Random freezes

JWhatever · #1 12-01-2011, 01:56 AM

Hey.

Lately alti has been freezing occationally. The game freezes for 0.5-3 seconds and after that continues normally. This is kinda annoying especially when playing in a league match or ladder. Sometimes the sounds "hang" (sounds right before the freeze keep looping). This only happens in alti.

Using steam version of Altitude.

I've tried to verified the integroty of game cache a couple of times and it keeps on saying that 3 files fail to validate. After doing that, it says that the files have been downloaded. When I start altitude, the game downloads some 5 meg file and asks for a restart.

Freezing happens only with alti. I've redownloaded alti and updated gpu and soundcard drivers.

My rig.
Win7 64bit
4 gig ram
2.2ghz dual core
nvidia gtx260m

I've cleaned the laptop every now and then so I would assume that the problem is not caused by overheating. On the other hand, every time this happens the fan starts revving.

I've been getting this problem ever since last patch (iirc).

So, any help?

-J

Aki1024 · #2 12-01-2011, 02:51 AM

This happens often to me as well. Steam Alti

DJ Nightost · #3 12-01-2011, 09:58 AM

Samd here :/

Ribilla · #4 12-01-2011, 10:11 AM

Same here, I've always had it.

Princess Squirtle · #5 12-01-2011, 12:21 PM

Same here.

Tekn0 · #6 12-01-2011, 12:39 PM

I've always had this. Also called "frame lag" by some. (steam here as well, though I don't think Steam is the issue).

My wild guess but I think it's some java garbage collector that kicks in and this causes the latency issues. Unfortunately I don't know enough of java internals to clarify or rectify the situation.

Karl, Lam. time for you to play mythbusters!

lemon · #7 12-01-2011, 12:41 PM

This started happening to me a few months ago.

Karl · #8 12-01-2011, 05:49 PM

It's almost always an external program that causes the issue. I've noticed it if I have eclipse running in the background.

Try setting Altitudes priority to High or Realtime and see if that helps:
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...ss-priorities/

Karl · #9 12-01-2011, 05:52 PM

You might also want to try setting the process affinity. It's possible that windows switches Altitude to another core that was in a power save mode.

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...on-in-windows/

JWhatever · #10 12-03-2011, 11:52 PM

'ey.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

It's almost always an external program that causes the issue. I've noticed it if I have eclipse running in the background.

Try setting Altitudes priority to High or Realtime and see if that helps:
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...ss-priorities/

I did this and it didn't solve the issue.

Quote:

You might also want to try setting the process affinity. It's possible that windows switches Altitude to another core that was in a power save mode.

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...on-in-windows/

...and I also tried this. So far I've played an hour with just one core and I've not had these massive freezes. But, after playing an hour or so, I got a noticiable loss in my fps. I blame my crusty cpu as it is only 2.2GHz per core so I take it that some funky program just executed itself on the backround.

I have an application that can adjust the maximum and minimum processor state so I'll try that out. Is there any risks of keeping the processor state at max other than possible overheating?

-J

Karl · #11 12-04-2011, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWhatever

I have an application that can adjust the maximum and minimum processor state so I'll try that out. Is there any risks of keeping the processor state at max other than possible overheating?

-J

Intel cpus will detect if they get too hot and they will downclock themselves, perhaps after an hour of play this is what you're experiencing. You could run something like CPU-z and see if it's downclocking when you notice the freezing.

Karl · #12 12-04-2011, 02:00 AM

You can also run SysInternals procexp which keeps a CPU history graph of all running processes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

This could point out a virus scanner or some such
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653

VipMattMan · #13 12-12-2011, 09:33 PM

Pretty sure I just found the culprit.

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3162/steamqs.jpg

That particular spike from Steam caused a screen freeze in Altitude. All the other spikes were me opening and closing other applications, or doing other things.

The Steam version of Altitude has long had the "problem" of causing Steam to think that you're idle when you're playing, even when you use the mouse to play.

