Mouse movements making the game stutter and crash

[Tramadollie]

Hey there. First and foremost, love the team's work and the mod. I recently changed my PC and upgraded to a Beefy system (9800X3D + RX 7900 XTX with 32 gigs of ram) and got an issue that I didn't have with my old system (2600X + RTX2060 + 16gigs)

I got an issue with the game stuttering and crashing when I move the mouse around. The issue happens regardless of if I'm in Fullscreen or in Windowed mode. At first I thought I'd just go and only use my keyboard or my controller to play the game since the issue only happens when I'm moving the mouse around but I think I found a weird fix? (At least one that works as I'm writing this issue) So less than a complaint for the mod not working, I'm mostly here to report on a bizarre solution I stumbled upon while testing.

It's quite simple, I just changed my Monitor's refresh rate. I have an oled monitor that goes up to 240hz but I don't use this refresh rate all the time to save some energy and I was running my monitor at 180 when experiencing this crash. At first I thought it was because the game is not supposed to run at such high refresh rate but when testing at 60 it still stuttered a lot. As a last ditch effort I turned my refresh rate to 240hz and.. nothing. Not a stutter in sight.

I was wondering if anyone did experience the same thing as I didn't found anything about this on the support page in the wiki and wanted to offer some help if some people were in the same boat as I was before finding this weird solution.

Thanks a lot for reading, and thanks again for the incredible mod.

[Small edit : After further testing today, it seems the issue is not solved by simply setting de monitor's refresh rate to 240hz (or setting it to the max possible setting for any monitor maybe?) I launched the game today and did make sure to have the refresh rate set up to 240 but I did stutter again. I tried setting the monitor back to 60 and then to 240 and it worked. So maybe it needs to be setup while the game is running? I dunno. If anyone has any insight I'd be glad to hear it)

[drojf]

Hi, this is actually a known issue, although we never figured out how to solve it.

See on our wiki: https://wiki.07th-mod.com/Umineko/Umineko-Part-0-TroubleShooting-and-FAQ/#the-game-has-poor-performance-or-stutter-on-text-and-menus-even-on-high-end-systems

And on the steam forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/406550/discussions/0/2569816316385480858/?tscn=1604006973

If you have a solution that always works then I can add it to the wiki (or even if not 100% sure, if you've done some testing and it seems to help, I will add it).

But I have a question - are you sure it is specifically that you need to set it 240hz while the game is running to fix it?

Have you tried booting the game starting at say, 60hz, then going to 180hz? or starting at 180hz and going back to 60hz etc.

[Tramadollie]

Hey there!

I went back and did a bit more testing to make sure and.. well TL;DR : I'm not sure of anything anymore except that the refresh rate definitely has an impact on the stuttering issue for me at least. I'll share here my method of testing (albeit flawed) and the results.

Firstly, I tested what happens when you increase the refresh rate of the monitor to the closest multiple of 60hz going up in refresh rate. To exclude possible unknowns I did the exact same thing every time. (Launch the game in windowed mode > put it in full screen. Launch the second episode (it's the fastest to get a textbox for me as I'm only at chapter 3 atm) > Shake the mouse in a circular pattern while the textbox scrolls > if stutter there is : changer the refresh rate to the closest multiple of 60hz superior > check again.

Here's the results :
Launch at 60hz : Stutter > Set the refresh rate to 180hz (I skipped over 120hz here because I was eager to test 180 as it was my original display rate at the beginning) > No stutter.
Launch at 120hz : No stutter.
Launch at 144hz : Stutter > Set the refresh rate to 180hz > No stutter.
Launch at 100 hz : No stutter.
Launch at 180 hz : Stutter > Set the refresh rate to 240hz > No stutter.

I then did two control tests and they were both contradictory to my previous experience :
Launch at 60hz : No stutter.
Launch at 240hz : No stutter.

The major issue I see about my method is that I didn't do a reboot between each test and that maybe fucks with the results? I don't know honestly. It could maybe explain the lack of consistency between two launches at 60hz.

I then did the exact same thing but lowered instead of increasing the refresh rate. For testing purposes I tried each time to lower the refresh rate even if I didn't have any issue with stuttering.

Launch at 240hz > No stutter > Set the refresh rate to 180hz > Stutter.
Launch at 180hz > Stutter > Set the refresh rate to 120hz > Stutter + it makes my whole computer laggy. I then tried to lower it further to 60hz and the exact same as the 120hz happened.
Launch at 120hz > No stutter but my second monitor is a bit laggy > Set the refresh rate to 60hz > Stutter.
Launch at 144hz > Stutter > Set the refresh rate to 120hz > Stutter.
Launch at 100hz > No stutter > Set the refresh rate to 60hz > Stutter.

So for me, the only thing really clear about these results is that display rate has an impact and that lowering the refresh rate always made the game lag in a way or the other for me, even if I didn't have any issue at launch. I don't know if someone will be able to interpret these in a comprehensible way but I certainly can't.

[drojf]

Thanks for the detailed testing.

Super weird...but I guess we can recommend starting the game at 60hz, then increasing the refresh rate (NOT lowering it) if you have stutter.

