Game significantly slowed after Natural Disasters patch

[Lord_Edwin]

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a significant slow down in the game speed since the patch that came out (for me, on Steam) on the release day of Natural Disasters (Note: I haven't installed or purchased Natural Disasters). I have a relatively moderate city of about 108k people. I do use many mods and assets, all from Steam Workshop, and am certainly used to the usual speed and performance restrictions that using these items incurs, such as speeds 1-3 all effectively running as the same speed.

However, compared to the night before the patch release when I played, the game now moves at a very, very slow rate. Vehicles move like snails as does the day timer. Scrolling around the map and sounds are unaffected.

Is this likely the result of a new conflict with mods and assets that haven't been updated yet (I know for sure that some of the mods are not working properly yet)? Or is there some new base coding that has altered the game's capacity to handle volume of traffic and population?

Thanks

 

[jcitron]

You might have a conflicting mod somewhere. I have noticed the opposite with 32 GB of RAM in my computer

However... I have noticed an increased memory load compared to the previous version with C:SL hitting 87% of the RAM usage. This could also be a mod issue which needs investigation, or maybe not.

If your system is a bit low on RAM to begin with, you might be hitting the limits which turn on the virtual memory swapping, which can cause poor performance as well.

 

[JohnA45]

I crash after exiting, even for a short time. If I play very long I've crashed during play once. I can't get tsunami's to form either, but I managed tornadoes and the other disasters to spawn fine...still the game is slow and choppy and I crash every time I try to exit the game. I have all my mods and assets disabled as well. (I also don't really have that many mods or assets compared to a lot of folks. Just 6 mods and a few dozen assets. I had very little trouble before I bought Natural Disasters, other than some frame-rate issues.
It's getting very frustrating and I'm not getting much of response elsewhere about any of this. I'm sure it's just my older computer. It seems others have the same issue...probably nothing we can do except quit playing until we can afford better computers...which really sucks! I wish there was a way to undo the update and purchase, but from what I have seen there is not. Even if I disable disasters I have the same problems. I want to know how to send the developers our crash data, I posted a thread but no answer and I cant seem to find an answer anywhere other than to post the crash report here. I know where to find them, just not where to send them.

 

[jcitron]

I understand the frustration. I have noticed that this update for one uses a new Unity game engine, which I think is heavier and more complex. Perhaps your system can't quite handle the increased code.

I noticed that even if a mod has been disabled, it's best to unsubscribe, exit completely, then start up again from the desktop as if it's clearing the cache. This seems to work better than just disabling them or unsubscribing at the CM and then returning to the game.

What are your computer specs?

Maybe there's something that can be updated. I'm not saying to do that just for the game here, but an increase in memory for example works wonders for a lot of programs overall so it's not a waste.

Interesting thing is I no longer get the crash on exit, however, I still get a Mod has caused an error message when I go to the main menu from the game. I too don't have many mods, but a good number of assets- mostly buildings and dependencies which are needed. For mods it's the railroad which work fine plus a few more which I can't think of at the moment because I just suffered major brain fart and can't think of them!

Please post a list of your mods. We can take a look and tell you if they've been updated or not. There's a thread in the Steam forums on this which I've lost the link. It has a list of mods that work, and which ones are still being updated.

As far as sending the data to the developers, you need to post your crash reports in the support folder. There's instructions there, or as I call it destructions on how to do it and what they need.

 

[metacritical]

the link is on reddit

 

[ma2412]

could you fix or locate the problem?

after weeks of playing with the new update (natural desaster) it's still less of fps if i am not in the near of the widest view of my city (= max zoom out)

but i noticed, that my trees changing colours randomly if i zoom in a little - maybe that is slowing down.
only mod i can think of to blam e is (maybe) the mod, which make trees not looking sick when polluted (cannot remember the name at the moment).

 

[jcitron]

could you fix or locate the problem?

after weeks of playing with the new update (natural desaster) it's still less of fps if i am not in the near of the widest view of my city (= max zoom out)

but i noticed, that my trees changing colours randomly if i zoom in a little - maybe that is slowing down.
only mod i can think of to blam e is (maybe) the mod, which make trees not looking sick when polluted (cannot remember the name at the moment).

Things definitely have changed, and the devs may have done this to try to improve performance. But other things have changed too, which I don't like for instance the cars and people clip each other more than they did before. This is noticeable with trams and buses as they seem to be ignored when crossing intersection.

What you are seeing is the transition between the full mesh of the assets, including trees and the lesser object as the game engine swaps out to lower resolution objects when zoomed out far. The content creators are supposed to create a full mesh and image object followed by simpler and less complicated meshes with lower detailed images, which are all then replaced with simple graphics. The reason for this is to take the burden off the video card and computer so it doesn't have to attempt to render complex meshes and textures for everything in the scene when zoomed way out, or viewing a wide vista.

The issue though is this swapping between the full mesh and the level of detail (LOD) shouldn't slow things down so it could be something else going on. This could be asset-related and it would depend upon how complex the mesh is to begin with on the assets, and the number of these assets in the area/scene. In other graphics-intensive programs, I have seen complex scenes bring a fairly high-end computer to its knees and the frame rates drop down to slide-show speeds at some points because of this.

 

[ma2412]

thank for explanations - but this is an issue since the latest natural desasters update (i think a mod is causing this, i will investigate).

it is not when zooming in and out, the tree colours are blinking from one green to another green and back - at the same zoom detail.

but i will start a vanilla game (once i have deactivated all mods for this testing, wich can take a huge time...)

 

[ma2412]

ok:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=556784825&searchtext=random+tree+rotation
the "random tree rotation" mod is causing those blinking tree colours since the natual desaster update - good to find out.

but if it is faster now... cannot say atm.

---------------

some other mod is causing C:SL to crash after starting a new game a second time (start a new game -> go back to main menu -> start the same new game again):
normally, the loading bar get to about 3-5%, then the background loading image will show up and it loads up within 10-15 seconds.
at the second time (see above) no 3-5% until background showing up, and at about 55% chripy is rotating with half "fps" and stays there forever...

but tis is a mod problem, since without mods it all works fine when start a second new game - maybe i will find out some day...

(just wanted to say this)

 

[jcitron]

Very interesting that this mod is causing that problem, but that may also explain why the graphics are performing badly. The program is now recalculating the meshes for the trees. This may work for a few trees, but not a gazillion which populate most of the terrains. The mod-creator should look back at his code and see why this is occurring.

I don't have this mod, and I don't visit the Steam Community forums often as I used to so I wasn't aware that this was occurring. I have, however, experienced the crashes on second loads. The first time the game comes up fine and my cities open up okay. If I exit to the main menu and load again, I get both what you are experiencing plus other script errors on things like public transport, or Rush Hour, which work fine otherwise.