Support Game freezes when file is being downloaded ingame

Hi,

The problem I have is pretty self-explanatory reading the title.
I found only one similar problem in the tech forums here.

Whenever the game has to download a file in game, my screen freezes and I can no longer control my character.
After some time, the game continues normally.

Generally this happens:

• after a patch
• when I go to a map/boss I did not visit for some time
• clicking a chest with keys
• opening a menu
• opening a merchant

Basically whenever the game has to load a "new" element for some reasons.

Very simple example
On the recent R218 update Devs modified our items, so some of them had to be redownloaded.
When I opened my inventory I Had untextured items so the game suddenly froze.
When the related items had their textures downloaded, the game came back to normal.
Also, when I entered new maps after this patch, I had to reownload them so the freeze issue happened.

My PC

• My ping is a constant 20ms
• I have 1G Fiber
• CPU is 4790K
• RAM is 16Go
• GTX 970
• No firefall application
• Windows firefall disabled
• uPnP is enabled on my box (so that's not a network port issue)
• All drivers are updated (chipset included)
• No firefall

Things to know/I've tried

• I do not have this issue on any other game
  
• DNS have been flushed
• Temp file / DSO cache deleted
• Game redownloaded
• Clean reinstall of Windows has been made (full format)
• Antivirus disabled
• Reduced ingame graphics (keeping in mind my PC specs, that's non sense anyway)
• Changed memory allocation

SO if you have any idea, please shoot
Thanks for your support.

 

Hey there @Lemnolia ,

You are not alone and this is a known issue.
I'm personally experiencing this issue very often since Dec. 2018 (Release 212) and in our moderation team some more members are being affected too.
The best you can do is: a ticket to the support and provide them your logfiles. I've done the same some weeks ago. Who knows development team will be able to find the error and fix it. It's not related with your PC, that I can assure you.

Attention: after a patch, you can experience some high loading times, etc.

Try to play via Internet Explorer. It sill freezes/crashes, but it's a bit better.
Cheers.

 

Thanks, I had a thought about all this.

Maybe this is related to our swap file size being too small compared to the game realistic needs.
Thus, while our cache would be too small for the game, sometimes we would need to download files we already downloaded before...
That would explain the situation, with files being replaced on our swap and the replaced ones having to be DL again.

So that would be very interesting to have someone with like 10Go setup of swap on his Windows, so we could know the total file size of the DSO cache after some time.
Then, by increasing our swap accordingly, check if the "redownloading" happens again (apart from the relevant ones related to brand new content of course).

By any chance would you know the max file size of the DSO cache?
If not, could you ask the devs?

But for sure, there's optimisation to be done from the devs on those "on the fly" files to download

 

Hey there @Lemnolia ,

Thank you for your detailed description.
Whenever you contact your support language, add the following information:

• Your geographical location (e.g. country).
• Your server.
• Ping in game (e.g. latency).

This information was requested by QA Team.
Cheers.

 

Hey, don't worry about those freezes .

It is quite normal thing and more important one time per RL ,if it isn't another issue, which I hope is not.

Any new release, you need to be patient with maps loading ... Example : if game freeze, move your mouse cursor - if it moves, just wait, don't click on anything (sometimes client can crash due gpu driver stops) few moments and:

Try those maps where game got frozen, you'll see there's no problem now.

 

I've reported this bug ~~ 2 years ago, even provided the video of this happening on q2 map, uploaded to youtube, to no avail. Let me explain again exactly what happens here:

1) The main thread is trying to load a resource, it sees its missing and so it 'delegates' it to a separate loader thread, hence you can still walk around the map with resources unloaded (the main event loop thread is not blocked, the delegate thread is).

2) The main thread is trying to load another resource, it sees its missing and so it 'delegates' it to a separate loader thread. HOWEVER the delegate is already busy waiting for previous resource so it block the 'delegation process' blocking the main event loop thread, resulting in a frozen game.

The issue only occurs when its trying to interleave two or more resource loads, go try it yourself. There is no issue with loading a single resource. Only when you 'queue' loading two or more resources, thats why it hangs when you walk 'further into' a partially loading map, you 'queue' more updates, and the updater thread cannot 'receive' it because its stuck loading the first.

Three solutions:

1) Dont use lazy loading to shred off 0.5 seconds of loading, load everything at one go when you enter the map (all the assets).

2) Separate main event loop thread from delegate; use shared resource instead of inter-tread communication

3) Fix the delegatee thread so it doesnt hang.

Now go translate it into chinese and send it to bigpoint, i cant be arsed sending the same support ticket over and over. maybe they will listen to you.

Source: Senior software dev, mainly client-server paradigms.

P.S. the 'delegate' thread unhangs in the exactly the same moment a new file in %TEMP%/DSOClient is spawned. As for the main/delegate thread hang, try to right click the hanged dso process, 'analyze wait chain' and you will see main event thread blocked on the communication with the delegate(s).

P.S. 2: The issue repeats after a patch due to the 'timestamp' attached to asset files: 'export_win32_textures_t003_outdoor_12_cultists___toc._27df04032d268dd3e4b1acfdf516dc34'
The last part _27df04... is some form of a unique identifier between versions, a hash, a timestamp, whatever. In any case it is re-evaluated with the new update, the identifier is no longer _27df04...', its something different. So the client sees its 'missing' this file; hence the reload. This is probably done to simplify the updating of the assets - you don't have to explicitly state which ones have been updated.

 

Brillant!
Thanks a lot, I hope this very clear resolution will be read and considered by the devs. It looks obvious and provide a clear fix!
Gg

 

I think is windows bug related, not dso, the hard drive hit 100% usage when this bug occurs. I get similar bug in another game, and is same conditions (100% hard disk usage.) ps not storage, is about read/write...

 

The second part is correct, thats why i presented a solution number 3. the delegate hangs on loading, some sort of packing/unpacking issue.

with solution number 2 there would still be 100% disk write/read but you'd still be able to walk around the map, albeit an empty one as the assets have not been loaded.

solution 1 would result with the 'freeze' happening during the loading process, hangs for few minutes but then you can run around the fully loaded map without a problem (not really true as there are other non-map related assets you could still dynamically load, such as opening a shop tab or achievements panel, using a new mount etc).

This is dso fault im afraid, the client needs fixing, the loading/unpacking process DSO is using is bugged, not the load/store routines from windows which are used on billions of computers. A good example is storing files in %TEMP% folder, i still think its a 1st april joke, who on earth would store game files in TEMP?????

PS. The loading of files, packing/unpacking or whatever is totally a DSO invention, its not windows related. Its probably firing tons of reads/writes to find the data, a naive example would be a mismatch in naming, and then a new request is made from the internet as opposed of disk, on which the resource has by mistake not been found.

 

The game is freezing because it is deleting files and then the game is downloading them again.

 

That is correct, but there is no reason why the game has to be stuck; it's already loading from a different thread than the main game thread, but it does it incorrectly (bugged i mean).

Multithreading coding is considered the hardest coding paradigm to understand. 90% of java developers don't know what 'volatile' keyword really does. So no wonder bugpoint would screw this one up as well. Most developers are just seasoned coders who glue things on top of existing framework, unfortunately.

 

hello!!! i also have the same problem every map changing the game reoalds and freeze instantly for a second especially in pvp is terrible even a sec freeze it makes you to not hit properly you see the player right and syddenly is to your left ect etc and i have and good msec 40-50