Lambda - Xen Portal Lag

Black Mesa Archive In-game Issues (Mod)
#1

Hello,

Very much enjoying Black Mesa, however I encountered a problem today.

I am at the very end of the Lambda chapter and am fighting off the aliens as the scientist opens the portal. As soon as the laser beam appears and the Xen portal begins to appear, I start to get huge amounts of lag. It is completely unplayable.
If I face away from the Xen portal and just look at a wall, the lag completely disappears.
Lowering my graphics settings to the absolute lowest settings possible does not help in the slightest.
I have tried restarting the game several times.
I experienced similar lag in Surface Tension when the garg was attacking the tower, however I didn’t take much notice as I cleared that part of the game fairly quickly.

My specs:
Intel Core i5 2.8GHz
4GB DDR3 1600MHz
ATI HD6950 2GB
500GB 7200RPM HDD

I have been playing this (and all other source games) completely maxed out at 1080p with no issues at all.

Any ideas?

#2

Capture screnshots with budget panel on and post them here. Then try using workaround as described in question 9 of the BM FAQ.

#3

I’ve found that I get some minor slowdown if I start at the auto save before the event (down to 40fps at the lowest), but things really start to grind if I load up a save that I made during the finale event - then it drops down to about 7fps. I suspect there is more going on here than just the complexity of the scene slowing things down - I think there’s a separate bug causing the problem.

It would be good to hear if others are seeing the same behaviour. Try loading from the auto save just before the finale and play through as long as you can. Then try loading from a save made during the finale one there are monsters flying around and compare your performance. And then for good measure, try starting from the auto save again and see if it improves again. If everyone is experiencing this behaviour then it could be a good clue as to the source of the problem for whoever is going to try and fix it.

And, for what it’s worth, my specs:
Core i7 920
12g ram
Nvidia gtx 670

#4

Having FPS drop dows to ~7 (and even to ~45) level with the hardware you have IMO is a bug per se, no matter is it related to a quicksave or not. It’d be interesting to check how does the game behave on my system wrt “final sequence” vs. quicksaved. I’d try to test it tomorrow and report back here.

#5

Yeah I just finished the game and I have to say, playing through the entire finale at sub 20 FPS isn’t exactly the way I’d like to remember finishing a game. I have a pretty top of the line computer and this end sequence destroyed my frames. Would love to see this fixed.

#6

I had the same problem on first playthrough, but was unable to completely recreate the situation. When playing the end for the first time, lag was unbearable even when I lowered resolution to 800*600 and all settings to minimum, while normally I’m able to play on max settings. The settings didn’t actually seem to change FPS at this phase, at least not noticeably.

When I tried playing the phase again to grab budget panel-shot after reading this topic (using quicksave-file), framerate dropped seriously on high settings, but was somewhat playable on minimum settings.

This is with the high-settings, if I remember correctly.

1023×575 132 KB

#7

I’m having the EXACT same issue.

Going fresh into the portal room and fighting off enemies is fine, there’s a bit of slow-down but nothing too bad.

But if I quick save during the final battle, and load that quick save my framerate will come to an absolute crawl. I’m talking 4 or 5 frames per second, it’s like watching a slide show of pictures. Completely unplayable.

I lowered my video settings right down to the absolute lowest all of them could go, dropped the resolution down completely, it’s still choppy as all hell, around 7 frames a second, just barely enough for me to stay alive and jump in the portal.

#8

i can confirm for me, playing the whole finale is fine, but a quick save/load i have amazingly bad fps

i5 2500k
8gb 1600hz ramm
Gigabyte GTX570 SOC

#9

Update: As others have posted, it seems to only be an issue if I have to load to a spot within the final section of the game.
I restarted Lambda Core from the beginning and had no issues, until I died and had to load from a save inside the final lambda core section.
Interesting, but good to know that it works from a previous save.

#10

I had this issue as well, and there was also two other points in the game where I had a massive FPS drop down to nigh-unplayable levels for no discernible reason (Right after the big fight with HECU in Questionable Ethics and while I was trying to kill the Gargantua with a missile strike). Both of those would always be present if I quickloaded the game, but they both suddenly went away on their own after a while.

Quickloading did indeed seem to be a trigger, but something odd I noticed is that while I was trying to figure out why my framerate was so low during the Lambda Core finale I had MSI Afterburner open on my other monitor, and I saw that there was no load on my video card whatsoever when I had the horrible FPS, so it seems that the game was no longer utilizing my video card.

Specs:
Windows 7 64bit
AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz Quad Core (Just edited this in. I knew I forgot something!)
4GB DDR3 RAM (I know that’s a bit low, but RAM didn’t seem to be an issue with Black Mesa)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 (12.8 drivers)

#11

i assume this is 32bit game anyway (not many 64bit games) so games can only utilize 4gb anyway :S

#12

Many said it is beacuse of your rig,they say if you have dual gpu it will work fine,well maybe but the fps drop is not beacuse of your rig,you can play this game with single core cpu and gpu ,this is source enigne not cryenigne,and the devs posted the official system req. so its bad optimatization ,i hope there will be update soon so i can play it again ,because small things like ligespikes ruined gamplay,but anyway it was awosme game.

#13

Same issue, but on lower end PC (anyway, Portal 2 was running on almost maximum settings) - c2d e6300, 4gigs ram and r4850
I had it also in Lambda Core, but there happend only once.
All settings to high, AA x4, 1600x1200

#14

Indeed and portal 2 is newer version of source enigne then BM.

#15

I can confirm that I encountered the same thing. When I start whole lambda portal sequence just by walking in there, my performance is superb but as soon as I save and then load the game during this sequence I have huge fps drop (to about 10-20).

My pc is:

core i5 2400k
8gb 1600hz ram
XFI Radeon HD 6870 1gb ram and it’s 256bit

I’m running the game absolutely maxed out with no problems but one mentioned before.

#16
#17

They havent fix everything there are more fps drop at some lvls not just at the end :frowning:

#18

I’ve seen only one screenshot with budget panel open in this thread illustrating the problem. Guys, could you please step in and post your screenshots with bugdet panel open when you have huge FPS dropdown there?

And yet another thing to try:
a) Quick load the game => notice dropdown;
b) Open up in-game console and leave it open as is for 3-5 minutes. Do not touch anything on keyboard or mouse during this period.
c) Close up the console and check if slowdown had disappeared.

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