• You've discovered RedGuides 📕 an EverQuest multi-boxing community 🛡️🧙🗡️. We want you to play several EQ characters at once, come join us and say hello! 👋
  • IS THIS SITE UGLY? Change the look. To dismiss this notice, click the X --->

Problem - Very odd framerate drop/freeze shortly after loading a zone (1 Viewer)

Many_Whelps

WoW was the first MMO
Joined
Jul 22, 2018
RedCents
9,106¢
This is probably not an MQ2 issue, specifically, but I feel like the people who read this forum are more informed and helpful than the brown sea that is the official EQ forums, so I'm asking here for help.

I have an issue that is currently affecting one of my characters, but has affected others in the past. It happens *after* I load into a zone. So it is specifically not during the transition and loading process between the time you hit a zone line and when you're able to move around in the new zone. I'm able to load into the new zone and move around for about 5 to 10 seconds and then the game soft locks (zero framerate, if that makes sense). It stays locked for anywhere from 15 seconds to sometimes over 1 minute. It does not crash the client, although Windows Task Manager reports the process as "Not Responding" until it comes back. Once it comes back, I'm able to move around and play normally until I hit the next zone transition. This also happens whenever this character loads a UI skin.

I use 14 characters across 6 accounts. I have noticed this happening on most, but not quite all, of my characters at some point in time, but currently it only affects a single character. I've relogged, rebooted multiple times, this current character has been like this for about 4 days, every time it zones. I've tested sans MQ2, sans ISBoxer. I've logged in through the launcher, clean, nothing else, single instance. Loaded default UI, still happens every time. At one point I completely reinstalled EQ and dumped all my settings (eqclient.ini, ui_name_server.ini, etc), but nothing has solved the problem for good.

Any troubleshooting questions I'd be happy to answer. I could probably make a video of the behavior if that would help too.
 
This is probably not an MQ2 issue, specifically, but I feel like the people who read this forum are more informed and helpful than the brown sea that is the official EQ forums, so I'm asking here for help.

I have an issue that is currently affecting one of my characters, but has affected others in the past. It happens *after* I load into a zone. So it is specifically not during the transition and loading process between the time you hit a zone line and when you're able to move around in the new zone. I'm able to load into the new zone and move around for about 5 to 10 seconds and then the game soft locks (zero framerate, if that makes sense). It stays locked for anywhere from 15 seconds to sometimes over 1 minute. It does not crash the client, although Windows Task Manager reports the process as "Not Responding" until it comes back. Once it comes back, I'm able to move around and play normally until I hit the next zone transition. This also happens whenever this character loads a UI skin.

I use 14 characters across 6 accounts. I have noticed this happening on most, but not quite all, of my characters at some point in time, but currently it only affects a single character. I've relogged, rebooted multiple times, this current character has been like this for about 4 days, every time it zones. I've tested sans MQ2, sans ISBoxer. I've logged in through the launcher, clean, nothing else, single instance. Loaded default UI, still happens every time. At one point I completely reinstalled EQ and dumped all my settings (eqclient.ini, ui_name_server.ini, etc), but nothing has solved the problem for good.

Any troubleshooting questions I'd be happy to answer. I could probably make a video of the behavior if that would help too.
that sounds frustrating.

I don't have an answer off the top of my head - but is that character always the same *instance* of eq? and if so, is it getting locked to a specific cpu core?
 
I don't use any specific core assignments. Currently, it is the 6th instance to load via ISBoxer, but even if I log in just the one account via the launcher and not use ISBoxer at all, it still happens. However, another character on the same account is unaffected.
 
I don't use any specific core assignments. Currently, it is the 6th instance to load via ISBoxer, but even if I log in just the one account via the launcher and not use ISBoxer at all, it still happens. However, another character on the same account is unaffected.
real interesting.

you have anyone you trust to log this toon in and just see if they get it too?

