1st Time Summons in a session causes brief stutter.

[Ralathar44]

Bug:  When summoning minions in combat, the game will stutter. 


Repro Steps: 

1. Enter combat with something
2. Summon a minion
3. Observe stutter 

Important notes/Required Conditions: 

1. Must be first time to summon that particular minion in that gameplay session.  It will not stutter again in future summons until game has been closed and restarted. 
2.  This can and does happen per individual minion.  as such if you "minion dump" by summoning several minions at once, the stutter can last for a full second or more.  Subjectively: this feels very crippling in more challenging battles. 
3.  This affects chanter summons, item summons, and priest summons that I have confirmed so far. 
Edit:  4.  This also seems to affect spells that summon a minion conditionally such as Ninagauth's Killing Bolt's Spectre summon on kill. 


Speculation:  I suspect the code for loading the minions into combat is causing the stutter.  The game appears to stop, process their load into combat, and then continue.  As the stutter is noticeable and impactful, especially for minion builds, this likely needs optimization.  Of course, having worked some QA in the past this could also be a bug and not optimization.  Everything can always be a bug lol . 


Caveat:  I am still running on non-SSD.  Pity me lol .  It's quite possible with an SSD this load-in time would not even be noticeable depending on how the code is structured.  The rest of my system should be fine or even good as you should be able to see in the attached dxdiag.

DxDiag.txt

Edited May 14, 2018 by Ralathar44

[Insolentius]

It also affects wizard's Essential Phantom.

[Cdiaz]

Hello Ralathar44,

 

Thank you for the post! Is this issue present in our latest patch 1.1? It should be resolved, so if not please let me know!

 

Best,

 

-Caleb

[Insolentius]

Hello Ralathar44,

 

Thank you for the post! Is this issue present in our latest patch 1.1? It should be resolved, so if not please let me know!

 

Best,

 

-Caleb

I just tested it (fully updated - Steam version). It affects spells/abilities that summon clones, summoned creatures from figurines and even shape-shifting. Basically, any item or ability that adds a new character/creature to the encounter or modifies an existing character's model will cause the game to freeze for about a second. This only happens the first time such an item or ability is used during a session - however, upon restarting the game, the same problem occurs once again.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Insolentius

[Ralathar44]

So, it's much better than it was but I don't think it's completely fixed.  My first game back I was able to repro the stutter again.  In case it was the save state I quit out and tried a few more times without repro.  However being a bit sneaky I made sure to keep a few summons unused until after I'd played for a couple hours and was able to repro the stutter again. 

I'm guessing that the way things were loaded into memory has been optimized somewhat and it's lessening the issue.  But I believe the actual issue remains, it's just been minimized.  It's prolly good enough now to where it's ok, not ideal but ok.  That's a big improvement from where it started though.  I'll keep testing/playing/enjoying though in case it's intermittent.

[kilay]

in my case  on 1.2.0.0228 this issue is always present affter any game restart

Edited July 15, 2018 by kilay

[Ralathar44]

After more testing the bug is definitely still present.  Specifically in my last sessionI played for a short time today, less than 30 minutes, before encountering the first combat.  This time my chanter alone was enough to cause a noticeable 1/4 - 1/3 second stutter with the very first summon of the session.  This continued to happen with the first summon of every other summon I had.  Bug is not resolved.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Ralathar44

[Insolentius]

This problem still hasn't been resolved. v4.1.2.

[Phenomenum]

Becose game is not using Pre-upload in VRAM. Though it should, becose whole VFX asset bundle is about 350 Mb. Every time, when you start a game and use some spell, game need a time to load corresponding texture or model to VRAM. Then, when you using the same spell / summon for a second time there's no stutter, becose all assets already was loaded into VRAM.

[Insolentius]

Becose game is not using Pre-upload in VRAM. Though it should, becose whole VFX asset bundle is about 350 Mb. Every time, when you start a game and use some spell, game need a time to load corresponding texture or model to VRAM. Then, when you using the same spell / summon for a second time there's no stutter, becose all assets already was loaded into VRAM.

I know, and it's weird since the original PoE didn't have this problem despite using the same engine.

[Phenomenum]

I know, and it's weird since the original PoE didn't have this problem despite using the same engine.

 

The whole game is weird, in therms of code and optimisation. I doubt they can do something about it.