Been having some issues since 1.2's release

[WaRTF]

Okay, so i don't really know how to word it right. But there's three issues I've been having in MSC.

First, the reconencting thing after you votemap/transition to other area broke to me. Now it requires me to manually disconnect before the mapchange. Otherwise im stuck in mainmenu with console open, unable to do anything for 5+ minutes. This has started happening since previous patch.

Then, Each time i connect/reconnect/transition/change map, I get an error saying "Couldn't fetch valid FP profile"

Lastly, My bloom works backwards. Instead of making everything look nicer/brighter. It darkens the game without adding any bloom.

 

[zeus9860]

Yesterday i've got some similiar issue on mapchange, i did alt+tab, game was minimized and when people did mapchange, i opened the game and it was stuck on the menu without reconnecting like it was meant to, it was with console opened and also displaying the usual message when a mapchange occurs.

Now related to bloom, i've seen many weird things, but this looks funny:
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^All that happened when a player connected the server i was on, making my screen get the texture glitch that usually happens with HUD's, but it happened backwards, screen got owned and HUD's were ok. Also turning bloom on/off seemed to fix it or bug it again, each time i changed it.

 

[Thothie]

Looks like only the second bloom level is rendering due to graphics card/OS issues.

Try ms_bloom_darken 0, or cycle the bloom level to max.


"Couldn't fetch valid FP profile" is a new one on me. :\

Reconnecting to servers takes a darn long time now, maybe a bit too long, but wanted to make sure the server had time to reset, so you didn't get the Steam validation error caused by some recent Steam update. Alt-Tabbing while maps are loading is liable to cause all sorts of strange issues as well. Kinda need to rig something up so the time to wait is more consistent between systems (right now it's just a long series of "wait" commands, and how long each "wait" is will vary wildly from system to system.) Really should rig it to give you something to do while you wait - maybe spit some background lore at you or something.

 

[Keldorn]

Is there a way to disable the wait?

I'd rather just hit cancel and wait 10-20 seconds for the server to start up than stare at a you will be connected shortly console message for 3 minutes.

 

[WaRTF]

Looks like only the second bloom level is rendering due to graphics card/OS issues.

Try ms_bloom_darken 0, or cycle the bloom level to max.

That's not what i have really meant.
The bloom doesnt work at all, just blurs the game and makes it darkier.
I meant the blooms is like this(Auto setting on islesofdread) or like this(Max setting, screenshot taken before the update that added the darken thingies)

I'm starting to believe that the "Couldn't fetch valid FP profile" and the bloom issue is related as they both started happening since 1.2 release. However while the bloom thing isn't that annoying(Since i can just turn off my bloom), the error is. Since i can't continue loading until i press "Ok", which doesn't let me go afk for atleast few minutes without getting a timeout after pressing it. To make the matters worse, it appears with each level change.

 

[cartman-2000]

"Couldn't fetch valid FP profile" is what you get when you use a gfx card that doesn't support the pixel shaders used by the bloom pixel shaders, like an old integrated intel gfx(only supports dx7, which doesn't support shaders.), I get this on my laptop too with one of those intel integrated gfx.

The amount of time it takes for the wait's to go through depends on your fps, if you get a very bad fps in the menu then it'll take a long time, for me at 100 fps it only takes about 15-20 seconds for it to reconnect.

I personally don't like any of the bloom stuff that was added(I always run the game with the bloom level set to 0.), made things a lot worse performance wise on my older computers, because of that I wasn't really able to get a playable fps in the mod until I got a new comp a week or 2 ago. And I have graphical issues with it on all of my comps, from corrupted text to corrupted lighting and textures, doesn't really matter what gfx it has, has problems on all of them.

 

[WaRTF]

Well, that solves two of my issues then that i'll just have to deal with.
But is there any way to edit the reconnect script or will i just need to disconnect manually the very moment "traveling to <mapname>" message comes up?

 

[cartman-2000]

you'll have to DC manually before it changes and reconnect after the server comes back up on the next map.

