Frame rate issues need some advice

[Percymazing]

Now before someone states the obvious, my frame rate for vanilla dungeons and shops and combat is fine. I have, however, downloaded a couple new shop mods. Specifically Apachi's goddes Shop and Colourwheel's Sexy Ladies Bank. For some reason my fps plummets when I go inside either of these shops. What's strange to me is that these shops aren't really all the complex. Some torches, a few armor replacers and some custom npc's. Has anyone else experienced issues like this? And if so did you ever find a fix short of lowering the graphic quality or resolution?

[kadath]

I don't know about Colourwheel's mod, but the Apachii store IS indeed a bit heavy lighting-wise if I remember correctly (had it on only for a short while, as most of its outfits don't really suit my tastes): several custom light sources, plus quite a bit of new models hangin' around, some of which might take advantage from a bit of PyFFI-ing. (PyFFI is a python utility aimed at optimizing meshes).

 

Still, as you prevent any "stating the obvious" mentioning how your vanilla "dungeons and shops and combat" do not cause fps drops, I'm inclined to suppose your game is for the most part still relatively unmodded: no big overhauls (FCOM), texture replacers (Qarl's) and the sort. If you indeed have no other MAJOR mod installed, then it is very likely Apachii store is the first mod of a considerable size (and so, in a way, considerably demanding) you installed: its unpacked resources were around 2 GB last time I checked. This might then be the first mod requiring you a further defrag of the data directory (which might affect loading times and stuttering rather than in-game fps, though - be sure to be talking about fps and not stuttering, as they are very different things) and most of all the first to test your system in front of a lot of custom content when inside the shop itself.

 

Some further information might help understaing how serious (exactly how much does your fps plummet?) this bottleneck is and where exactly it might be located. For instance, use the console to show your video memory usage, and take note if and how much it gets higher when inside the problematic shop(s). When the video memory used is higher than the physical VRAM your GPU has, the fps obviously drop: this scenario would be likely caused by several high-res textures around in the cell, which your systems might not be able to handle as it does with the vanilla, low res textures.

 

 

Apart from that, there are several utilities very handy for preventing these localized issues which aren't rare at all. First and best thing would be Streamline, an OBSE based plugin which simply adapts several graphic settings in real time to keep the game inside certain fps ranges you specify. For instance, let's say the culprit in this case are the lights and the shadows they cast inside the shop (pure speculation/example)? Streamline will detect your fps dropping, and will on the fly lower how much shadows are allowed to be drawn, restoring an acceptable fps. Once you go out and are again at high fps, the shadows will be restored.

Edited January 29, 2011 by kadath

[Percymazing]

I appreciate all the advice. I really only have two major mods. Just OOO and UV which I know both really change the way the game plays, but I didn't notice a whole lot of massive changes to the textures in the vanilla dungeons. Apachi's Shop and Colourwheel's bank are the only mods to cause an FPS drop like this one. I'll be sure to look into getting streamline as well as using the console to track my VRAM usage. Thanks again for all the tips, I really appreciate it.