The game is too slow after MMO games

Game Dev Tycoon bug
#1

after creating the R & D lab and hardware lab, developed my first console and two MMO games, since then, the game is very slow. :frowning:

#2

Yup, I have the problem, too. I usually refrain from opening my hardware lab because that is what slows down the game for me.

#3

Hey Guys,

It would be helpful if you could give us so info on your systems;

Desktop or Laptop?
OS?
Processor make and model?
RAM?
Graphics Card?
Graphics Card RAM (VRAM)?

#4

laptop, windows 7

AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-53 1.7 GHz,
1024 MB, Nanya 1024MB PC-4300 DDR2, 2x512MB,
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150, 400 MHz, up to 320MB Shared Memory

for highlighting, I play GTA IV with no problems!

thanks!

#5

AAA games have massive amounts of cash spent on streamlining so that below entry level systems can run them. Many AAA games these days are created for the lowest possible system rather than a standard gaming machine so that the companies can cash in on people with low powerd systems.

Our Minimum specs are listed on the Steam page as;
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP SP3
Processor: 2 GHz dual core
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Hardware Accelerated Graphics with dedicated memory
Additional Notes: minimum resolution of 1024x768

From researching your hardware it seems you are using a Notebook, not a laptop?

An AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-53 1.7 GHz, comes underneath the minimum "Processor: 2 GHz dual core "
Your “DDR2, 2x512MB” is 1GB short on the 2GB requirement and your “ATI Radeon Xpress 1150, 400 MHz, up to 320MB Shared Memory” fails the Graphics: Hardware Accelerated Graphics with dedicated memory as you have no dedicated memory.

So although Game Dev Tycoon will be playable, you will experience some lag, especially as the game progresses.

#6

This has been mentioned before but maybe the developers missed it:

http://forum.greenheartgames.com/t/becomes-really-slow-and-laggy-in-stage3/7561

#7

I don’t think this is strictly a system specs issue. I have a similar issue; the game is notably slower after opening the R&D Lab and then slows down even further after opening the Hardware lab. It’s still playable, but not at all smooth.

My specs on a laptop (“desktop replacement”):
Windows 8
16 GB DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M w/ 1.5GB dedicated memory
Intel i7 740QM 1.73-2.93 GHz Quad Core

Running fullscreen @ 1920x1080 on a dual-screen system (2nd screen at 1600x1200). GDT is only utilizing ~4% CPU and 600MB of RAM at any time, and everything else on my system is very responsive even while GDT slows down.

edit: formatting

#8

Lag can be caused by many reasons and people who don’t have lag don’t post to say so they don’t have lag which makes it seem like there is a bigger lag problem.

While I am not diagnosing your case, some very common causes of lag are;

  1. Trying to play games on a Notebook

  2. Trying to play non AAA games on a mid range laptop, MMOs often face many lag complaints caused by this. Often times the OS and running processes are using a vast majority of the RAM leaving an insufficient amount for games. Add an integrated graphics chip with shared or insufficient Vram and theres trouble and of course a 32bit OS doesn’t help.

  3. Too many junk running processes for “fluff” applications, often a form of greyware.

  4. Not defragging the hard drives regularly.

  5. Some of the paid heavy duty Anti Virus suites with “Real Time” protection scanning everything thats active will cause massive slowdowns.

  6. No Sound card, Having a sound card actually reduces pressure on the CPU by taking the strain. Having a sound card will give you more fps in many games. Even a cheap one. I am not sure about wireless headsets as i use one myself, I know it bypass’s the sound card but have not looked into how it works.

  7. An undiagnosed problem with hardware such as bad sectors on your Hard drive or a very old PSU which is almost out of power. An overheated GPU/Chip is a very very very common cause of lag. Check the temperatures regularly.

  8. I get many reports of people with full hard drives having problems, strange behaviour, often they have their OS and all programs on one drive and the drive is more than 99% full. They then add external hard drives or extra internal ones but leave their main hard drive full.

