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I woke up today and now my game is slow (resolved...?)

A topic by AlmyriganHero created Sep 11, 2020 Views: 1,983 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(1 edit)

So this isn't technically a bug with my game at all (more on that below) but it is, none the less, a technical issue which is negatively effecting development, and to which a simple browser search presented no solution (or even any particularly relevant results.)

My problem is basically...exactly what the title says. I woke up today, and found that my computer had restarted in the middle of the night. Nothing terribly unusual about that, but after booting up Game Maker Studio 1.4, making a few minor tweaks to a level I'd been working on last night, and compiling the game for a test, something..."funny" happened. I almost immediately noticed that the timing and speed of everything was off. The game seemed to be running at around 70% of its normal speed. Regardless of any circumstances, as well; every room, every screen, however packed or empty, was effected by this same unusual torpor. I even created a new room with nothing but the player character and an invisible floor; just as slow as any other part of the game. To completely rule out the possibility that it could be any changes I made, intentionally or otherwise, I downloaded an executable demo build that had worked fine on the day I uploaded it. Sure enough, slow as molasses.

For further testing, I played a few games in my Steam library, as well as a Studio 2 project by one of my friends. Both were absolutely fine, and I can also confirm that my game is running fine for that same friend. It's not a particularly demanding game, either; pixel art, fairly low resolution, an old-school lighting engine based on surfaces and gradient sprites, and simple post-processing shaders to adjust bloom, saturation, and contrast. Even with both the lighting and shaders disabled, the game ran no faster.


I'm barely even looking for solutions at this point, I'd be happy for a few good theories, or even just affirmation that I'm not literally the only person this has ever happened to. My only real guess is that a Windows 10 update screwed me over, somehow, for some reason; but that's obviously not much to go on.

(1 edit)

So to recap: You’re a game developer. You went asleep, left your computer running and due to reasons unbeknownst to you, it restarted. Now everything you do with Game Maker Studio 1.4 is running slow while others don’t have that issue. And you don’t know what went wrong.

Based purely on speculation, I can think of a few things:

  • Could there have been a recent update to Game Maker Studio without your consent? You could backup your settings and current version of the game, uninstall Game Maker Studio and then either reinstall either from an old backup of the last working installer or the latest version available online.
  • Windows 10 is a bane on humanity and you should purge it from your machine (any machine, really ;) ). Windows 7 is still an option if you don’t want to learn Linux…
  • I have seen systems being brought to their knees purely based on fragmentation. Personally, I use the free version of Defraggler for my HDD. (I’m not affiliated or sponsored.)
  • Some piece of hardware could have gotten damaged but not broken. (I hope that’s not it.) Or maybe your machine’s fans have gotten too dusty… If dusting the fans and letting everything cool down for a while also shows no results, you could bring your machine to your local experts to have a look at it. You know… What we all do: Ask someone who knows what they’re doing as a last resort. ;)

I hope any of this helps.

(5 edits)

I know it wasn't a Studio update, because as stated, I redownloaded an executable demo compiled several days back, and it's suffering from the same problem. That basically rules out any issue with the file itself, as far as I can tell; something else on my computer updated, and now a file that previously worked fine, and was not even present on the hard drive the time of the restart, is misbehaving. I'm also reluctant to believe it's anything as "simple" as a damaged fan or bugged graphics driver, since far more demanding games and other programs are functioning at their usual capacity. Aside from this one particular issue with the one game that I'm developing, I'd never have even assumed anything changed.

And that's what honestly makes it so perplexing. All evidence points to the issue originating on my computer, and yet there's nothing discernably wrong with my computer, save for its interaction with this one very specific game. I don't even know where to start looking for the hangup, and I'm not quite desperate (nor knowledgeable) enough to start messing with the machine in ways as drastic as switching out to older operating systems. Or for that matter to blow money on expert analysis and repair, when for all I know whatever issue I'm experiencing will be patched within a week by whoever caused it.

I appreciate your thoughts, and I'll keep them in mind if the issue takes too long to resolve, but I guess what I really need is just someone who's already experienced and resolved...whatever this is.


Edit: I will try defraggler, though. Who knows; if it works, it works, if it doesn't...hopefully it won't destroy my PC.


Edit 2: After messing around a bit, I'm beginning to suspect that it was an Intel driver update that caused this. Unfortunately, the option to rollback is completely greyed out, so I guess I'm going to need to uninstall it and figure out which version I had yesterday.

(+1)

General update post:

Through some slightly less specific searching, I found out about the "sleep margin" global game setting. People seem to agree that the default value of 1/ms should always be changed to 10/ms anyway, and doing that...completely fixed everything, no changes to any computer settings required. That begs the question of why I only just now needed to change it, and why only I had any such issue in the first place, but if nothing else, I can at least playtest my game again.

Since I'm still pretty ignorant on the matter though, another question; have I fixed this issue, or is it now going to play at hyper-speed on literally anyone else's machine? To my paltry understanding, it has more to do with frame calculations than actual game speed, but you can never be too safe.

(+2)

Hi! Just experienced the same exact issue yesterday with GMS1.4. Last I checked like a few days back, my games were fine, but yesterday afternoon, every one of my games on Game Maker Studio was running like 1/4 slower than usual. This was after a Windows update.

have you discovered if the 'Speed margin' really puts the games' speed back to normal again and for ALL MACHINES, so as not to only be the correct speed when playtesting, and then having them run at, like, double speed when a friend tests on their computer?

The origin of the issue is still a mystery, I assume?

(+2)

IIRC, Windows changed it’s multitasking scheme, so it was an W10 update that caused this.

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