[HALF-SOLVED] Menus disappear in-game / Performance issues

Dear fellow Zero-K players,

I have played through a sufficient amount of game to report some recurring issues that occur in-game. I really love this game so these bugs are even more of a pain in the neck. I tried to set all graphics parameters to minimum but I still get them at unpredictable times.

My config is as follows:
- Windows 10 64 bits
- i7 6600U CPU 2.60 GHz
- 16 GB RAM
- 1TB SSD hard drive

Note that I play skirmishes with a simple mod that gives veterancy bonuses because this kind of veterancy is something I'm an absolute fan of and I only play RTS games in which units have veterancy bonuses.

1. Menus disappear in game.

This bug has been the most annoying. At some random point in the game (it seems to happen more often when I hear the fan, so it's probably related with my computer being overloaded or something), either just the bottom left menu (the mild version) or literally the entire interface of the game disappears. I'm left with just the units, and the game still running. I cannot select the units nor save the game nor make the interface reappear. The only way to get back the interface is to restart the program without saving the game. This has made me lose several minutes of games several times. I don't know how to find a quick fix or what could be wrong in my computer (which has ok hardware I think) that would produce this. Looking for previous posts in Zero K didn't help. I tried to follow the instructions of a similar one (that I can't remember of unfortunately) only to find that this bug re-occured later on.

2. FPS issues

As soon as I have, let's say, about 15 units on the screen, the frame rate drops significantly. If I have something like 30 units it's barely playable. So in the endgame I have to de-zoom to strategic map to move my troops, it's impossible to look at the battle without the game almost freezing, and going to something like 1-3 FPS. Is there anything I missed there? I also tried to look for previous posts but none of them really helped.

3. Various minor interfaces issues

When I start a new game or load a saved game, often the illustrative screens that appear while the game is loading become a single uniform color, and the writings on top of the loading bar are replaced by cryptic "symbols". Then I get these "symbols" instead of the construction time bar on top of buildings, or even I don't get any time bar while the builders build the building. Also if there is any trees or rocks on the map, they disappear. And also the indicators of metal sites either blink or disappear on the map. These bugs don't prevent me from playing the game but I notice that they occur at almost any game.

So, what are your tricks with the last version of the game to alleviate these problems?

Best regards.

Dear MM_MasterMind,

I got the exact same issues while playing the campaign (in which the mod does not act), so I think that the mod is not a necessary cause of the issues. I'll try making some screen caps.

The Spring engine the game is built on doesn't seem to play nicely with intel graphics, or vice versa. It seems you've probably tried all the compatibility presets you can enable in the graphics menu of the lobby to help smooth things out...

https://springrts.com/wiki/FAQ:trouble#Intel has some troubleshooting steps and might have a picture of the cryptic glyphs you were seeing, though they may not really help on Windows 10.

Is your system a fairly thin laptop? The CPU seems to be commonly used in thin and light laptop models anyway. I'm guessing it might have some temperature and performance constraints if pushing both the CPU and GPU too hard.

It also seems like the GPU portion may not have much memory bandwidth to go around. If you can handle playing at a lower resolution, that may keep your system from hitting either the temperature or memory limits too quickly. You could try the game in windowed mode at different sizes to see if rendering the game at a smaller resolution can give you a reasonable frame rate.

If you can get it playable at a lower resolution you might be able to enable some of the less performance-intensive features in the graphics menu as well.

Nice, if you can get that Nvidia GPU enabled it would probably fix most of your issues.

This looks like a good place to start for enabling your GPU in Zero-K. There may be two different places to look for modern Windows 10.
https://www.nvidia.com/content/Control-Panel-Help/vLatest/en-us/mergedProjects/nv3d/Setting_the_Preferred_Graphics_Processor.htm

Double-post. After further test, it seems that the performance issues are fixed. However, the idle builder bar still randomly disappears and also rocks and trees disappear. If I save/load I can make the idle builder bar reappear. However the rocks and trees remain invisible even if I save/load and even if I quit/restart the game in between. Do you have ideas about what to do in this case?

GoogleFrog

I tried to do as you said, it made the software crash. Here is the bug report:

https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/CrashReports/issues/32718

quote: tried to do as you said, it made the software crash.

That is what it is meant to do. It cannot send a full log without closing.

Your report doesn't contain the bug. It looks like you did not start a game or experience the bug ingame in that report.

GoogleFrog

I tried to get the bottom left bar bug again but it didn't appear for the moment. However, as the tree/rock disappearing happens systematically once it is there, I played my game and then generated a bug report there. That's at least half of the problem:
https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/CrashReports/issues/32737

A possibility is that the game makes the remains of destroyed units disappear each time the game is re loaded to avoid overuse of resources due to high number of remains, and also puts trees and rock in the same category since they are reclaimable.

GoogleFrog

https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/CrashReports/issues/32750

I got the bottom left bar disappearing in game this evening. Up there is the bug report.

Best regards.

quote: [f=-000001] Error: [SH::CreateProgramObject] hardware does not support creating (ARB) program-object "DecalShaderARB" [f=-000001] Error: [SH::CreateProgramObject] hardware does not support creating (GLSL) program-object "DecalShaderGLSL" [f=-000001] Error: [SH::CreateProgramObject] hardware does not support creating (ARB) program-object "DecalShaderARB" [f=-000001] Error: [SH::CreateProgramObject] hardware does not support creating (GLSL) program-object "DecalShaderGLSL" [f=-000001] Loaded DecalsDrawer: Legacy

Have you updated your drivers?