Choppy gameplay

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Hi!

I've noticed that a problem like this have been posted before but I decided to start a new thread since I think my problem is kind of unique (not trying to brag here... ), so here it is...

I practically ALWAYS suffer from choppy gameplay; not just when I'm scrolling. The game runs OK up to about 2000 inhabitans, but then the choppyness/stuttering/lagging begins. By the time I reach a couple of ten thousands it becomes practically unplayable.

I would like to point out that I have tried the following to improve gameplay:

- Ingame settings (hardware/software rendering, other settings high-low/on-off)

- Change game files (the graphic card .sgr ones)

- Change nVidia settings

- Shortcut parameters

These are all the solutions I could find on any site and I've tried them all with practically no improvement.

This is my setup:

Simcity 4 + Rush Hour, latest patch (v.1.1.638), plus a bunch of plugins/mods (worth about 360MB's). The game is installed on the 'D' drive.

Windows 7 Pro (x64)

Intel i5-750

8GB RAM

GeForce GTX470

So if anyone could please help me figuring out what the problem could possibly be, I'd be much obliged.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Fascinating. Your machine is about equivalent to mine except I have ATI graphics and ATI 64-bit processors. I start getting lag around 125,000 Sims and this is pretty standard for the engine I am running. The slowdown is exponential because of the algorithms in the program that just have to do more as the number of objects grow.

The stuttering you describe is unusual, so I wonder if you are having some kind of memory problem. How big is your virtual memory (swap file)? If you are getting paged, it could be due to some other program that is eating your CPUs. Are you running a big virus scanner or some other large program in the background? If so, why not drop your Internet link and discontinue other programs while you are playing? One program of note is the Norton protection suite, which I have found is very machine intensive at times.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply!

I've got the page file disabled. Also, the only programs that could really use the cpu running in the background are WMP and/or iTunes and Firefox. As for internet security, I'm only running Avast antivirus.

Personally I don't think any of these contribute to the problem I'm experiencing. I've always had the same experience playing the game in the past years on my older PC's.

Do you reckon enabling page file again would improve gameplay?

[skylerracer23 71]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply!

I've got the page file disabled. Also, the only programs that could really use the cpu running in the background are WMP and/or iTunes and Firefox. As for internet security, I'm only running Avast antivirus.

Personally I don't think any of these contribute to the problem I'm experiencing. I've always had the same experience playing the game in the past years on my older PC's.

Do you reckon enabling page file again would improve gameplay?

well thats your problem. WMP and iTunes TAKE A LOT OF RAM. trust me, if your not using them, then close em. Firefox is ok in terms of leaving it up unless you are downloading something ( it will just slow the download speed) your Antivrus is another thing, make sure your not scaning anything. Also, As a little handy tip close out any Windows gagets, they cause a slowdown thats blind to the eye. thats all I know. hope it works

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Thanks for your reply Skyler, but sadly I don't think that's is causing my problem either. RAM usage never exceeds 35% when using those programs at the same time and when I've also loaded a village (+/- 3000 sims). I don't have any gadgets running and I don't scan while playing games...

EDIT:

Also CPU usage stays quite low when running all this. SimCity is running on core #1, that one is quite heavily used pretty much all the time when the game is running. It also happens when it's running on any of the other cores. I have had programs in the past that ran very choppy when the core they were on was regularly at 100%. I don't know why SimCity would take up the full 100% though.

My problem persists if it's (trying) to run on all four cores by the way. Even though not one of them is at 100%...

  Edited May 2, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I would enable your virtual memory for openers. And you are running too much junk, so I would cut that down, even if you think firefox isn't doing anything, it is a memory and CPU hog. You should use the -CPUCount:1 option on the command line for SimCity 4 to force it to use only one core, ever. The dispatching algorithm for processors in Windows has been known to be a little dicey.

If you can, put your swap file on a separate device (physical) from the Program Files directory, and make it fixed size at about double the size of your RAM. Operating systems these days want a lot of elbow room. My swap has two whole partitions (23.5 GB). SC4 runs smoothly for me until I get up to around 125K Sims, but due to a software limitation on my drivers I have to run in software rendering.

And yes, SC4 will run 100% CPU a lot of the time. The program is very CPU intensive. Most programs are I/O intensive, but if you ran a proper monitor you would find that you are getting more timer run outs than anything with SC4. It hardly ever does any synchronous I/O except when saving or loading a city. The graphics are run by the GPU, even in software mode. Also, do not set high priority for SC4. It doesn't need it if you give it a single core. It is not multi-threaded and cannot be.