  9. A genuine and random incompatibility between the hardware and software the game is using. Many games, even AAA have experienced this. Many people could not run DAO due to either owning a AMD Phenom processor, Vista or a dual core processor, thats just an example i picked from the top of my head (I had a friend with a low spec phenom who could not run the game at all). When Skyrim first came out i was unlucky enough to own a Nvidia BFG 295 GTX which BSOD every 5 minutes or so. If you check any game forum you will find a compatibility issue that was never spotted in the QA phase. These are often a real headache to fix.

  10. Using beta GPU driver, or using very new drivers on a very old card. Both of these can result in sub par performance or strange behaviour.

#9

[quote=“Charlie, post:8, topic:7955”]
Lag can be caused by many reasons and people who don’t have lag don’t post to say so they don’t have lag which makes it seem like there is a bigger lag problem.[/quote]
Understood. I work in IT/customer service. I know it’s rare to receive praise and people only speak when they want to complain.

[quote=“Charlie, post:8, topic:7955”]
While I am not diagnosing your case,[/quote]
What can I do to assist you in doing so, then?

Well aware. Not trying to be facetious or come off as rude, and I realize you need to treat everyone as “lowest common denominator” in customer service. Just stating I am aware of these facts and willing to look more in-depth.

That all said, what can I do to assist in looking into this issue? It is completely reproducible, without fail. The difference in responsiveness is staggering immediately after I click “yes” to open the R&D lab and the screen reloads.

I’d be more apt to accepting the aforementioned list of “common problems” if the game was sluggish from the start, or if performance degraded over running it for a long period of time; but that’s not the case. The degradation is triggered without fail by a game event every single time.

So; how can I assist with isolating the cause of this issue? Happy to provide memory dumps, dxdiags, run versions with debug code – whatever it takes, just let me know. I found the game via Steam’s Greenlight and I really enjoy it, and would like to keep enjoying it (fully) in the end-game stages.

#10

Hi,

I’m experiencing the same issue on my notebook and it should be able to run the game smoothly.
Its specs are:
A6-3430MX with Radeon HD 6520G.(Its performance is similar to the intel HD4000)
8GB Ram.
Win 7

According to the resource monitor this is a CPU usage issue, I use to get this slowness once I get to the third stage with the R&D + 6 employees and it seems that the bubbles are causing the lag? Maybe is a bug in the generated points math? Maybe in the rendering of the bubbles?

I’m using last version and this is the only game where I have experienced something like this. I can run sims 3 +exp and Diablo 3 with mid settings without any issue.

Is there any way to enable a logging to check what’s going on?

Thanks in advance.

#11

The min specs for Game Dev Tycoon as listed on Steam are that it requires a 2Ghz Processor.

Yours is a 1.73 which has the possibility to ramp up the power to 2.93. Is this function working correctly? Or is it being capped so that no matter what an app will ask for it remains capped at 1.73?
Power saving features can affect this as can battery life and being attached to the mains.

You can try running the game at a lower resolution and in window mode and check if that improves your framerate.

You can monitor your cpu with CPU-Z - http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

You can also use a program called speedfan to monitor your mobo temp;
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

You can monitor your graphics card temp with GPU-Z

#12

Hey Kimmberly,

The min specs for Game Dev Tycoon, as listed on Steam are;
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP SP3
Processor: 2 GHz dual core
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Hardware Accelerated Graphics with dedicated memory
Additional Notes: minimum resolution of 1024x768

A Radeon HD 6520G is an integrated graphics chip set with no dedicated memory. I researched your chip here;


Unfortunately as an integrated chip with no dedicated memory it does fail to meet the minimum spec so some lag is to be expected.

Here is the same websites information about your CPU;


It states "The processor core is clocked at 1.7 GHz base clock speed and is able to automatically overclock up to 2.4 GHz (TurboCore, depending on temperature and used cores). "
1.7Ghz is also below our minimum spec although it can overclock when needed and utilize its turbo core this will depend on your settings and its temperature.

Sims 3 and Diablo 3 are AAA games which have massive amounts of time and money spent on streamlining them to work on entry level, or below, systems. This is why they allow you to drop the graphics quality down.

