Short version:
I'm stuck playing on a macbook pro and most of the time its performace is suprisingly good (around 100 fps, smooth, decent hit reg) but sometimes, randomly, the game gets weirdly jittery. It's normal for about two seconds at a time, then pauses for like half a second, normal for two seconds, etc. with regularity (same interval) for like a half hour at a time. Recording a demo and stopping it sometimes fixes it. Anyone know any console commands/possible causes?
Long ranty wall of text:
It's possible the problem is as simple as the laptop overheating, but I hope it's not that because then there's not much I'm willing to do. I've been playing tf2 on this macbook whenever I'm on vacation at my parents' house for years and it's been a problem since the beginning. The only thing that makes me think I can possibly fix it (and that puts a seed of doubt that it's not just some random symptom of overheating) is that sometimes tf2 randomly runs amazingly, with no issue, for hours at a time, for weeks at a time, with similar memory usage. Using no fps config has occasionally made the issue go away, but when I tried that two weeks ago it was worse than it has ever been, and installing Comanglia's config (for the first time, I previously used a heavily modified Chris' which I guess I forgot to back up when I uninstalled the game on the mac) helped marginally. I'm half convinced that there's a net setting or obscure console command that might help, and I'm turning to the nerds of tftv with low hopes.
A couple more things to note:
- I semi-regulary verify integrity of game cache/ delete custom folder to try to fix this.
- steam cloud is disabled in-game, that helped a lot actually.
- I've reinstalled both tf2 and steam several times over the years on this computer, issue has persisted semi-randomly the entire time.
- I've used this computer on probably four different ISPs (one move, one change of service provider, one at lake house), once on a good wired connection but mostly on wireless, and the issue has persisted/randomly not happened through every one.
- My ping SOMETIMES spikes up really high when this is occurring but it is usually when I'm on wireless and ping spikes seem to happen fairly often even when this particular problem isn't occurring.
- I'll try to get a net_graph screenshot up tonight but looking at net_graph 4 last night choke said 2/3 and loss said 0, I know those are important but not what they mean.
I know embarrassingly little about hardware, here is a screenshot of the specs page, let me know if more info is neccesary:
http://i.imgur.com/XHV6MhB.png
For my current net settings:
I have used Chris's good connection/ bad connection and Comanglia's good connection extensively, I tried Comanglia's bad connection last night and it made things much worse in different ways so I switched back. I have messed with cl_interp and cl_interp_ratio a lot but I don't see how that could be causing anything. I have tried setting several different values of an fps cap to reduce overheating but that made my tf2 significantly worse (in other ways unrelated to the issue)and it was visibly better when I set it back to 0. I tried changing cl_smooth and cl_smoothtime or whatever it is to default once and that didn't help either. Here's my current config, Comanglia's, which is barely edited if I remember correctly.
http://pastebin.com/qaDzYc0M
Sorry for wall of text, TL;DR post console commands / fixes that might improve performance on a mac laptop if not potential solutions to my specific problem.
[size=14][b]Short version:
[/b][/size]
I'm stuck playing on a macbook pro and most of the time its performace is suprisingly good (around 100 fps, smooth, decent hit reg) but sometimes, randomly, the game gets weirdly jittery. It's normal for about two seconds at a time, then pauses for like half a second, normal for two seconds, etc. with regularity (same interval) for like a half hour at a time. Recording a demo and stopping it sometimes fixes it. Anyone know any console commands/possible causes?
[size=14][b]Long ranty wall of text:[/b][/size]
It's possible the problem is as simple as the laptop overheating, but I hope it's not that because then there's not much I'm willing to do. I've been playing tf2 on this macbook whenever I'm on vacation at my parents' house for years and it's been a problem since the beginning. The only thing that makes me think I can possibly fix it (and that puts a seed of doubt that it's not just some random symptom of overheating) is that sometimes tf2 randomly runs amazingly, with no issue, for hours at a time, for weeks at a time, with similar memory usage. Using no fps config has occasionally made the issue go away, but when I tried that two weeks ago it was worse than it has ever been, and installing Comanglia's config (for the first time, I previously used a heavily modified Chris' which I guess I forgot to back up when I uninstalled the game on the mac) helped marginally. I'm half convinced that there's a net setting or obscure console command that might help, and I'm turning to the nerds of tftv with low hopes.
[u]A couple more things to note:[/u]
- I semi-regulary verify integrity of game cache/ delete custom folder to try to fix this.
- steam cloud is disabled in-game, that helped a lot actually.
- I've reinstalled both tf2 and steam several times over the years on this computer, issue has persisted semi-randomly the entire time.
- I've used this computer on probably four different ISPs (one move, one change of service provider, one at lake house), once on a good wired connection but mostly on wireless, and the issue has persisted/randomly not happened through every one.
- My ping SOMETIMES spikes up really high when this is occurring but it is usually when I'm on wireless and ping spikes seem to happen fairly often even when this particular problem isn't occurring.