  Edited May 2, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Alright, I have pagefile enabled again, minimum size is twice the RAM, max. is four times. I've actually created a seperate partition for it on a different physical drive.

I closed all other programs and I've got the -cpucount:1 in there. Again, it seems only a little better. I still think performance could and should be a lot better though.

Tell me, don't you have any lag at all until you hit 125000, or or do you already have some early on in the game? But again; in my case it's already unplayable at a couple of ten-thousand.

What is it exactly that makes the game lag? A lot of props? Inhabitants? Particles?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Alright, I have pagefile enabled again, minimum size is twice the RAM, max. is four times. I've actually created a seperate partition for it on a different physical drive.

I closed all other programs and I've got the -cpucount:1 in there. Again, it seems only a little better. I still think performance could and should be a lot better though.

Tell me, don't you have any lag at all until you hit 125000, or or do you already have some early on in the game? But again; in my case it's already unplayable at a couple of ten-thousand.

What is it exactly that makes the game lag? A lot of props? Inhabitants? Particles?

Don't let windows control the size of your swap file. It will wind up checker-boarded and have many extents. This is one of the real drawbacks of NTFS. You should also run disk cleanup and defrag your drives once a week.

I don't run at Cheetah speed which could well be your problem. At this speed it is easy to over run the simulation and create some lag and a lowered frame rate for the graphics. If you are running on Cheetah, shift down and see what happens. This is, after all, a leisure time activity and there is no need to act like a type A personality as mayor. With the amount of RAM you have the game should not swap unless you have a very large plugin suite. Take a look at the in-core size of the game if you can.

Because I run Linux, I can run my System Monitor on a separate desktop without disturbing the game. It doesn't know I've switched out to another instance of the desktop. Just brought it up with a city having 150K Sims, lots of network types and good and busy. It is occupying about 500MB of RAM but has a map into 2.7 GB of virtual. Effectively idle it is using 76% of one CPU. If you would like to see my full configuration look at http://www.ezlink.ca/~jwinterton/Hardware2.html

[Mister Giggles 310]

SimCity4Mayor:

Two options I can think of:

1: Disable shadows. These are CPU hogs.

2: Re-install video card drivers. Given how powerful your video card is, something may have gone wrong with installing the drivers/something else if you're having lag this bad.

Your computer is vastly superior to mine, so the problems you're experiencing are not normal by any means. I've had cities upwards of 10 million sims and the lag I experience is somewhat low.

Nonny:

Don't let windows control the size of your swap file. It will wind up checker-boarded and have many extents. This is one of the real drawbacks of NTFS.

Older versions of Windows didn't handle the pagefile efficiently. Since Vista, this has been remedied. Vista/7 is MUCH better at handling memory than 9x/XP, and you no longer need to follow a "Twice as much memory" kind of rule for the pagefile to make up for the operating system's inadequacies. The more physical ram you have, the less important a pagefile is. I personally recommend just letting Windows handle it, unless you want to save some hard drive space by shrinking it.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

@ Nonny Moose:

I've set the pagefile manually and I clean up and defrag my disks about once a month. I also clean up the registry a lot because a messed up registry also causes a major slowdown

And always running the game at it's slowest speed; I don't like the higher ones.

As I mentioned before I only have a bout 360MB's worth of plugins so that shouldn't cause a major slowdown I guess.. And what do you mean by "the in-core size of the game"? The space it takes up in the RAM?

@Mister Giggles:

I've tried changing the in-game settings (see first post), no joy... And I've also tried reïnstalling the video card drivers already. This thread is really something of a last resort since I've already tried so many things. I'm really annoyed at the fact that my PC should easily be able to run this game but never seem to do so.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not trying to shoot down all of your tips and advices. In fact, they're much appreciated.

On a side note, I once had an AMD Athlon X2 system with a Geforce 6600GT, 4GB's of RAM. That PC also didn't run SC4 properly... :S

A later system, Intel E-5500, GeForce 285GTX and also 8GB's of ram, same story...

[Mister Giggles 310]

That's quite alright...I'm just pulling things out of my hat, as normally what you've done fixes the problems you describe.

On a side note, I once had an AMD Athlon X2 system with a Geforce 6600GT, 4GB's of RAM. That PC also didn't run SC4 properly... :S

This system is almost identical to my own, and as before, it runs SC4 fine. Since you've encountered the same problem on 3 completely different systems, I am led to believe a program you've installed/came pre-installed on each system is causing the issue.

