878
Aug 21, 2012 10:13 am Pyrrhic File Added: ArcenDebugLog.txt
Aug 21, 2012 10:13 am Pyrrhic File Added: Lavaslow Worldfile.zip
Aug 21, 2012 10:17 am Pyrrhic Note Added: 0027879
Aug 21, 2012 10:19 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027880
Aug 24, 2012 3:07 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027946
Aug 24, 2012 3:12 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027947
Aug 24, 2012 3:12 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => Chris_McElligottPark
Aug 24, 2012 3:12 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status new => confirmed
Aug 24, 2012 3:16 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027948
Aug 24, 2012 3:58 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027949
Aug 24, 2012 4:43 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0027951
Aug 24, 2012 9:43 pm Pyrrhic Note Added: 0027961
Aug 25, 2012 11:15 am Pyrrhic Note Edited: 0027961
Aug 27, 2012 9:40 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0028003
Sep 1, 2012 1:33 pm Pyrrhic Relationship added related to 0005445
Jun 30, 2013 6:20 pm yesdaniel Note Added: 0033040
Jul 1, 2013 8:35 am Chris_McElligottPark File Added: CloudsLava.png
Jul 1, 2013 8:37 am Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0033044
Jul 21, 2013 11:05 pm yesdaniel Note Added: 0033159
Apr 14, 2014 9:28 am Chris_McElligottPark Category Gameplay - General Complaint => Gameplay Issue