I recently read about a debugged event that eq had which was really poorly coded, and your issue makes me wonder if there is just something borked with your character specifically, in case it is a class/aa/gear combo or something whacky with something unrelated to hardware/software local - just to rule it out.

I had an issue in eq2 where they ended up deleting some database entries to fix some guild/character issues --- no idea how their data is structured, but considering people have been losing toons and all these rez bugs, wouldn't surprise me if something *is* borked
 
There is a freeze as new models load, but it shouldn't be for that duration. Since it happens when you reload your UI, do you have a custom UI? If so, does it happen with the default UI?
 
under options>display>advanced there is a drop down box that toggles between most memory usage and least memory usage. Try setting it to whichever one it's not currently on. Sometimes it can take a few hours to settle down. Least Memory Mode often means that after you zone it will take several seconds for the game to work right. Back a few years, they put in an auto feature that would set it to least so you would not crash if your running out of memory. Not sure if that still applies or not.

There are also journals and logging that might be affecting it.
 
under options>display>advanced there is a drop down box that toggles between most memory usage and least memory usage. Try setting it to whichever one it's not currently on. Sometimes it can take a few hours to settle down. Least Memory Mode often means that after you zone it will take several seconds for the game to work right. Back a few years, they put in an auto feature that would set it to least so you would not crash if your running out of memory. Not sure if that still applies or not.

There are also journals and logging that might be affecting it.
I have tried swapping memory modes, but did not test over a longer period of time. Someone suggested that it might be a memory/paging file issue. I'm going to try increasing system memory from 16GB to 64 GB and eliminate the paging file.
 
You don't want to eliminate the page file. Increasing RAM is good (if you're at 16 you're probably hitting a bottle neck on swapping) but the page file isn't slowing you down, it's preventing you from crashing due to being out of memory.

I do usually set the page file to a static size rather than dynamic so that there's no performance overhead in resizing on the fly. Hard drive space is cheap these days.

You want the page file to be as large as your memory (and I usually go 1.5 times that, but at larger memory sizes it's not super necessary). One reason for this is that when you have an OS crash, windows uses the page file as a temporary storage location for the memory dump. So not having enough page file space is going to mean not getting any of that dump information.
 
This is now affecting 2 characters from my main group every time they loading into a zone. I'm honestly at a loss as to figuring out the cause. The client has got to be attempting to process something shortly after zoning that is getting hung up.
 
I have an SSD for OS and applictions, including EQ, and a mechanical drive for storage and backup stuffs. I did create a symlink to move the EQ logs folder to the mechanical drive, but everything else EQ related is on the SSD.
 
Going through the dbg.txt file I notice some failure messages:
INI:
[Fri Jul 31 09:14:28 2020]00207:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00208:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00207:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00208:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00207:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00208:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00207:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00208:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:14:29 2020]00207:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture blueglobesp501.dds    for    particle system.
INI:
[Fri Jul 31 09:22:39 2020]00209:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture pt_add_smoke.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:22:39 2020]00208:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture pt_add_smoke.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:22:39 2020]00209:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture pt_add_smoke.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:22:39 2020]00209:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture pt_add_smoke.dds    for    particle system.

[Fri Jul 31 09:22:39 2020]00209:D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx()    failed to create texture pt_add_smoke.dds    for    particle system.
I've seen this with other files too, but these are the most recent. Both files are present within the EQ directory structure
 
There's also not a sudden change in the log frequency on a zone, so the logging would cause consistent issues (like log too big or read problems). It wouldn't be specific to right after zoning.

Are those texture log times correlated to the timing of the issue? I get those (not those specific ones) as well, but without the symptoms you're seeing so I'm curious.

One thing I do from time to time with ISBoxer is a diff/compare on my virtualized ini files to see if there are different settings I changed on one char but not another. It may be worthwhile to look at that since this isn't happening across all characters.

I'd be curious to know if this is just slow paging and the RAM upgrade helps.
 