Nonny refers to the hardware footprint the game is taking up while running (In-core size of the game). Task manager will tell you the CPU usage and the RAM usage, including the pagefile. Although, I can predict SC4 will be using nowhere near 8 gigs (It can't), nor will it be using close to its 2 gig max (Max for 32-bit programs).

Even if every single file in the game was loaded into memory, you're only looking at roughly 1.6 gigs worth of memory usage (Game files + your plugins).

  Edited May 2, 2012 by Mister Giggles  

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Those PC's were years ago, I'm not using the same programs as I did back then. I've had more PC's (or different configurations of hardware) and SC never, ever seemed to run as I expected it to.

I build and install all my PC's myself so I know what's running on my PC's. For as far as I can tell there shouldn't be anything on there that can cause trouble. In fact, I've only reïnstalled my PC in january so this is a pretty clean installation.

My PC can run BF3 (and many other games) without any trouble so I don't think it's a program on my machine that causes my problems.

[Mister Giggles 310]

You've had MORE PCs, none of which have worked with SC4? That quantity of hardware will not so fail so consistently with one piece of software, not even a buggy mess like SC4 can be.

Some program you're installing or some configuration change you're making is causing the issue. Whatever it is, it's involved every single system you've built and put SC4 on. I don't see another logical explanation.

[ArchangelMichael 51]

@SimCity4Mayor -- You say you've changed Nvidia settings. What did you change? Have you tried underclocking your GPU? I have a pretty old system (built and burned-in NINE years ago and still running fine... yes, I'm poor), but MechWarrior 3 didn't run well on it until I read somewhere that just about any hardware newer than the game will process the game data too quickly for the game itself to keep up. Throttling down my GPU to a very low setting solved the problem. Maybe this would work for your SC4 lag.

If you're up for a lengthy experiment, slice off a partition for Linux Mint, install Wine, and see if SC4 gives you the same trouble as it does in Windows.

As a last resort, you could hunt down a single-core P4 system (like my old clunker) for legacy gaming. Thank the 8-bit Gods for FCEUX!

[-JD- 41]

Perhaps your copy of SC4 is corrupt? That makes more sense to me since you've tried it with so many different machines and all with the same results. It's definitely worth a look

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

@Mister Giggles:

I would like for that to be the issue because it would be easy to resolve. But I really don't see how? How can every hardware configuration I had or some program cause my touble? I really don't think I'm using the same software as say, 6 years ago. But are there any known concflicting programs?

@ArchangelMichael:

I'm not a tweaker. I like working on PC's but I've always kept my hands off over- and underclocking. And the nVidia stettings I've changed are the settings for SimCity only. I can take a look into Linux I suppose, but I'm going to need to some for that. I'm not really a Linux expert.

@JD:

The copies (SC + RH) I have are the original CD's that I bought on the release dates, they are all still in mint condition. Plus, the game won't update if any files are corrupt and I can install updates.

EDIT:

I think I may have made a bit of a discovery. When I loaded one of the 'standard' cities (the biggest one in 'Berlin') and set the speed to cheetah it ran perfectly fine. In about a minute the city went to 30000 Sims, but the choppyness nearly wasn't there at all, even when scrolling. I tend to use a lot of parks packed with trees in my own cities... Maybe it's a stupid question, but could this be (part) of the problem?

2nd EDIT:

I've checked it out already, I've deleted all those tree lots from my city and replaced some of them with a palm tree lot. Seems to make a very big difference. So I should probably stop using those tree lots.

That's a major bummer for me because I like those tree lots to seperate roads and neighbourhoods and for building forests...

  Edited May 3, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Couple of things that haven't been mentioned in the game: Turn off waves and clouds if you haven't. These are great, useless CPU eaters.

Now, about your graphics hardware: SC4 does not recognize nor use any advanced 3D features. Make sure all of them are set to 'application selected' or equivalent language. Many graphics cards that have additional features, even anti-aliasing, can crash the game.

If you are running in hardware mode, try software rendering and vice versa.

