Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Technical problems stuttering due to camera linked to animation

Hello,

I downloaded the demo of the Divinity 2 to see how it would run on my machine (saw the screen shots for Dragon Knight Saga on Steam and it looked really cool!). Anyways, i noticed right away that there are micro stutters all over the game.

At first i thought it was the settings. Lowered everything, same thing. Tried all the usual tweaks on the forums, etc...and those micro stutters are always there. Btw, i'm playing on a very powerful and clean PC (only used for games and barely any services are running).

Spec:

i980
12 Gigs of DDR3 166 RAM
Triple GTX 480 SLI
Velociraptor Harddrives in Raid 0 for fast read/write

Upon closer look, the problem is not with the engine, but with the camera. Currently, the camera is directly linked to the player's animations. The original animations for walking, running, and especially jumping, were not animated smoothly and exported without smoothing. As a result, the framerate is high (i get a constant 60fps), but the stuttering appears. This is why so many people are complaining about it (again, not micro loading, but super fine-micro stuttering).

This problem can be fixed by unlinking the camera and giving it its own follow path (or insert a smooth curve into the code...which is the easier solution).

anyways, just my 2 cents. Otherwise, great looking game and i look forward to buying it once the stuttering is fixed. Btw, is there a demo for DKS?

thanks,

They are in the process of finishing up the demo for DKS.

Some of the animations in D2:ED were updated, but I don't recall if that was before or after the demo was made.


Welcome to the forum.

That problem is well known.

Like Raze said, the demo for DKS should come out soon (but how soon ?), and that problem is supposed to be solved in it.
So we just have to wait a bit to see if it is completely solved

wasnt the 30 fps cap supposed to fix this stuttering crap? real agitating that i go pay for a game that has stupid fps caps in place to fix problems massive amounts of people experience, and it doesn't fix the problem at all

The cap was intended to fix stuttering problems and slow mouse responses in menus that some people had, which it did in at least some cases. Obviously it wasn't 100% effective, but then every case of stuttering probably didn't have the exact same cause.

Larian is testing the hotfix for the fps cap tomorrow, and if all goes will it will be released then, as well.

thats actually really great IF it works. this problem was persistent entirely through d2:ed and its still persistent, so obviously i have my doubts about how well this hotfix will work. should i have faith, i don't think so judging by the general "fix" attempts. (as in, hardly cared about in the previous and still not fixed in the new release)


oh and my menus DO run better, not slowly and stuttery. well i lied actually, still slow but doesn't stutter.

glad to hear that the devs are fixing this problem.

I hope they are not just re-animating the movement to be smoother, but rather completely overhaul the camera system. This direct camera-player link is not a solution.

It's a shame because the game looks really nice and i love the old-school RPG feel. But the stuttering makes it unplayable and actually gave me a headache after about 20mins. Had to uninstall it last night.

Before this spirals out of control let me just say that camera and animation are NOT linked.

The stuttering feeling is part of a very complicated threading issue that we are spending a lot of time and resources on trying to fix. The 30 fps cap takes away the stuttering for a lot of cases.

We are however creating a patch with which the player can set the fps cap to what they please or even turn it off. This might bring back those stuttering issues so it's no deus ex machina.

On the other hand we are still actively searching for a cleaner solution but I can give no ETA on that.

Even with the newest hotfix it still stutter no matter what details or resolution I set

The hotfix was not intended to deal with stuttering, it allows the removal of the FPS cap. The cap was a fix for the stuttering, that worked in many, though not all, cases.

just bought the game couple days ago and without giving away spoilers im at the vanishing platforms in some cave, this issue i have with video stuttering is by the time i turn around after what most would call a cutscene that mother frickin platforms are gone ! I am not a reactive type gamer(arcade games are painful to play) and my system is fine, game runs great on a 5770, I got to the top platform via quicksave and keep trying. So after trying this on several settings even lowered graphic resolution. 20+ quickloads later I managed to jump onto the first disppearing platform only to have it vanish. I play many other games including a couple MMOs and never had a problem like this.. so quit with the dumbshit vanishing crap I dont want to play arcade games

If it wasnt for the crap reward I finally got or the game locking up my video card or the arcade style BS I would not have posted here. but I seriously think its an issue due to video stutter like the OP said. NO OTHER BETTER MADE GAMES HAVE THIS ISSUE!

I've used old solution (funny but help with stuttering). It worked with Ego Draconis, and now work with DKS (which has lower stuttering so after my solution it's almost invisible). Download and install opera browser (I have 1010) and run it and minimze to tray. Then launch DKS. Stuttering is minimized

btw I have not ruled out the stutter could be caused by a mouse issue

Prehaps that is helping because Opera is using one of the other cores, making the game use fewer? I think the hotfix lets you turn off the use of additional cores, if so maybe that would help you?

LOL you couldnt pay me to install opera...

Nope it's not helping to turn of 1 core.

can someone with a fast machine confirm if the new hotfix fixes the stuttering? I wanna buy DKS this weekend.

I get a constant 60fps in the demo (never even moves to 59)...but the stuttering is unbearable.

People in the following thread are reporting that it works for them -

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=423581#Post423581

A demo of DKS will be in a number of weeks and if you're unsure, you can always first try that.

I bought this game off steam during it's initial release on pure impulse.

I saw the screenshots and I played Divine Divinity a long time ago. I enjoyed it so I decided to get this game. The value sounded great, get Eco Draconis with updated graphics and the new Dragon Knight Saga for $40.

Unfortunately I just cannot stand this stutter...It gives me a headache. The game seems promising enough but I have not gotten past the initial area. At first I thought it was my rig until I started researching the problems people were having with this game.

It truly is a shame, I honestly wished you guys would've done more testing before release. Saying "We didn't think it would bother so many people." is ridiculous, the stutter is immediately obvious. To me it's most obvious when I'm running, the terrain stutters. It's not a graphical stutter, the stutter is almost smooth. To me right now this game is broken and unplayable. I payed $40 to participate in a Beta test.

I'm thoroughly disappointed and to be honest this experience will effect my future purchasing decisions for games made by Larian Studios, at least within the first 6 months. (Which also means paying premium "New Game" price)

I will check back periodically in hopes of an official patch that fixes the stutter.

My Rig Specs (I'm running on mostly High, around 75% quality not close to max)

AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0 Ghz Black Edition
4GB Kingston Hyper X DDR 2 1066 RAM
XFX ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB GDDR5 VRAM Overclocked Edition

I'm thoroughly convinced that this stutter is not caused by my hardware. Again, I reemphasize my opinion that Larian Studios should have done much more testing/polishing before releasing this product.

Bit of an old topic here but I can confirm that running applications in the background actually improves the game's stuttering.

Pretty bizarre, but even on my ancient dual-core (opteron 165 oc @ 2.4ghz) having both my firewall (comodo) and browser (firefox) with its five homepage tabs open and minimized before running the game actually eases DKS's stuttering. In-game settings are generally on high, FPS cap at 60, looks great at 1680x1050.