I17 Bugs: Input Delay and other oddities

Alright folks. Figured I'd post this up here to help people out who didn't get a full chance to see the Beta forums.

I17 has brought with it severe input delay of several seconds, where you either don't or keep doing something several seconds behind. Now a fix for this that seems to have worked was running services.msc and disabling any keylogger that was running (in my case ATI Hotkey Poller). This fixes up the input delay somewhat...

However something unrelated appears to have cropped up.

As some of you may be aware, people often use Ventrilo as a 'voice chat' of sorts in game. This was quite common with the various PvP SGs as well as a number of others. Now since I17 (and this was happening on Test) the Vent server gets very bizarre spikes of ping which makes it almost unusable. This is followed up with error messages about input being too high and disabling the input device.

Now one suggestion is that the new ambient sounds could be affecting this...but considering the fact I have my sounds all turned off...I think not. I suspect it might be linked to the issue with the input delay...

Anyone else having similar problems with Ventrilo? Any fixes? I know it's third party but I figure may as well ask where it's happening.

Add my mission title to the list:

"Defeat BOSS_NAME and Guards Peregrine Island"

And the Slow Fields no longer look like water. They are pixelated.

Wow Flea I am having the exact same problem. I logged in right after i17 came out and my input is really delayed and my in game movements as well. I logged off of the game and noticed my vent had the same exact error. I didn't even bother to think it had something to do with the game.

Update - Skype's dropping every other minute on calls as well.

So that's Skype and Ventrilo bugged with I17.

Anyone got Teamspeak status?

For the input delay, this kb article might be of use.

Hope it helps!

Sorry Mod08 I have an nvid card

Yep. That's exactly what fixes the in-game input lag, disabling that service...

But it does nothing with the Ventrilo and Skype issues currently being experienced. I know they're third party but I'm posting here to see if our collective hivemind has already solved this or can solve this wonderful issue.

The Symptoms, for those not sure.

Ventrilo

*Erratic Ping Spikes - going from 'normal' (for me, 131-132) to an obscene amount (186000 at one point) on a regular basis, during which you can't really speak or do anything. This is often accompanied by some sort of error message about the input device transmitting too quickly, recommending using DirectSound (which I already am, go figure.)

Skype

*Calls drop after a couple of minutes on a persistant basis. Sometimes you hear a 'sound loop' of transmission before it dies.

LEt me know folks. I've had one report saying TS3 seems to be fine.

Thank you moderator 08 that definitely fixed my lag problem, now the game is playable again. Unfortunately my vent is still pretty much unusable while playing the game.

For anyone who the above fix doesn't apply to, I'd like to request you contact our tech support department. They are more equipped to help you than I, and with enough data we can pinpoint the problem and address it fully.

Thanks,

I finally found a solution that worked for me regarding ventrillo ping spikes and crashes. I was reading a post on another game in which a user was having the same problem. Some one gave the solution that worked for him.

Solution
1. Have Ventrillo Open
2. Open Task Manager
3. Righ Click on Ventrillo in the "Applications Tab" and click on "Go to process"
4. It should take you to the "Process Tab" with Ventrillo.exe highlighted
5. Right click on ventrillo.exe and set priority to high

You should be able to open coh now and run vent smoothly. This worked for me perfectly. I am not sure if this will work for skype or team speak but you can give it a try and hope for the best.
(Sorry for the detailed description, making sure everyone is able to follow the steps.)

I'm experiencing the same prob. Graphics are fine, mouse input is fine however, every time it try to use the keyboard to type or move major delay occurs. Updated every possible driver i could think of nothing helps.

I've played for years never had a issue. However today wow major one. I'm on a labtop.

I've had similar issues with TeamSpeak. Very frustrating!

Running WinXP Pro, on a somewhat older machine. I have a TeamSpeak server and client running on this same machine that I game with.

On first running I17 (with TS client running) all game sounds were very erratic. Looping, skipping etc. Very strange. I changed the TeamSpeak client to use DirectSound instead of Wave and that cleared up my game sounds, BUT... TeamSpeak STILL did not work right!
Only when the TS client window was up and had focus did it work correctly. As soon as CoH had focus (doing anything in-game), the voice chat was intermittent, random and very glitchy. Our VITAL (to us anyway) voice chat was completely USELESS!