[ArchangelMichael 51]

Adjusting Nvidia GPU and memory clock speeds is easy with Nvidia System Tools. Your card is supported. It adds some additional options to the Nvidia control panel, particularly the "Performance" section. Under Performance ==> Device settings, use the sliders to create a custom profile with very low settings. Click "Test" and wait for it to test the settings, then "Save to Profile" if everyting passes (fiddle with it some more if it doesn't, but that's not likely if you're underclocking). Name the profile "SC4" or something related to the game that you'll remember. Now go to Performance ==> Profile policies and do the following:

1. Check the box next to "Load this Profile"

2. Click the "Profile" hyperlink in the middle-right box (under "Take these actions:") and choose the SC4 profile you just created.

3. Click "Game is loaded" in the middle-left box to highlight it, then click the arrow button to add the condition to the middle-right box.

4. Click the "Game" hyperlink that now appears in the middle-right box (under "When these conditions meet:") and add SimCity4.

5. Click the Accept button and the new profile policy will appear below in the "Rules" box.

6. Follow the steps above with "Game is stopped" to create a rule that reinstates your userdflt.nsu profile when you exit the game.

Nvidia System Tools comes with a set of system monitors, but I don't care for them. Maybe you'll like them, but I keep tabs on my video card with GPU-Z. It will tell you at what frequencies it's running, display the temperature, and monitor the hardware load.

[Mister Giggles 310]

@Mister Giggles:

I would like for that to be the issue because it would be easy to resolve. But I really don't see how? How can every hardware configuration I had or some program cause my touble? I really don't think I'm using the same software as say, 6 years ago. But are there any known concflicting programs?

Not that I am aware of, no. It would have to be a very subtle conflict, since every other game of yours works fine. With more information, though, I now have something else to desperately cling too.

Tree lots: I find it queer that the vanilla cities work correctly, whereas the self-built cities do not. Despite the fact that the tree lot files slow you down, I'm not sure they're the problem...perhaps they only exasperate the situation.

1: Try to plop a bunch of your tree lots in the vanilla city. See what happens. If it slows down...

2: Remove all your plugins, start a brand new city, and see if it slows down. If not...

3: Add in ONLY the tree lots and their dependencies, and plop a bunch of them. See if it slows down.

The last thing you can do to confirm, beyond shadow of a doubt, that the tree lots are causing a problem: Make a big city, vanilla city. 500,000+, every corner of a large tile used. If there's no (major) slowdown, add in your tree lots. If it's not the tree lots, then it's possible something ELSE in your plugins folder is causing the problem.

  Edited May 3, 2012 by Mister Giggles  

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

@Nonny Moose:

I already tried changing (all) ingame settings, that doesn't help. And in nVidia's control panel I've also already set everything I can to application controlled.

@ArchangelMichael:

Thanks, I will try that! Will let you know what results I get.

@Mister Giggles:

I'm pretty sure it's the tree lots that cause (some to most of) the trouble. Because when I ran that city in Berlin I did absolutely nothing besides letting the tim run on cheetah. Didn't zone or plop anything. I'll try what you suggested.

EDIT:

So I've just built a city of 120000 Sims in 15 minutes, using the Rush Hour tutorial city as a base. Only plugins used were some growable buildings and ordinances. However, all plugins were still loaded. I used just roads, no public transport. Ran it at cheetah speed continuously, no lag... Just some occaisional stuttering, must have got something to do with the plugins I use. I really think it's the tree lots.

  Edited May 3, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[Mister Giggles 310]

Intriguing. Is it a lot you made yourself, or is it one you downloaded? If the latter, could you link to it? If the former, could you attach the lot file to a post and link to the dependencies? I want to test this.

  Edited May 4, 2012 by Mister Giggles  

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

They are downloaded,

Before my current installation I used a forest lot made by PEG. I can't find that one on the STEX.

EDIT:

I'd like to remind you that I use them quite extensively.

And I've just modified the 1 tile lot; I've deleted all the trees on the lot and instead, I've added just one prop family. I deleted all of the original lots in one of my cities and plopped the modifed one down instead. City worked like a charm afterwards. Apparently, my SC can't handle lots of trees (on a lot).

I also have all other programs running again while playing SimCity... No lag while not using those lots.

I've also tired the 1x1 lot with 5 of the same prop families and plopped them down, game still running fine.

  Edited May 4, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You can recover your tree mod from SimPeg.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Thanks, but I don't hink I'm going to need PEG's forests anymore. Since I've modified THIA's ones I've got a city running with forests.

