[ut2004] stuttering sound/low fps on level startup

[Paul E. Rybski]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, EC wrote:

> Fri, 18 Feb 2005 15:41:38 -0500 (EST) | "Paul E. Rybski"
> <paul at rybski.net>
> ::-Hi,
> ::- 	When I typically start a level either through instant action or
> ::-online, the sound seems to stutter a bit and the framerate is very
> low
> ::-until I have "looked around" and seen most of the new
> environment
>
> It is possible that the various 'UsePrecaching' settings in the
> ./System/UT2004.ini got set to false.  While this is unlikely because
> the default is true, still worth looking into.

Hi,
 	Thanks for the suggestion.  I looked in my UT2004.ini file and all 
of the UsePrecaching options were in fact set to True.  Just for fun, I 
tried setting them all to False and found virtually no change in the 
performance.  My base case is running Torlan (without the new vehicles) in 
Instant Action mode.  On startup, the sound stutters and the fps is low 
but then after a few moments, it's fine.  Also, the cut scene to an 
exploding core at the end of the game is also very jerky.  This jerkyness 
is the same regardless of whether these PreCaching values are all set to 
True or False.  Any other .ini hacking I could try?

I sometimes wonder if my sound hardware is to blame.  My on-board sound 
chip is a "Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller", 
according to lspci.  As far as I know, this chipset does not support 
multiple applications playing sound at the same time.  I've (wildly) 
speculated that this might be causing problems with simultaneous playback 
of the announcer voice and the game sound/music.  I'll be installing a 
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 card this weekend which does support this sort of 
hardware mixing.  We'll see if this makes any difference at all.

Other people don't seem to be having this problem on a regular basis like 
me, so it's got to be something to do with my hardware configuration. 
I've had identical problems with kernel 2.4.27 as well as 2.6.10 and even 
switched from OSS to ALSA drivers and didn't see any performance 
difference.

Very strange.

-Paul