Workaround: I did something very similar to Athalusis.
In the windows Task Manager I changed the TeamSpeak SERVER priority to AboveAverage (not High). This allowed us to use TS voice chat again.
(Be aware! Higher priority is not always better. You can set a service / program's priority so high that nothing else has a chance to run correctly.)

Also, since I17, IN-GAME, when I press CTRL+ESC to pull up the windows Start Menu (to access the task tray, or start other programs) it takes FOREVER... from 30 seconds up to 2 minutes!! Normally it comes up instantly. I have a feeling this has some relevance.

Objective Opinion time:
This is a HUGE issue. What other game interferes with audio and / or keyboard input in such a way? None that I know of! This will cause all sorts of problems if it isn't fixed. No game has any business demanding FULL CONTROL of all input / output like this.

Hope this helps in some way.
-Morty

Here are some of my workarounds for my slower 1ghz on board video laptop.

Moving toon with Keyboard workaround:
This could be a workaround if you have a Sony PS2 controller. With a High Speed Dual Ps2 To Usb Converter, you can use the controller to move the character in the game. Compared to the keyboard control, it's smooth and your toon stops when you release the buttons. I suppose a joystick works just as well. The usb converter is about $6 at bestbuy.

Chat workaround:
Run Coh in window mode and type what you want in notepad. Then cut and paste into the chat window.

Hope this helps.

I play the game with conference calls on skype. Same as everyone else just loops cuts out.. and then ends the call. Me and my friends are leaving CoX for now.. since it sucks not being able to communicate besides chat =/.

I don't think the problem is ventrilo at all. I too have had these ping spikes, but I traced it to CPU spiking. When I run ultra mode, my friends in ventrilo say I break up and stutter. When I shut ultra mode off, no breakup or stutter. I pulled up my task manager on both accounts and was getting a 98-100% CPU spike on a AMD II x-240 system with 4Gb of Ram and a Geforce GTX-260 (core216), raid stripe 0 hard drive array, in ultra mode, not zoning. And a 45-68% CPU usage on my old i16 settings, (ultra mode off) not zoning.

My friends, however, are running 6+ year old systems and video cards. They have ultra mode shut off entirely and are getting 100% CPU spikes when loading into missions or zones only. It only seems to stutter and break up when loading mission and zone maps for some reason. When they've loaded in, ventrilo is fine for them.

I even testing this out today. I turned off all ultra mode setting and went back to my i16 settings. I had task manager open. I loaded into Talos, IP and Peregrine. My CPU was spiking at 70-80%. This seems unusually high since I have plenty of RAM, plenty of video ram, fast hard drive array. I mean, I'm just loading a zone map, why is the CPU usage spiking up then dropping down once I'm in zone? Am I missing something here? I thought maps cause hard drive and ram usage to spike, not the CPU. Am I wrong?

I hope someone can take a look at this. I'm positive now that I've tested this out, that it's not our systems, it's either wrong coding that's causing addresses to the wrong hardware or i17 is so powerful, that even on pre-i17 graphic settings (ultra mode OFF), it's now a complete system hog.

I'm having similar problems with Skype that started when i17 dropped. I can hear the conversation just fine, but friends report that my voice drops out. It's not a loose mic cord, and the problem goes away when I alt-tab out of the game. CPU usage is very high, but I don't really see why it would crowd out only my outgoing voice.

I did install new Realtek Audio drivers for Win 7 (Asus has no Win 7 updates) and new Nvidia drivers today, so we'll see how it goes. I'll also try setting the process priority to high, but expect it'll probably screw something else up. Otherwise I'll have to dust off the old PC just to run Skype. This really needs fixing.



My system:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64
2.53 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5GC-MX/1333
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
4 GB RAM

My new favorite description of a power:

Hellfire Aura (power used by the Hellfire Demon, second tier 2 demon you get):

"You are on burning due to being too near the Blazing Aura."

(Note, this power ONLY does toxic damage.)

Just wanted to say that I changed the process priority for Skype.exe to high (it was set to "below normal") and the problem went away. I even jacked up my graphics settings to test it and it ran great.

I can't rule out that updating drivers fixed it, but I think it was the priority change.

The Television shows a room full of people clapping and cheering...though with the kind of hesitation you get when you haven't completely verified what you're excited about and know you could be celebrating for nothing. Still, they're excited. This thread contains the information they were looking for.