 

[Thothie]

I personally don't like any of the bloom stuff that was added(I always run the game with the bloom level set to 0.), made things a lot worse performance wise on my older computers, because of that I wasn't really able to get a playable fps in the mod until I got a new comp a week or 2 ago. And I have graphical issues with it on all of my comps, from corrupted text to corrupted lighting and textures, doesn't really matter what gfx it has, has problems on all of them.

Should be able to set ms_bloom_level 0 and get your old FPS levels. True I didn't test this with Intel GMA, and I suppose I should have, having a system or three laying around with em. You *might* have to add ms_bloom_level 0 to the config.cfg if it's stopping the game from launching - though it should also stick if you set it in advanced options first.

Bloom is not for the faint of graphics card, but ye should be able to turn it off without issue.

Is there a way to disable the wait?

I'd rather just hit cancel and wait 10-20 seconds for the server to start up than stare at a you will be connected shortly console message for 3 minutes.

Hrmm... The wait script is setup server side and sent to the client. If I could think of a way to grab a cvar from the client first, maybe I could redirect it to an optional custom cfg, but I canna think of a way to do that. :\ If I stuck in a custom cfg for the wait (which would be an idear, could stick in a message of the month or something) there'd still be the issue that it'd get written over every patch. :/

I dunno if write protecting the file would stop the installer from overwriting it.

 

[cartman-2000]

Turning bloom off does very little to increase performance on my old machines, there isn't really a fps difference between the 2, and yes i do have the bloom cvar in my userconfig file to have it off by default. My old amd comp(used to be my main gaming comp) has an ati hd 4650, with or without bloom on HL only uses about 25% of the gpu so it's not really the gfx card in that comp that is causing the low fps but the cpu and the inefficient open gl in the drivers drivers.

 

[Thothie]

Hrmm... Odd. Makes a rather massive difference on my laptop. With it off, it shouldn't be any worse than before the bloommod - it's just adding filters it wouldn't otherwise render. Granted, since its inception, MSC has been really rough on both the GPU/CPU (rougher than any other HL1 mod, to be sure).

Ye can fiddle with the additional settings at the Settings for Low End/OpenGL Fail Puters Thread.

 

[jon50559]

One thing I have noticed, is that when I play MS:C, my first core (since HL is only single-threaded) is always at 100% usage, until I alt-tab or exit. Having bloom on/off makes no difference. There's no performance issues for me, but I just found it strange, as it really shouldn't be happening on my processor.

 

[Thothie]

Bloom shouldn't hit the CPU, SFAIK - although if your graphics drivers are relying on software rendering, as they often do with OpenGL on ATI cards or under Vista/7, then it would. It is checking cvars every frame, but that should be negligible client side, also SFAIK (sent a question for MiB in that regards).

MSC is CPU beast in general though, doubly so, if you're using a listen server. It regularly pegs the CPU at 25% on my main rig (it being a quad-core CPU). HLDS tends to do the same (I keep my HLDS and client on separate cores). So that, sadly, isn't particularly surprising. Alt+Tabbing doesn't suspend the process in anyway, so it'll still be eating the same CPU when in the background. Sadly, there's no way to multi-thread the game and remain compatible with the engine.

 

[jon50559]

You misunderstood me, I think?

Well, I have an nVidia, although I run on Windows 7. MS:C keeps my CPU up against the 100% wall constantly, never dropping unless I alt-tab to my desktop, where it drops to ~6-8%, before it returns to using the entire 100% when I go back in-game. I have a quad-core as well (Intel Q8400). All of this is just observations I've made, and it's a bit weird :?

Not that it's a problem, but I just have no idea why it does this.

 

[cartman-2000]

Half-life and hlds are affinity locked, they will generally only run on your first core. The -noaff flag for the hlds server should disable the affinity lock and allow it to automatically switch to another core, not sure if the flag works on the client too.