You can try running the game at a lower resolution and in window mode and check if that improves your framerate.

1 Like
#13

Or obviously the game needs optimizing…

1 Like
#14

@Charlie

I find your response offensive. I can’t believe you played the “You don’t have enough CPU frequency/dedicated memory for the gpu” card.
According to you a dual core at 2GHz like the T2410 can run this? The a6-3430 is twice as fast! Even if the game wasn’t coded using threads, you can never say that a i7 740 QM can’t run this. It is more than 3 times as fast… The turbo boost only works at 2.93GHz when only 1 of the 4 cores is under high load.
Maybe I should get a galaxy S4 that has a 1.9GHz quad core if the frequency of the processor is all that matter for this game as you said.

Regarding the GPU, it is working with plenty of free ddr3 in dual channel ram. It works better than a dedicated 305M that would meet the required specs. Its usage is very low even when I have my 6 employees, full HW lab and R&D. The game doesn’t have a high video memory usage either.

The main issue with the game is that it seems to be capped to 25% of the CPUs (the equivalent of 1 core, 33% in a tri-core). That usage is split in all the cores, none of them reach over 60% usage. Can this be only because the game wasn’t coded to be multithreaded? (the fact that all the cpus are being used and under low load confuses me). Could you please check if there isn’t any bug limiting the cpu usage? Its a shame that this game is limited to use one core nowdays that new processors are being manufactured with 4-8 cores. You should check what is using all that cpu with the bubbles + labs too using the 80% 20% rule, something seems to be wrong.

1 Like
#15

Yes.

I am always utilizing main power, not battery.

Understood, but I don’t feel I should have to play the game in an inadequate fashion to work around what I feel is a software defect.

I’m not allowed to upload files yet. Here is a screenshot of CPU-Z and Task Monitor and another of HWiNFO64 showing GPU utilization in the same period. None of my hardware is working outside of thermal norms or anywhere near maximum capacity.

#16

This happens for me as well, but it starts happening even before I get the R&D lab. I’m playing on a laptop with 3 GB of RAM, 512 MB dedicated video card and a dual core processor (at 1.7 MHz I think). Pretty old, I can accept stuff working slower than they should, but I strongly suspect there’s a performance problem with the game as well. The slowdown only happens during the “bubble generation” phases (game development, contracts, engine development) and sometimes it only happens at the start of the phase, going away almost completely for the second half of the bubble generation phase.

I understand @Charlie 's argument about the limited resources available to indie devs, but it might be important and ultimately prove useful to try and get indie games to work on lower-end specs. There are only a few fronts where indie games can fight the AAA titles on even ground. AAA titles will always have more content, better graphics/sound, more polish, etc. But on the performance and minimum requirements front, indie games should be able to compete. I think the pendulum swings both ways here with @Charlie 's argument, in the sense that AAA publishers/producers can also afford to raise the minimum specs and simply drop the low-end/old machine market, while indie devs should make efforts to get their games to be as accesible as possible, in order to have as wide a player base as possible.

#17

I’m experiencing the same issue. The game start to lag as hell every time you have full staff and fully funded R&D Lab.
I’m playing the Steam version.
@Charlie You should consider this major since every one experience the same problem (google “game dev tycoon lag” and you’ll see many people complain about this issue: https://www.google.co.in/#q=game+dev+tycoon+lag )

#18

I’m experiencing immense lag after completing the game and continuing, so much that it’s unplayable.

I exceed the minimum system requirements,even though I’m using a laptop it shouldn’t make a difference considering the specs.I’ve played over a hundred various games at mid to high settings on this laptop.

specs-
AMD A8-5545M overclocked to about 2.5ghz,and although the graphics chipset is a Radeon HD 8510G (shares laptop’s memory) it has 8gb ram. running windows 8,64bit of course

#19

me to

to high settings on me laptop.

specs-
AMD A1-1200 APU with radeon hd graphics overclocked to about 1.4ghz,and although the graphics chipset is a Radeon HD 7310G (shares laptop’s memory) it has 4gb ram. running windows 8.1,64bit of course