Gunfire stutter?

[Barleyman]

I was playing the Northern Inferno "The Grey Ghost from the East Coast"-scenario last night. This is pretty naval gunfire heavy scenario as only two ships in the scenario have ASuW capable missiles so it comes down to 5 and 8 inch guns mostly. The problem is that on my rig there's some major lag when the shells land, came freezes for 1 second or so, then chugs on for maybe 1 seconds and freezes again. This happens when just 1-2 ships are firing but gets worse if more are engaged.

The only thing I could think of was sound but that's not it.

I've got 5600x with 16GB ram so CMO it shouldn't really be resource starved. The scenario has accurate gunfire enabled which does increase the complexity of the solution but somehow this doesn't seem right.

Is this a known problem?

[Easy301]

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear you're having issues.

The first step is to isolate the issue to either a problem with your system configuration or something that's wrong with CMO.

Does this happen in other scenarios or is it this something you are able to reproduce just in this scenario?

A save file allows us to do this, please upload a save file so those of us with the campaign and the developers can give it a shot and see if we are also seeing the same thing.

If you don't know how to do this the easiest way to is click "Save As" during the scenario when you're encountering this issue, save it to your desktop, go to your desktop and right click the save and select "Send to>Compressed file", you'll notice a new zip file on your desktop, click reply here on the forums and you'll see an attachment section near the bottom of the screen. Browse and attach the file that way.

You may also get a little more engagement posting this in the tech support section, the devs usually try and get to every issue posted there and can ask for various logs and such if needed and you'll get more responses from those well versed in some of the more technical stuff.

Now to the problem: I don't have this campaign but I've never experienced slowdown with ships firing, even multiple ships in a scenario and the hardware you listed should be more than enough for the light unit situation your describing. I also haven't seen this issue reported anytime recently.

CMO oftentimes doesn't like certain background programs this is especially true with overlays. If you have the game on Steam right click the game in your library then click "Manage" and in one of the tabs there you'll see "Disable Steam overlay" try disabling that. This is often related to UI issues but has been the cause of performance issues in the past.

Anything that's causing access delays to those sound files when they are needed to be played can cause stuttering like this, this comes down to once again make sure you have no background programs or antivirus programs running that can interfere with CMO. It's a good test to close everything but the essential background applications down and run the scenario save again and see if it's happening.


Posting a save file here is your best bet but I'd try one more thing, it's all about isolating the issue and finding out what it's not. If you want to make sure it's not an issue with your sound configuration do the following assuming your in Windows 10-

Right click the speaker icon in the Windows task bar and click "Sound devices" or "properties" I forgot which one and the wording exactly and I'm on mobile and not my computer at the moment. Once you're at the right screen you'll see your various input and output devices listed, right click your output device and click "disable" and then run CMO and the scenario save once again. (Start a YouTube video or such first to make sure you disabled the correct sound device) This does as the name implies and disabled your sound device, CMO won't see or use any sound device and you can verify if It helps solve the issue. Don't forget to do the same thing and enable it again when done.

And finally, have you reran the scenario since this happened? I've solved a lot of chugging performance in CMO lately by just restarting the application and running the scenario again this is especially true if I've ran multiple scenarios beforehand. (This may only be a quirk with my system but thought it was worth mentioning) Report back if you've done this when you started experiencing the problem please, I'm curious if just closing and rerunning the scenario solved this issue for you.

Otherwise, we can't do much to help collectively as a community without a save as a place to start, we'd just be guessing what it can be or what can help like I'm doing now.

Not to sound like a broken record or anything but again, give some thought to posting this again or requesting it be moved to the Tech Support so you can get the most help.

Hope some of this helps at least,
Steve.

[Barleyman]

I actually turned off sounds from CMO and that didn't have any effect. Of course I don't know if that actually turns sound off-off or just sets the volume to zero.

As for this happening on other scenarios, well, not many scenarios devolve into mano-a-mano gun-fest, so .. But yes this is the only incident of stutter that I've noticed, otherwise the game runs perfectly fine as long as shells are not flying.

I'll upload a savegame when I'm at home. Disabling Steam overlay and seems like an idea worth trying as well, perhaps also rivatuner as I don't use it anymore.

[thewood1]

I play plenty of scenarios with lots of gunfire. I never really noticed it, but never focused on it. I'll take a quick look and see if any of my scenarios have the issue.

[Dimitris]

This is a known issue, caused by a lag on the refresh of the interactive message log when there is a large number of messages to display.

It is not caused specifically by gunfire, but gun battles are a great way to generate tons of messages (one for each shell hit/miss), so it tends to bring this up.

This has been fixed in the private beta and the fix will very soon be available also in public (part of Tiny).

Possible workarounds in the meantime:
* Hide the message log
* Use the raw/waterfall (non-interactive) message log mode
* Disable weapon-endgame messages (Options --> Message Log)

[Barleyman]

Can I technically speaking upload save of the Northern inferno if you guys don't have the DLC? Does that incur Banhammer of Doom?

[Barleyman]

Possible workarounds in the meantime:
* Hide the message log
* Use the raw/waterfall (non-interactive) message log mode
* Disable weapon-endgame messages (Options --> Message Log)

I'm not actually keeping the log visible but minimized, in case that has any effect. I'll check those other suggestions when I have time to actually fire up CMO!

The contact report is another message spam-flood if you have it open and have active track.

[Barleyman]

Now you broke it! It was working fine when I tried that scenario just now to make a save near action etc. What was changed .. not much. One thing that was maybe different that I was playing with BT headphones while now the audio went out by Nvidia HDMI.

Might also have been that "restart CMO" business. Didn't disable Steam overlay.

[nukkxx5058]

I'm not actually keeping the log visible but minimized, in case that has any effect.

Having the log as raw text in a separate window usually helps a lot (as compared to have it minimized - but sill in interactive mode). Even if minimized, it seems to me that it is operating in the background.

[Barleyman]

I'm not actually keeping the log visible but minimized, in case that has any effect.

Having the log as raw text in a separate window usually helps a lot (as compared to have it minimized - but sill in interactive mode). Even if minimized, it seems to me that it is operating in the background.

How do you put it into raw mode? I tried looking in the settings last night and didn't see anything like that?

[thewood1]

Make sure you don't have any sound enhancement apps like Nahimic running. Those cause a lot of problems in some games. Its outlined in the troubleshooting threads.

[nukkxx5058]

I'm not actually keeping the log visible but minimized, in case that has any effect.

Having the log as raw text in a separate window usually helps a lot (as compared to have it minimized - but sill in interactive mode). Even if minimized, it seems to me that it is operating in the background.

How do you put it into raw mode? I tried looking in the settings last night and didn't see anything like that?

yep, it's not in the settings. Look at the picture below.

raw text.jpg (457.24 KiB) Viewed 942 times

[thewood1]

Its also fairly well explained in the manual...

"The message log can be placed in a separate window by pressing
CTRL-SHIFT-M or via a menu (see 6.2, View, or 6.4, Game
Options Window). In a separate window the message log can be
toggled between the “interactive” view (which has the different
message categories and hover-balloons) and the “raw text” view
found in previous versions of COMMAND (which simply has a
list of detailed text messages arranged in chronological order)."