cpu load 100%, toggling Auto Zoom brings it back to normal

[Daella]

Here's some more background on my setup. I played the game for well over a week in all kinds of environments with all the eye candies, shadows, effects, transparency etc turned on; typical cpu load on my system is around 15% to 20% depending on amount of shadows or spells being cast. The game constantly run at a locked 20fps.

 

I encountered a situation where my camera was located "in a building" stuck between two walls in White Stone, actually my character was standing just in front of the magic shop, the camera was stuck looking thru the ceiling of the magic shop (camera in the rafters, me outside) looking down at the ground at about 30 degree angle. Anyway, from that point on with the Auto Zoom enabled the cpu started being used at 100% and I couldn't get more than 13fps playing with all the eye candy settings. Enabling, disabling, whatever didn't work. Even after moving away from the buildings back in the wood, then restarting the game the cpu was still running 100%.

 

I disabled the Auto Zoom and the Extended Camera and cpu went straight back down to 15% usage (85% idle) and framerate was back up to 20fps. Re-enabled all the eye candy and things are working fine. Re-enabling the Auto Zoom doesn't seem cause issue anymore.

 

Running on Mac OS X 10.4.11.

[Daella]

Here's a follow-up on this, I actually had "Auto-Zoom" disabled and the problem re-occured, after verification I had the "Extended Camera" option enabled, toggling it again fixed the issue. (I had toggled both Extended Camera and Auto-Zoom the previous time).

[Torg]

That's interesting, but it will be very hard to debug this problem until it can be recreated consistently.

 

When did it reoccur this second time? Was it also stuck behind an object or something? Can you recreate it again?

[Daella]

I actually got the bug another 2 or 3 times. I noticed it occured once when moving from one map to another when the camera itself was outside the map looking into the map. I'll try to find a way to consistently repeat the problem.

[Daella]

I can consistently repeat the problem with the following procedure:

 

1.) Go to Nordcarn at [67,19]

2.) Make sure Extended Camera is turned on (Auto Zoom on or off doesn't matter)

3.) Look due south (or approximately)

4.) Lower your camera angle just a tad below the standard camera minimum (under 30 degree)

5.) Zoom out as far as possible, the White Stone flag should be displayed in between two raised segments of the Fort wall

5.) Use the White Stone flag

 

You can notice the bug was successfully triggered by:

 

a.) you cannot change the camera sideways using cursor keys

b.) cpu usage goes to 100% (or 50% if you have dual cpu)

c.) frame rate drops from your normal setting

 

To get rid of the bug, toggle on/off the Extended Camera, your cpu will go back down, your framerate back up and you can change the camera using cursor keys.

[Schmurk]

Activating the extended camera allows you to see further so more objects are displayed so more cpu usage, it's normal.

However, you can reduce the number of objects displayed by reducing the maximum viewing distance in the options, it'll maybe resolve your problem.

[Daella]

True although this isn't the case this time. Since basically "fixing" the problem is as simple as first disabling Extended Camera and then RE-ENABLING it, zooming in or out barely affects the frame rate or cpu usage.

 

This is definitely not a simple case of more objects bringing my machine down to a complete crawl.

[Schmurk]

The problem is that when you disable the extended camera the camera rotation is brought back to the default angle range so you don't see the horizon anymore and so the number of visible objects is reduced. Then you can enable it again but as long as you don't rotate the camera, it doesn't change anything, you still see as many objects.

You can simply try that: when you notice a frame rate decrease while in extended camera mode, rotate the camera in order you see you char from the top and you should see your frame rate increase again. If this doesn't work, then ok, there's a problem.

Anyway, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said so to be sure, please post screenshots of situations where you think there's a problem...