[Dave_Billing]

For the last couple of days I have noticed eduke32 is doing something weird. Whenever I pick up something in the game, the framerate drops and subsequently becomes momentarily sluggish, shortly returning to normal. I have never noticed this before, and I have absolutely no idea what to do, I've reinstalled everything, but to no avail. I'm stumped. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Hendricks266]

Which renderer are you using? If it's Polymost, I have a hunch as to what it may be. (Polymer maybe. Classic, I'm stumped.)

[NY00123]

I recall it occurring with different source ports earlier (like xDuke), possibly since a 8-bit palette changes while picking up something. That may occur more often on Win7 than, say, XP, although it can still happen on XP.

So, if it's the classic renderer then that may be it. If it's Polymost, see Hendricks' post.

Dave_Billing, on 19 May 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

For the last couple of days I have noticed eduke32 is doing something weird. Whenever I pick up something in the game, the framerate drops and subsequently becomes momentarily sluggish, shortly returning to normal. I have never noticed this before, and I have absolutely no idea what to do, I've reinstalled everything, but to no avail. I'm stumped. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Plagman]

I bet it's classic, someone else was complaining about palette uploads being slow as balls on ATI with newer versions of Windows.

[Dave_Billing]

It's occurring independent of the renderer used, so it happens in both polymost and software mode.

[Fox]

The possible causes I can think of:

- HUD update (if you are using the full Status Bar)
- Screen tinting
- Message display

I suppose you could isolate the last two. The message is not displayed when picking-up a Pistol, and you could try other means that change the screen tint.

Edit: perhaps it os one of the commands typically used in pick-ups...

    ifp pshrunk nullop
    else
      ifp palive
        ifpdistl RETRIEVEDISTANCE
          ifcount 6
            ifcanseetarget

To isolate this you probably should check if the framerate drops when you are on top of the weapon or item, but you are already full.

[Helixhorned]

I have noticed framerate drops on Windows in the classic renderer in the past (both on ATI and NVIDIA systems), though I have never been able to pinpoint them in a reproducible way. However, as far as I'm concerned, full screen 8-bit more is broken in Windows 7. The two major deficiencies I have noted when playing on a recently installed (and updated) Windows 7 with reasonably up-to-date NVIDIA drivers are:

• For my native resolution of 1680x1050, frame rate caps at about 60 fps for a simple scene. Mouse input becomes annoyingly laggy. Switching to windowed mode in the same resolution bumps it to 125 fps and makes mouse input snappy again.
  
• Color correction does not work. Apparently, someone reports that it does (else, EDuke32 would fall back to software CC), but it has no visible effect.

Therefore, on Windows7, I suggest playing EDuke32 in a windowed mode at the screen's native resolution. For this, you'd need to disable window decorators and make the EDuke32 window cover the task bar.
For the former, I found a solution on the net (edited 2nd answer works for me), though it's not ideal as it requires third-party software. [We could include the respective code into EDuke32, but right now I'm not in the mood of wading through the sad mess that is the Windows API to hook it up with the startup window, etc.]
Making a window being able to cover the task bar is easy -- right-click on the Windows menu logo, go to "Preferences" and you'll find some task bar options there.

[Dave_Billing]

Fixed it. Disabling V-Sync seems to have rectified the problem.