I wonder if this issue in the first place only affects people with high refresh rate monitors...I don't remember anyone mentioning what refresh rate they used so I don't have any data (or maybe I just forgot...). Then a workaround could be to trick the game that you only have 60hz available (I'm guessing there are various existing workarounds for games which don't work correctly at high framerates).

I also always thought this was a Nvidia problem, but perhaps it is an engine problem related to high refresh rates.

Some other things you could try:

• Do you have an old monitor which is 60hz only? then you could confirm or rule out that it is related to high refresh rates.
• If you know how, try to force vsync on or off in AMD control panel for Umineko (seeing as the issue is framerate related)

I understand if you want to stop testing here, because it must have taken quite a while to perform the tests in your previous comment.

[TellowKrinkle]

See on our wiki: https://wiki.07th-mod.com/Umineko/Umineko-Part-0-TroubleShooting-and-FAQ/#the-game-has-poor-performance-or-stutter-on-text-and-menus-even-on-high-end-systems

BTW was that not fixed by 07th-mod/ponscripter-fork@fd57193?

[TellowKrinkle]

And can you run with --record-render-time somefile.csv, make it lag, and post the resulting file?

[drojf]

Ah I completely forgot and didn't record it on that wiki issue.

Although if I did put it on the wiki, I would have to note that quite a few users have reported issues with the experimental exe (mainly crashes at certain points in the game, where I have to disable some graphics/sprite movement calls, otherwise they can't proceed past that part of the game)

So if there is a way around it otherwise, that would still be useful.

[Tramadollie]

Okay, so I did a bit more testing with the Vsync in Adrenalin and with a second monitor locked to 60hz.

First I tried the monitor tech and it still did lag and stutter, so no improvements here!
Then I did two series of test, one with the Vsync forced by Adrenalin and the second one with nothing changed as a control group for the experiment.

With Vsync turned on : 60hz > Stutter / 120hz > No stutter / 180hz > Stutter / 240hz > No stutter
Without Vsync : 60hz > Stutter / 120hz > No stutter / 180hz > Stutter / 240hz > No stutter.

So, the Vsync didn't change anything either. I'm perplexed as why the 240 and 120 frequencies are fine since I did yesterday's testing.

I'm sorry but I'm pretty much illiterate when it comes to coding and I don't understand what " run with --record-render-time somefile.csv " means. I'm gonna need a bit more explanation to be able to do that!

[TellowKrinkle]

So if there is a way around it otherwise, that would still be useful.

I don't think so, the only way to fix it is to modify the exe, so unless you want to binary patch the current exe to add the code in that and 07th-mod/ponscripter-fork@cdb7ee9, I don't think we can fix it without using our ponscripter-fork

If you have any consistent reproductions (or a stack trace) of the crashes I'd be happy to look into those though.

I'm sorry but I'm pretty much illiterate when it comes to coding and I don't understand what " run with --record-render-time somefile.csv " means. I'm gonna need a bit more explanation to be able to do that!

It sounds like we aren't shipping the modified engine anyways (which is what adds the --record-render-times option), so the first step would be to install https://github.com/07th-mod/ponscripter-fork/releases/tag/v4.0.0 by downloading the release, renaming the ponscr.exe to match the name of the main exe, renaming the existing exe to back it up, and putting the new one in its place.

If that doesn't fix things, create an empty text/csv file, then open cmd, drag the new exe onto it to paste its path, then add a space, --record-render-time, another space, and drag on the empty file, then press enter. It should launch the game, and when you're done reproducing everything, close it and the text file should be filled with logs of render times.

[drojf]

I updated the ponscripter-umineko repo just now, so that the "experimental exe" option will install the latest ponscripter-fork version (v4.0.0). Admittedly you still need to backup the existing executable manually so it's not much different.

If you want to install using the installer, firstly backup your existing executable:

• Navigate to the game folder, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Umineko
• Backup your existing Umineko1to4.exe (in case you need to revert it later)

Now install the new executable:

• Run the 07th-mod the installer
• Navigate to Umineko
• Choose the Windows Experimental Engine option:

• Scroll to the bottom and click "Start Update"
• Wait for install to complete successfully
• Launch the game and check if the bug is fixed

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If the bug is not fixed, follow tellowkrinkles instructions, starting from "If that doesn't fix things, create an empty text/csv file, ...". I suspect the bug would be fixed though.

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the only way to fix it is to modify the exe

ah ok, I should note that down in the FAQ as well

If you have any consistent reproductions (or a stack trace) of the crashes I'd be happy to look into those though.

ok, I'll keep that in mind for next time, I was kind of recording it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sBlhH3OIW4xmJCPijSbbRA1aZh0ajG8Yo0eFpvIkkcQ/edit?gid=0#gid=0 , but I guess not that many people use the experimental exe in the first place, so I dont have much data. Or it could be the only people who report about it are the ones with issues (e.g. on my own computer I can't reproduce their crashes), so the data could be biased in that way.

if @Tramadollie plays through the game using the experimental exe, then we can get some data from that playthrough.