Performance Issues Help(EP17)

[Masquerain 6]

Hello all

 

I had previously left Reborn on hold at EP15. Recently decided to pick it back up since EP18 is right around the corner and so, me and my friend started a new playthrough with the 17.1. Patch (latest visible download) of the game.

 

And now, the issue is that ever since both of us started, the game's performance has been....shaky at best. As a rather old Reborn player, I'm already aware of the infamous game spots that tend to lag or drops a lot of FPS and all of that, but in this case, lag and FPS drops were a thing since the start and occur almost everywhere. To (possibly) better illustrate the performance of both mine and my friend's games, here's a list of what happens during different situations:

 

-When walking around towns/cities/other not-small outdoors locations

Walking at normal speed, the game inconsistently drops FPS/skips frames and stutters at random. All of these only get worse in infamous locations such as Obsidia/Malchous Forest/Rhodocrine Jungle. Walking with turbo speed does what the mode normally does and skip more frames, but the overall performance makes normal speed feel better due to the already existing frame drops and lag.

-When walking indoors

Performance is what it should be in the first place, that is smooth and normal, everything running as it ought to

-When walking outdoors in smaller locations e.g. alleyways

Inconsistent performance. Sometimes runs completely fine, sometimes drops frames and lags

-When talking to any NPC anywhere

Here is where my game and my friend's game differ. Whereas NPC/game dialogue in my game is mostly fine and runs smoothly(excluding default laggy areas), my friend's dialogue lags (text appears word by word in a laggy manner)

-During battle

Now here is where the main issue in everything lies. Battle performance seems to be the worst. The only time it feels relatively normal is if you play battles with turbo speed where the frame skip actually helps battles feel smoother. At normal speed, the game drops and skips frames, lags and stutters. This is the same for both me and my friend. Some examples of what kind of stuff happens during battles:

-------

* Let's say my Roselia used Mega drain on a random pokemon in battle. What happens on screen is that the opponent's HP drops to...say.. 55%. It takes the game around 1second to update the full damage dealt by the attack and show that the opponent's HP actually dropped below 50%. I don't exactly know what to call it, stuttering or skipping frames or lagging frames, but every battles does this kind of thing very often.

* In-battle dialogue also lags

* Things like switching or picking attacks/choosing a command also skip frames and lag

 

Now given all of that, it gets really frustrating to play because of the very poor battle performance. Being forced to play at turbo speed doesn't seem like what a game should normally be like... I can say for certain that 90% of these issues were not present back when I played EP15, so I'm not sure what happened since then. Both me and my friend have tried looking around the forum for solutions, but the only things we found were either outdated or didn't work at all.

 

So in summary, does anybody have a clue what might be causing all of these issues? Does anybody experience the same things and/or know how to solve them?

Or does the game perform this way by default in EP17 and is thus doomed to have no ways of improving (and if that's the case, are there any plans to improve overall performance in EP18 or at any time at all)?

 

Thank you all in advance for your time taken to read all of this! Hopefully somebody can help (P.S. Issue doesn't stem from computer specs, that much was already established)

 

[Walpurgis 501]

These issues are all known. There's a limit to how much we can do on our end about this. You can hopefully reduce the lag by not having other programs/the less possible running in the background while playing and in the case of the battles by disabling the animations (Battle Scene: Off).

[Arys 36]

How interesting. I never think of it as a problem before. Since I usually play on turbo mode, stuttering is something I experience daily. But even in turbo mode, lag is inevitable especially in that Apophyll Beach. I usually had to turn off turbo mode so the lag is more bearable.

 

I don't think I ever experience smooth play in normal speed. Even line in building is usually shaky. But I never had lag in dialogue.

Maybe if you reduce screen flickering and turn on smooth mode will be better?

 

I never use RPG maker so I didn't know how efficient this thing works. But if there's plan to improve performance, I think it'll happen in post games.

[Masquerain 6]

5 hours ago, Walpurgis said:

These issues are all known. There's a limit to how much we can do on our end about this. You can hopefully reduce the lag by not having other programs/the less possible running in the background while playing and in the case of the battles by disabling the animations (Battle Scene: Off).

 

5 hours ago, Arys said:

How interesting. I never think of it as a problem before. Since I usually play on turbo mode, stuttering is something I experience daily. But even in turbo mode, lag is inevitable especially in that Apophyll Beach. I usually had to turn off turbo mode so the lag is more bearable.

 

I don't think I ever experience smooth play in normal speed. Even line in building is usually shaky. But I never had lag in dialogue.

Maybe if you reduce screen flickering and turn on smooth mode will be better?

 

I never use RPG maker so I didn't know how efficient this thing works. But if there's plan to improve performance, I think it'll happen in post games.

Thank you both for the replies.

@Walpurgis

Then, should I understand that that's just how the game runs nowadays and neither the dev team nor playerbase is able to solve those issues?

And if that is the case, are there any plans on the dev team's side to work on improving said performance? Seems like the new animations might be causing the majority of the performance issues during battles and if it really is so, maybe something should or could be done about reverting things back or changing them (or giving people the option to do so somehow). Now obviously I don't know how things work, but I am just putting suggestions out there. It really wasn't like this back around EP15, so I don't know what made it this way.

@Arys

Yeah, I know some places lag by default and I know things don't run perfectly smoothly all the time and never have done so, but now, it appears things have become worse, especially in battle. If one has to turn animations off for smoother gameplay, then what was the point of adding those animations in the 1st place?

 

I have never used RPG maker or anything of that sort, so I have no clue what you meant with flickering or anything, but I also don't know how that connects to Reborn itself so yeah..there's that too

[Commander 875]

10 hours ago, Masquerain said:

-During battle

Now here is where the main issue in everything lies. Battle performance seems to be the worst. The only time it feels relatively normal is if you play battles with turbo speed where the frame skip actually helps battles feel smoother. At normal speed, the game drops and skips frames, lags and stutters. This is the same for both me and my friend. Some examples of what kind of stuff happens during battles:

This took me a while to figure out but your performance settings can drastically effect how Reborn runs. If it's in a power saver mode, it's going to lag more and it also just grinds down to how powerful your machine is able to handle it. It's really weird how what seems to be a low end RPGmaker game which can lag like crazy unless you have a really powerful machine. I've had my fair share of nightmares with Obsidia Park when doing modding and figuring out how to make sure low end PCs can handle the changes. So here's a few things to check:

 

1. Are you not on power saver/set it to high performance (likely why the two games are performing different

2. What does task manager look like? Ctrl+Shift+Esc should pull something like this up:

If the CPU categoery is at 80%-90%, that's probably a sign your computer is weak or something is wrong making the game completely unplayable. A spike is fine but if it's consistent it'll definitely cause lag. Usually it's the Disk category that causes lag but Memory being high will cause your computer to freeze briefly. If these become an issue, look for things that are hogging the categoery and if they aren't critical or important (pretty sure the computer won't let you) select it and end task. You can see google taking up a lot of my memory there.

 

3. Redownload the game. Sounds weird but sometimes something can go wrong with the download. It happens. Usually you'll get a few weird errors or it's glitchy so do this merely if you are worried it downloaded improperly.

 

4. Likely the engine created is at its limits and will have some occasional lag. The most common areas for the lag are Opal ward bridge and The segment of Obsidia ward to the East (where you fight the first tangrowth). RPGmaker is not made for big games like Reborn with a lot of events so expect some lag but with a good PC it should be tolerable.