Open a chat window with someone who's playing Altitude. When they've been playing Altitude for a few minutes you see it list them as away. When they open their overlay to respond to you it brings them back "online". It will eventually return them to "away" while they're playing, as long as they aren't active in Steam.

I have a sneaking suspicion that these Steam based screen freezes are resultant from Steam thinking you're AFK, and it doing some update checks or something occasionally during that period.

Tekn0 · #14 12-12-2011, 11:14 PM

Damnit Valve!!! They should stop adding asshats to Team Fortress 2 making a bigger ass of themselves and start fixing Steam so we can play Alti without these annoying freezes

Demonite · #15 12-13-2011, 08:13 AM

Surely if that's the reason then going onto steam friends and setting yourself as "Busy" should stop the problem? If you're busy it doesn't update you to away etc.

I think that does make sense though, because I never used to get the spikes when my steam chat was set to offline.. but then it might just be something else.. xD

trendy11one · #16 12-13-2011, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tekn0

Damnit Valve!!! They should stop adding asshats to Team Fortress 2 making a bigger ass of themselves and start fixing Steam so we can play Alti without these annoying freezes

Delete all your friends. Problem solved

Tekn0 · #17 12-13-2011, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trendy11one

Delete all your friends. Problem solved

I don't add people to my Steam friends lists. In any case, this was more a jab at how I hate how they ruined TF2 than Alti itself.

Solqom · #18 12-13-2011, 08:15 PM

Do people playing a non-steam version of Alti still experience screen-freezes?

VipMattMan · #19 12-14-2011, 01:50 AM

Well, it's definitely Steam. I marked the times I got screen freezes in Altitude, and they all coincided with spikes from Steam.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4660/steam2sc.jpg

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/8534/steam3d.jpg

http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/1869/steam4.jpg

The last two were with my status set to busy, and offline, so that didn't help either. It's possible they're still doing idle-time update checks in those states, but I dunno if that's what it is.

Karl · #20 12-14-2011, 02:00 AM

I've been playing a lot of cod:mw3 the last few days and im getting screen freezes too... Steam is doing something...

We'll look into their API and see if we're missing some sort of heartbeat or something we're suppose to be doing to keep them from doing whatever it is it's doing.

VipMattMan · #21 12-15-2011, 06:27 PM

I was actually incorrect about the Altitude/Idle thing. I tested some more and it only does that to people who don't use their mouse.

I use my mouse to play, and I still get those freezes from Steam.

elxir · #22 12-15-2011, 06:39 PM

it happens to me a lot but i always assumed it was a combination of crappy computer (old macbook) and crappy comcast (comcast)

Aki1024 · #23 12-15-2011, 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

We'll look into their API and see if we're missing some sort of heartbeat or something we're suppose to be doing to keep them from doing whatever it is it's doing.

Thank you! I've been lucky in that this hasn't really cost me much while in ladder games. Lucky so far.

Solqom · #24 12-18-2011, 06:49 PM

I've tried changing the core that alti uses, and changing its priority. It didn't help at all.

It's really frustrating! I just let in a game changing goal in ladder that should have been easily saved because I couldn't do anything or see what was going on for 1 or 2 seconds.

Is there anything else we can do to minimize/eliminate this happening?

VipMattMan · #25 01-11-2012, 11:18 PM

So I was thinking about this today, and noticed that I couldn't recollect any specific instances of me getting screen freezes over the past couple of weeks. Asked a few other Steam users and they said they hadn't noticed any recently either. Is this true for everyone else (with the Steam version), that was having a problem ?

I'm wondering if maybe one of the last Steam patches finally fixed the freezes.

Premier Stalin · #26 01-11-2012, 11:42 PM

I think they have definitely changed something... and timed it perfectly to stop just as I start to get connection lost every few minutes :/

gearguts · #27 01-12-2012, 12:10 AM

Looks like it's fixed for you, just commenting I get screen lag, about 0.5 seconds and am pretty sure it's my computer. Settings are low, but if I play with 19 bots (offline) it happens much more often. Linux, minimal system with not really anything else running. Dual core (AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ / 2.0 GHz).