Scrolling is very choppy

[Epperaliant]

I have Steam version, 1.31 updated, all the DLC but the last 4 GC ones.
My machine is a i5 6600k, 8 gb of ram, GTX 660 and an SSD.
Game is installed on SSD in the default steam folder
Windows 10 64but, fully updated.

My problem is that the scrolling is very choppy and teared, it looks like the game runs at very low fps and makes me dizzy.
It happens whenever there's lot stuff on screen, be it military units or overlay elements like the movement icons (selecting planes automatically triggers this).

The issue is especially terrible when scrolling diagonally, the game really slows to a crawl and tears.



Tried:
-Windowed mode
-/nocache
-LargeAddressAware
-Lowering/raising resolution
-Messing with process priorities
-Running as admin
-Clicking all the settings in the launcher
-Reinstalling latest video/audio drivers
-Verifying Steam Cache
-Renaming the Video/audio folders
-Ran the game in Safe mode


The only thing that yielded (modest) improvement was running the game as admin and removing the hex grid.
Game completely ignores all nvidia panel settings and rivatuner.
Temperatures are fine, the machine is clean and has a clean selective startup, task manager reports no spikes while playing.

There's my Dxdiag as attachment.


Please, could you help me?
This game was expensive and I expected it to run decently on my machine

[PeteMitchell]

I followed your other thread as well, just a crazy idea: have you tried installing Win 7 as a virtual machine/box and then run PzC from Win 7? e.g. https://o7planning.org/en/11883/install ... virtualbox
It may add more complexity than less but maybe worth trying (with "older" games)... Other than that, I agree with previous statements regarding a new clean Win 10 installation.

[Epperaliant]

I tried the game on my laptop with win10 and has the very same issue, so I am not going to waste an entire afternoon doing backups and reinstallling windows10.
The Virtual Machine...that could work but I have no legit Windows7 key to use and my god it looks complicated and time-consuming.

[PeteMitchell]

I see, makes sense... what you describe is not totally uncommon. However, I have it only sometimes and only to some very minor extent on the very big Battlefield Europe map (175x113 hexes)... nonetheless, Win 7 is sometimes still more stable than Win 10.

[Epperaliant]

I wonder, isn't there some way to force vsync?

The game flat out ignores all Nvidia panel settings and Riva tuner too.

[Epperaliant]

I am installing a windows 7 32 bit virtual machine.

Took most of my free time today, hope it will be worth it

[Epperaliant]

Nope, it runs even worse

I think I deserve some explanation from the devs.
Why can't I force v-sync? Why nvidia panel gets ignored? And why diagonal scrolling causes all this stutter/tearing/shimmering?

[PeteMitchell]

Nope, it runs even worse

I think I deserve some explanation from the devs.
Why can't I force v-sync? Why nvidia panel gets ignored? And why diagonal scrolling causes all this stutter/tearing/shimmering?

I am very sorry to hear this, especially as I had been able to get PG running flawlessly on a virtual DOS box some time ago... so I thought this could work here as well, i.e. as Win 7 is pretty tested/stable (by now) and about the same age as PzC... have you emailed Slitherine support?

[zakblood]

works perfectly on windows 10 as well, on standalone and steam version on higher and lower spec pc's

something is wrong in the mix on the users setup or hardware, my advice is go to tech support also, but what they can do with hardware is already known, nothing, if it didn't work in VM, your hardware is an issue, it's that simple imo, but then again best try support to find out for sure, just point to this post so they don't have to go over the same ground, good luck and also hope you get it sorted, but 99% sure it's not the game either, 1% is something on the pc which conflicts or hardware, so will never be 100% sure either

[VPaulus]

The issue it's related only with the Steam version.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to reproduce the issue and we have no workaround for the moment.

[Epperaliant]

Thanks for the replies.

I was wondering, increasing the scroll speed makes things more bearable.
Isn't there any way to mod the game and manually increase the scroll speed beyond the default limit?

[VPaulus]

I'm afraid not. That's hard-coded.
Could you post a DxDiag report? IF we have DxDiag reports from those experiencing this issue maybe we could find something common.

[pipfromslitherine]

Just to note that PzC doesn't use DX or OGL and so the nVidia settings will not effect it.

Cheers

Pip

[Epperaliant]

Thanks for the help, will repost the dxdiag as soon as I'm home (probably tomorrow).

By the way, if it can help you devs, I did noticed that reducing the size of the png images (such as the movement png) actually improves the performance. I resized them using gimp.
To make it simple, the more overlay and units stuff is on screen, the more it lags.
As reference, I get massive lag while the tobruk fortress is on screen in Afrika Korps.
Selecting aircraft obviously makes thing extra worse (because of the many movement tiles shown).

As for the virtual machine, I did setup a 128 mb videocard, maybe was the reason it ran so bad?

[pipfromslitherine]

You might want to check that you are getting hardware acceleration for Windows GDI operations.

Cheers

Pip

[Epperaliant]

Ok here's the DXDIAG from my main gaming machine:

[Epperaliant]

And this is from my Virtual machine, where the game does not suffer the overlay related lag, but a general significant slow-down (animations included).

Could you help me guys?

[pipfromslitherine]

Just to check - is this a Steam version? Have you tried disabling the overlay?

Cheers

Pip

[Epperaliant]

Yes, it's steam version with disabled overlay.

[PeteMitchell]

And this is from my Virtual machine, where the game does not suffer the overlay related lag,

Oh this is interesting, maybe this seems good news?

but a general significant slow-down (animations included).

This was to some extent expected as this is normal given most CPU architectures and some other factors... and well, you are basically running two OS at the same time, host and VM...

By the way, your CPU seems about three years old, about the same age as the first Win 10 release. I am not an IT expert but maybe its hardware (incl. drivers/firm ware) AND Win 10...