Spring choppy, jerky, unresponsive? Try this! Tested:Gentoo

[Tagliatelle]

Update: FIXED - SEE BELOW

Hey

I used to play spring over 6 months ago, I think I used 82.0 back then, worked fine.

I installed 85.0 yesterday hoping to play again, but the game is unplayable due to video jerking. After the loading screen, once the battlefield appears, the video is smooth for the first 3-5 seconds, and then when everything is done loading it becomes unplayably jerky. The FPS counter shows around 150-200fps the first few seconds its smooth, and then drops to 60-70 when it starts jerking.

This is in Gentoo, 64 bit. Compiled using "openmp" and "multithreaded", but I also recompiled without either and again without both, no difference. I initially thought it was a multithreading problem, but seems like it isn't.
Tried using Balanced Annihilation and ZeroK (svn or git or whatever it was).
Tried turning all widgets off and tried turning lua shaders off in spring-settings.
Tried medium and high quality in springsettings.
I tried starting Spring both from Springlobby and directly via the spring executable.
Nothing helped.
games-strategy/spring-85.0
games-util/springlobby-0.139
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-290.10

Gentoo Linux x86_64
gcc-4.5.3-r1, glibc-2.12.2, kernel gentoo-sources-3.1.4
nvidia-drivers-290.10
GPU: GeForce GTX 285M
CPU: Intel Core i7 820QM
RAM: 2 x 4GB SODIMM 667MHz

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cat .springsettings/springsettings.conf
[General]
LanguageID=58
firstrun=0
CacheVersion=11
SettingsVersion=22
[Spring]
CurrentIndex=default
[Spring/Paths]
[Spring/Paths/default]
UnitSyncPath=/usr/games/lib64/libunitsync.so
Uikeys=/home/drslony/.spring/uikeys.txt
[GUI]
ShowTooltips=1
[GUI/SETTINGSFRAME]
left=368
top=225
height=655
width=1183
maximized=0
[SpringSettings]
mode=5000
disableWarning=0
SimpleDetail=medium
SimpleRes=1920 x 1080 (current)
SimpleQuality=high

Please tell me what other logs you need.

[Forboding Angel]

Infolog.txt

>>

Pastebin.com

[abma]

does this help?

http://springrts.com/wiki/FAQ:trouble#d ... nd_effects

[Tagliatelle]

Forboding Angel http://paste.pocoo.org/show/527843/

abma I don't use Ubuntu, there is no alsoft-conf in Gentoo, or alsoft* anything for that matter. Was there a regression with sound in recent spring versions? It worked fine >6 months ago.
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/527849/
We can try with disabling the sound completely, if you tell me how.

ps. I don't use pulseaudio.

[hoijui]

spring 0.82 -> 83.0+ has quite some changes in sounds stuff. i had the same problem on gentoo. indeed the sound configuration under gentoo is not so nice. you basically have to manually create a config file. either under /etc/ or in your home. i am on ubunu right now, so i cant check, but it is something like ~/.alsoftrc, and there is a template .tar.bz2 for the config file, installed with OpenAL soft under gentoo.
... maybe jk can give more precise info, in case you cant find out yourself.
i disabled pulse audio and some effects.. i think jk said that the important change is to disable reverb effect.. anyway.. after that change, the sound thread uses 0-1% CPU, instead of 160%, and spring runs ultra smooth again, for me.

[Tagliatelle]

Thank you for the reply hoijui!
For future reference:

How to fix Spring in Gentoo
Choppy, jerky, laggy video and sound? Try this.

Check if you have OpenAL installed:

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eix media-libs/openal

Open up ~/.alsoftrc for editing

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nano ~/.alsoftrc

Copypasta this stuff into ~/.alsoftrc

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[general]
format = AL_FORMAT_STEREO32
#format = AL_FORMAT_STEREO16
frequency = 44100
drivers = alsa,pulse
excludefx = eaxreverb,reverb,echo,modulator,dedicated

[alsa] 
device = default
#device = pulse
#device = plughw:0,0
mmap = true

Explanation:

• Note that the lines that begin with a hash are commented out.
• AL_FORMAT_STEREO32 is the best quality and performance wise. OpenAL does it's internal processing using 32 bit floats. If you use AL_FORMAT_STEREO16 then your CPU has to do extra work to convert the signal to 16 bit, so if you hardware supports it, use 32 bit. In fact OpenAL should automatically fall back to 16 bit if 32 bit doesn't work.
• excludefx is the line that fixes the stuttering for you. You're telling OpenAL not to use these sound effects, they are responsible for high CPU use which makes your Spring dramatically drop in performance into an unplayable state.
• Using mmap should reduce latency and CPU consumption. If your system doesn't support it, OpenAL should fall back to non-mmap mode.
• Try the commented out devices if the default one doesn't work for you. To find out your choices for the plughw: option, try these commands:

  Code: Select all

  cat /proc/asound/cards
  cat /proc/asound/devices
  aplay -l
  aplay -L

Now run Spring again, and hopefully you'll be back to wasting hours of your life doing things no less meaningless than your whole existence! Yay!

[Cheesecan]

Be sure cmake ccflags setup right. Could be compiling without sse.

[Pithikos]

Thanks guys!! This fixed my problem. I was running on 100%++ CPU and lagging like hell. Never thought it could be an issue with sound.