I have a core i7 2600k cpu in my main comp and half-life + mods always pegs the first core at 100%, and doesn't really use any of the other cores. Nothing internal to the mod runs in a separate thread, only exception is if a mod added some special thing to it like SC's custom sound engine using fmodex, which runs in a separate thread(as far as I know.).

 

[Thothie]

Half-life and hlds are affinity locked, they will generally only run on your first core. The -noaff flag for the hlds server should disable the affinity lock and allow it to automatically switch to another core, not sure if the flag works on the client too.

I have a core i7 2600k cpu in my main comp and half-life + mods always pegs the first core at 100%, and doesn't really use any of the other cores. Nothing internal to the mod runs in a separate thread, only exception is if a mod added some special thing to it like SC's custom sound engine using fmodex, which runs in a separate thread(as far as I know.).

I use Prio as my alternative task manager, and it seems to set and save the affinity on the HLDS and client just fine. However, I think it was saving just fine way back in the day before I had that - but it maybe a Steam update messed that up.

I'd strongly suggest moving the hl.exe to your "off" core, and setting its priority to high, if it be swamping your CPU (especially on an i7 - jeeze...).

 

[cartman-2000]

lol, it doesn't really impact the overall performance of the computer all that much, even with running the game and a server on the comp at the same time, worse fps I got so far was on an old_helena run at about 40fps and the server it self had minimal lag through out the whole map, the laggiest part oddly was when the orc boss spawns, there's a little bit of a lag spike when that happens, but the horde prior to that doesn't really lag at all. The only way it would present a problem is anything else was locked to the first core to, then those apps would get slowed down a bit.

It seems to be somewhat common for older games to peg out a core when your playing them.

We've sort of derailed the thread a little bit...

I'm not really sure if bloom is properly accelerated by the gfx card on ati cards, it didn't seem to make much of a difference on my old comp with the ati card, it's either properly accelerated by that or it still is running with bloom even when it's set to 0. Ati cards seem to do better with open gl games that use pixel shaders then ones that don't, but the performance is still a bit less then what you got with 2007 drivers and older on windows xp.

 

[Thothie]

Well, Windows puts all its high priority tasks on Core #0 - this includes your graphic drivers. If your graphic drivers are working overtime from software rendering, they'll compete with MSC for system resources, thus slowing everything down. You can't move the graphic drivers to another core, but you *can* move MSC, thus freeing your graphic drivers and MSC from the terminal tangle.

It makes a huge difference, regardless of system power, as a lot of Windows tasks out-prioritize everything else, thus putting MSC on effective hold against its own requests, if it's on the same CPU.

Think I recommended this to someone before, but they lacked the CPU to take advantage of it at the time - unlike yourself.

 

[cartman-2000]

I didn't really notice any difference in performance in running hl on my computer, when locking it to some other physical core on my computer.

I have a nvidia card in my new comp(and windows 7), and those drivers do support multithreading, not sure how much hl would benefit from it, but it might be doing some of the work on the other cores, I see the cpu usage on the 3 other physical cores in my comp go upto about 5-10% cpu usage when running hl, and the main core cpu usage isn't really at anymore then 10-20%(the server I have running on the comp goes to main core if there isn't something running on it pegging that core.). My HT cores sit idle most of the time, even when running both the server and playing on it at the same time.

For Ati cards, I think multithreading might be disabled by default, and would have to be turned on manually either through ati tray tools or a registry edit.

Here's some screens from the task manager with hl running.

No setting of the affinity, CPU usage isn't actually at 100% on core #0, but close to it.
http://imagehost.cartman-2000.net/share ... E99F2.html

Setting the affinity to core #2.
http://imagehost.cartman-2000.net/share ... E99F2.html

Setting the affinity then unsetting it.
http://imagehost.cartman-2000.net/share ... E99F2.html

edit:
After a bit more testing I actually get better fps by about 10-15%, by not messing around with the affinity at all of the game, if I lock it to a single core I loose about that much in fps, and the fps is still not as high if I unlock it after it's been locked to one core.