- I'll try to get a net_graph screenshot up tonight but looking at net_graph 4 last night choke said 2/3 and loss said 0, I know those are important but not what they mean.
I know embarrassingly little about hardware, here is a screenshot of the specs page, let me know if more info is neccesary:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/XHV6MhB.png[/img]
[size=14][b]For my current net settings:[/b][/size]
I have used Chris's good connection/ bad connection and Comanglia's good connection extensively, I tried Comanglia's bad connection last night and it made things much worse in different ways so I switched back. I have messed with cl_interp and cl_interp_ratio a lot but I don't see how that could be causing anything. I have tried setting several different values of an fps cap to reduce overheating but that made my tf2 significantly worse (in other ways unrelated to the issue)and it was visibly better when I set it back to 0. I tried changing cl_smooth and cl_smoothtime or whatever it is to default once and that didn't help either. Here's my current config, Comanglia's, which is barely edited if I remember correctly.
http://pastebin.com/qaDzYc0M
Sorry for wall of text, TL;DR post console commands / fixes that might improve performance on a mac laptop if not potential solutions to my specific problem.
Potentially you could be running out of ram... does the jitteriness happen more when you have other programs open in the background? (ignoring mumble, it's small and shouldn't make any real difference)
Potentially you could be running out of ram... does the jitteriness happen more when you have other programs open in the background? (ignoring mumble, it's small and shouldn't make any real difference)
I only ever have itunes and mumble, sometimes textedit if I'm editing something in my hud or changing autoexec. I can take a screenshot of activity monitor next time I play, think that shows memory usage...
I only ever have itunes and mumble, sometimes textedit if I'm editing something in my hud or changing autoexec. I can take a screenshot of activity monitor next time I play, think that shows memory usage...
Here's a screenshot of netgraph while the issue is occurring, seriously doubt it's internet related though:
http://i.imgur.com/Rum9sCt.png
I also forgot to mention a couple things:
- this issue happens on local servers
- alt-tabbing occasionally fixes the issue completely (????) for the rest of the time i play tf2
i feel like i haven't done an adequate job of explaining exactly how the issue manifests itself so i tried recording a demo when the problem is occurring and then again when it's not. the game is much smoother in the problem demo than in reality but if you look at the rocket trails you can see how the game looks to me, every time the rockets skip my game just paused/skipped. it's similar to dropping frames except the game, players, and myself seem to be affected by it. also, towards the end of the demo you can actually see a little bit of stuttering which is pretty similar to how the game looks. the no_problem one should show a good contrast with how it normally and should be. they're both only a couple minutes long.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vcmt4ti8pjz6fyo/demos.zip?dl=0
Here's a screenshot of netgraph while the issue is occurring, seriously doubt it's internet related though:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Rum9sCt.png[/img]
I also forgot to mention a couple things:
[list]
[*] this issue happens on local servers
[*] alt-tabbing occasionally fixes the issue completely (????) for the rest of the time i play tf2
[/list]
i feel like i haven't done an adequate job of explaining exactly how the issue manifests itself so i tried recording a demo when the problem is occurring and then again when it's not. the game is much smoother in the problem demo than in reality but if you look at the rocket trails you can see how the game looks to me, every time the rockets skip my game just paused/skipped. it's similar to dropping frames except the game, players, and myself seem to be affected by it. also, towards the end of the demo you can actually see a little bit of stuttering which is pretty similar to how the game looks. the no_problem one should show a good contrast with how it normally and should be. they're both only a couple minutes long.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vcmt4ti8pjz6fyo/demos.zip?dl=0
CPU Choke M8, also, i pray you turn EVERYTHING off when you play video games with that little ram.
It's a laptop as well, so it's likely getting hot.
CPU Choke M8, also, i pray you turn EVERYTHING off when you play video games with that little ram.
It's a laptop as well, so it's likely getting hot.
DrPloxoCPU Choke M8, also, i pray you turn EVERYTHING off when you play video games with that little ram.
It's a laptop as well, so it's likely getting hot.
By turning everything off it doesnt mean just closing the programs sometimes stuff runs in the background without you knowing it. I dont know if MAC has something similar to windows task manager?? But i recommend going to something similar to "processes" and close the programs from there. I also heard disabling TF2 overlay helps free RAM.
Process screenie: http://imgur.com/gbrNmXp
[quote=DrPloxo]CPU Choke M8, also, i pray you turn EVERYTHING off when you play video games with that little ram.
It's a laptop as well, so it's likely getting hot.[/quote]
By turning everything off it doesnt mean just closing the programs sometimes stuff runs in the background without you knowing it. I dont know if MAC has something similar to windows task manager?? But i recommend going to something similar to "processes" and close the programs from there. I also heard disabling TF2 overlay helps free RAM.
Process screenie: http://imgur.com/gbrNmXp
try typing purge in the osx terminal, it might free up some memory if that's the issue
try typing purge in the osx terminal, it might free up some memory if that's the issue