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View Full Version : Blatant Lag Issue Needs To Be Fixed



Berek-Halfhand
02-07-2007, 06:53 AM
I'm a huge fan of Heroes, so when I went to E3 2005 to learn about Heroes V I was ecstatic. I spoke with Fabrice at length as he showed me the demo.

When I got the Collector's Edition this past fall I was pleased that it came out and everything was going to be an enjoyable experience, or so I thought, as many of you were probably hoping for. We're now well on our way through several patches and even an expansion.

I expected the game to at least work, and for the most part it does... expect for the blatantly obvious lag issue when viewing in the direction of the main map area, especially at lower angles. This isn't my computer's fault, as any setting still has the effect. It would seem to be generated from the game not being able to handle all the effects, and generating everything improperly all at once even though you can't see much of it. The problem with this is it will do it no matter what settings or performance your computer is at, although certain maps are worse than others.

It seems to be relatively stable if you do not lower your camera angle whatsoever, and/or you zoom in completely. Obviously though that isn't a way to play the game.

It is an obvious issue that just about everyone has. For some reason the programmers weren't able to program well for it and have decided not to fix it yet. It's unbelievable, a blatantly "in your face" issue and they don't fix it, lol. Several patches later I come back and its still a problem, no change whatsoever.

I can't play the game until this is fixed. I have no idea how you guys handle moving around in the game world when it chops out on you no matter what when you view in the direction of the inner map.

Please fix this issue http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif. I've seen others complain about it, and its amazing not everyone is. I can't be a hardcore fan boy and just ignore it saying it isn't there, that's not an enjoyable experience to delude myself http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif. I'd like to play the game decently. No more expansions until you get the root problem figured out, lol. I'd do it that way anyway.

Just to note that I've tried the game on numerous hardware configurations, so the problem is absolutely not my own. I wish it was, then I knew I could fix it.

If anyone just so happens to know a trick around this, such as shutting off the particle effects or shutting off whatever is causing this, please let us know. I'd like to seriously get into the game and create maps for it, as I've done with previous Heroes versions. I'm eager to, but I can't with problem being a complete annoyance to the play experience.

Berek-Halfhand
02-07-2007, 06:53 AM
I'm a huge fan of Heroes, so when I went to E3 2005 to learn about Heroes V I was ecstatic. I spoke with Fabrice at length as he showed me the demo.

When I got the Collector's Edition this past fall I was pleased that it came out and everything was going to be an enjoyable experience, or so I thought, as many of you were probably hoping for. We're now well on our way through several patches and even an expansion.

I expected the game to at least work, and for the most part it does... expect for the blatantly obvious lag issue when viewing in the direction of the main map area, especially at lower angles. This isn't my computer's fault, as any setting still has the effect. It would seem to be generated from the game not being able to handle all the effects, and generating everything improperly all at once even though you can't see much of it. The problem with this is it will do it no matter what settings or performance your computer is at, although certain maps are worse than others.

It seems to be relatively stable if you do not lower your camera angle whatsoever, and/or you zoom in completely. Obviously though that isn't a way to play the game.

It is an obvious issue that just about everyone has. For some reason the programmers weren't able to program well for it and have decided not to fix it yet. It's unbelievable, a blatantly "in your face" issue and they don't fix it, lol. Several patches later I come back and its still a problem, no change whatsoever.

I can't play the game until this is fixed. I have no idea how you guys handle moving around in the game world when it chops out on you no matter what when you view in the direction of the inner map.

Please fix this issue http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif. I've seen others complain about it, and its amazing not everyone is. I can't be a hardcore fan boy and just ignore it saying it isn't there, that's not an enjoyable experience to delude myself http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif. I'd like to play the game decently. No more expansions until you get the root problem figured out, lol. I'd do it that way anyway.

Just to note that I've tried the game on numerous hardware configurations, so the problem is absolutely not my own. I wish it was, then I knew I could fix it.

If anyone just so happens to know a trick around this, such as shutting off the particle effects or shutting off whatever is causing this, please let us know. I'd like to seriously get into the game and create maps for it, as I've done with previous Heroes versions. I'm eager to, but I can't with problem being a complete annoyance to the play experience.

Phoss
02-07-2007, 10:32 AM
I totally agree. I have the same problem, but not so much on single player. In multiplayer, however, it reaches ridiculous levels. That combined with the fact that the AI turn is twice as long as my own turn makes the game almost unplayable.
My brother ran a scan on the game while we were playing, and one of the problems in multi seems to be that it's sending thousands of tiny little packages all the time instead of a few large ones. It just seems like these people have no idea about programming in general. Someone needs an education...

Berek-Halfhand
02-07-2007, 11:02 AM
Well, I'm sure the programmers are smart. I don't want to turn the thread into a bash fest because all you'll get is fan boys emotionally crying for revenge then. I'm a fan boy myself actually, just a sane one ;P.

I would just like to know how come they are ignoring the problem, and why they don't have the skills to fix it. Don't even make a game if you can't get such basic things right. They got the rest of the game done great I think. Looks good, runs good, its just this one instance, unfortunately this instance is acute.

Vryllyn
02-07-2007, 11:13 AM
I had that problem with my ol' 6800GT. It only had 256M of memory and was slowly dying a slow horrible death. I'd try maybe updating your drivers or possibly upgrade the video card.

Once I went to the 7600, I don't have any noticable slowdown.

C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s
02-07-2007, 11:15 AM
I'm no technical expert by any stretch of the imagination so this is pure conjecture on my part. But I believe it to be an issue with the game engine they chose to use. When you angle the camera down to view the world from a ground-level view the game slows down tremendously. The problem is that the engine doesn't disregard things in the distance and it doesn't limit the viewing range at all. So what you end up with is an overflow of animation. All those trees, objects, buildings, etc....they're all visible at that angle and they're all being animated fully. I think that in order to fix that problem they'd have to either replace the core engine (simply not possible) or do a major overhaul on it (not financially feasable). And since those 2 options really aren't viable options at all, they introduced some new pre-set camera angles that basically eliminate that problem. The Classic HoMM view and the Top Down view (I'm not sure if I've got the names of those correct though). Then they also introduced the feature of highlighting all interactive items on the map with the ALT button. Since these 2 camera angles cut down on the possibilities of the panning of the camera, the ALT highlighting helps out quite a bit on this situation. It's not a perfect solution by any means...but it seems to be a suitable trade-off.

I'd be shocked if we saw them use the same engine for H6. I'm sure it'll still be 3d (going back to 2d simply isn't going to happen in this day and age), but either a heavily modified version of this engine or a new one altogether would be most likely.

Berek-Halfhand
02-07-2007, 12:47 PM
I already have a PC much faster than that. It isn't hardware related unfortunately http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif.

Berek-Halfhand
02-07-2007, 04:39 PM
Anyone play Heroes 3? I'd love a good Heroes game, but I'd like to wait until Heroes V is a bit more tweaked.

Actually, you mentioned something about the different camera modes. Perhaps I'll try those as a stop-gap measure until they fix the original viewing support, if it is fixable.

C_h_u_c_k_l_e_s
02-07-2007, 07:30 PM
Most any other night I'd jump on the question of playing H3....but I'm not free tonight. Some other night...ab-so-friggin-loutly. :O)