A snippet from the texture.txt file
INI:
[Thu Jul 30 18:37:58 2020]00020:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "SB_rock01_10n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:37:58 2020]00037:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "SB_rock01_10n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:37:59 2020]00020:ResourceManager::CreateTextureFromBackgroundData(): unable to load "ows1hs_NRM.dds"  D3DX error: 88760b59 

[Thu Jul 30 18:38:09 2020]00023:ResourceManager::CreateTextureFromBackgroundData(): unable to load "ows1hs_NRM.dds"  D3DX error: 88760b59 

[Thu Jul 30 18:38:09 2020]00022:ResourceManager::CreateTextureFromBackgroundData(): unable to load "ows1hs_NRM.dds"  D3DX error: 88760b59 

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:00 2020]00021:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "moltensteel.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:00 2020]00022:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "adl_moltensteel_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:02 2020]00021:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "moltensteel.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:02 2020]00022:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "adl_moltensteel_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:02 2020]00038:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "moltensteel.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:02 2020]00039:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "adl_moltensteel_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:38 2020]00023:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "tent_mat4_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:47 2020]00023:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "tent_mat4_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 18:39:54 2020]00040:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "tent_mat4_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 19:04:53 2020]00000:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "c_unm_bd_s05_n.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 19:06:21 2020]00001:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "grid_standard.dds" (not found)

[Thu Jul 30 19:07:50 2020]00002:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "c_unm_bd_s05_n.dds" (not found)

[Fri Jul 31 09:06:25 2020]00000:ResourceManager::CreateTexture(): unable to load "4000GENERICCHAIN_N.DDS" (not found)
There are many similar entries going back a few months. Not sure if related.
 
Are those texture log times correlated to the timing of the issue? I get those (not those specific ones) as well, but without the symptoms you're seeing so I'm curious.

time stamps don't really correlate.

One thing I do from time to time with ISBoxer is a diff/compare on my virtualized ini files to see if there are different settings I changed on one char but not another. It may be worthwhile to look at that since this isn't happening across all characters.

Will try this later in the afternoon when I have more time to troubleshoot.

I'd be curious to know if this is just slow paging and the RAM upgrade helps.
RAM upgraded earlier this week, behavior did not change post-upgrade.
 
Ok, so I've figured out what the root cause of the issue is and how to sorta mitigate it. Because *reasons*, my guild has 5000+ characters. The roster is what my client was reading shortly after zoning that caused it to lock up. The characters affected had had the "show offline" checkbox enabled. So even though the guild window wasn't open, it was still trying to read all the offline members. To mitigate, I've made sure to uncheck "show offline" and reduce the "per page" setting to 20, down from 100, for all clients. I still have a very short, almost imperceptible, framerate "hitch" after zoning, but it's only noticeable because I know what I'm looking for and not the minute and a half fuck off timeout that I was getting.
 
Ok, so I've figured out what the root cause of the issue is and how to sorta mitigate it. Because *reasons*, my guild has 5000+ characters. The roster is what my client was reading shortly after zoning that caused it to lock up. The characters affected had had the "show offline" checkbox enabled. So even though the guild window wasn't open, it was still trying to read all the offline members. To mitigate, I've made sure to uncheck "show offline" and reduce the "per page" setting to 20, down from 100, for all clients. I still have a very short, almost imperceptible, framerate "hitch" after zoning, but it's only noticeable because I know what I'm looking for and not the minute and a half fuck off timeout that I was getting.
woah! what a crazy thing.

I'm absolutely impressed you managed to narrow that down and figure that out lol
 
woah! what a crazy thing.

I'm absolutely impressed you managed to narrow that down and figure that out lol
I just happen to notice that the hang always preceded the guild MOTD showing up in chat. The MOTD would come immediately following the client hang. Unfortunately, the MOTD only shows on initial log in or I might have noticed sooner.
 
Problem - Very odd framerate drop/freeze shortly after loading a zone

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top