One thing though, I may have gotten the Rush Hour tutorial city to work with lots of Sims, but thats only a medium tile city. When I'm running a city of 60000 Sims in a large tile (in a custom region) my pc does seem to be in a bit of trouble even though I don't use the tree lots.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The number of Sims is only a basic indicator of the density of the simulation. If you have reached the knee of the simulation exponential curve, things will only get slower and slower. I hope you are using the -CPUCount:1 option to cut down on switching, and have killed any onerous background processes. This program can eat a processor completely, and since it is memory intensive with little, if any, I/O will just run out its time-slice continuously.

You might get better performance from a satisfaction view point by running at a lower simulation speed. This gives the processor more time for things like updating the frame buffers.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

I am using -cpucount:1 and as few programs as possible and running the game at it's slowest speed most of the time. I rarely run it at cheetah. But as I've posted here before the game/my PC can actually handle a city of 120000 Sims at cheetah. But it was only a medium tile and Rush Hour city.

  Edited May 5, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I've started to notice considerable lag running at turtle when the population gets to around 150,000 on my machine. I have to run software rendering because a glitch in the fglrx driver which fails to cooperate fully with the wine layer (*sob*). That's life, I guess.

In order to go any better I'd need a faster processor. Mine is currently a dual Athlon X2 running at 800 MHz. Since I am past the knee of the simulation curve, I would not bet a faster processor would solve this for long.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

What exactly IS the 'knee' of the simulation curve? Can it be calculated and/or is it measurable, other than via laggy gameplay?

You've talked about algorithms and exponential slowdown before. But can you explain to me in layman's terms what you mean by that? I'm not a native English speaker. I do think I know quite a lot of English but this goes over my head.

I still think it's got something to do with lots that have got lots of trees on them or something... I managed to create a city of +/- 650000(!) Sims with my personalized tree lots. And the game is running fine most of the time. It's when I scroll through the residential and commercial zones that it's lagging kind of bad. I'd like to point out that I haven't used the tree lots a lot in this city though.

  Edited May 6, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

What exactly IS the 'knee' of the simulation curve? Can it be calculated and/or is it measurable, other than via laggy gameplay?

You've talked about algorithms and exponential slowdown before. But can you explain to me in layman's terms what you mean by that? I'm not a native English speaker. I do think I know quite a lot of English but this goes over my head.

I still think it's got something to do with lots that have got lots of trees on them or something... I managed to create a city of +/- 650000(!) Sims with my personalized tree lots. And the game is running fine most of the time. It's when I scroll through the residential and commercial zones that it's lagging kind of bad. I'd like to point out that I haven't used the tree lots a lot in this city though.

Now a lot of this will depend on your knowledge of mathematics. The simulation is a finite automaton which must account for every object in the game, and therefore visits each object programmatically. As the number of objects grows the game gets more and more loaded and uses more CPU as a consequence. The curve is an exponential hyperbola of the form

y=axe^bx

Where a and b are Finagle's constants of variable correctness, y is the number of CPU cycles for one pass of the simulation and x is the number of objects to be considered (including trees, by the way). The constants a and b are imponderables because we don't have the source code for the algorithm.

Graphically, this curve starts out as a rather low slope moving in the positive x-axis direction but as the CPU usage approaches then reaches 100 percent the slope turns upward (at the knee) and climbs for infinity.

Now scrolling exacerbates this effect by demanding a full redraw of the screen at each step (there are six click stops here) if you zoom, and a finite number of steps if you scroll depending on the number of pixels in the direction of the scroll. In any case, the graphics section of the algorithm is particularly stressed at the expense of the rest of the program. Scrolling and zooming performance is somewhat relieved by the use of hardware rendering mode when the GPU coprocessor can take some of the load off the CPU.

I have a particular problem with a capability of my windows intercept layer on Linux which forces me to run on software rendering, so I see this problem quite a bit. However, I have simply reconciled my play to small towns scattered across large tiles. This has proved to be quite satisfying. Currently my largest city is running around 250,000 Sims, but it is attached to a rather fully populated region containing around 650,000 Sims in many farming and minor industrial towns. I have given up the impractical people heaps because I no longer believe they are sustainable even in a European context of over crowding. I find I have a leaning towards more green space, parks, and playgrounds rather than megalopolis aggregations.

[SimCity4Mayor 0]

Not really layman's terms, are they? But thanks anyway... I'm convinced my problems were caused by the tree lots for a very big part. By using them way less and 'my own versions', the lag seems to be reduced greatly. However, I'm still curious about Mister Giggles' experiences with the original lots...

  Edited May 8, 2012 by SimCity4Mayor