Age of Conan

Special thanks to Hugh.

Stuttering:

Q:What is it ? Well if you enter the thirsty dog first time and you're screen is shaking as hell and you get 1 frame per X seconds instead of X fps (AKA the slideshow effect) that's the stuttering effect we're talking about =P

Q:Why does it happen and why does it still happen even though I have teh strongest bleeding edge new computer in the world ?

To generate the possibly insane goodlooking graphics the game uses objects called "shaders". Shaders are small programs that alter pixels or vertices. Consequently, there are two major types of shader - pixel shaders and vertex shaders. These tiny programs add effects to basic geometry - so a water-styled shader can be added to a flat blue texture to make it look reflective, or a glass-styled shader can be added to a polygon to make it appear transparent. These shaders are the key to what makes the graphics in games today look so much better than the graphics in games from let's say 5-8 years ago. These shaders are programmable, so games developers can make their own, allowing them to create a unique look and feel for their game and that is what Funcom has done. Now the problem is that some of these shaders in many area's in the game are not known yet known to your betaclient so when that happens the game uses the graphic card's onboard processing unit (the GPU) to compile (sort of calculate) the shader results and then displays them. The time of compilation is what gives the feeling of insane stuttering which is super annoying.

Q now we know the problem, how does Funcom handle it ?

Funcom thought of this when developing AOC. Their solution was and still is to simply have your computer hold the results of every compilation in memory -so that this stuttering would be a one-time thing as long- as you are standing in that 1 small space or area (let's say the area of thirsty dog inn). When you log off and exit AOC, the AOC client is supposed to write down those results from memory into a file on your harddisk so that all compilation results don't have to be done all over again next time. Upon a clean client exit (which never happens because AOC crashes all the time currently and therefore loses it's compiled shaders) it saves all these changes into a file in the general beta folder and that file is called "shader.cache.local"
As the result is calculated it's kept into memory as long as it's needed which means that if you leave the area to go and find new "previously unknown shaders" your current ones will be lost from memory and replaced by new ones which means you'll have the stuttering again. Also, after every crash you lost your compilations before your computer had the chance to write them down so you'll have the same stuttering upon next logon...

Q:So what's the magic trick then to get rid of the stuttering ?

Basically whenever your computer has compiled new shaders you want to immediately save those results to disk so your computer gets them from there next time instead of having to do it all over. That way you'll have no or almost no stuttering since it's much faster reading out the results than recompiling them. There's a button in the game that you can press to instantly save the current results of a shader compilation into the shader.cache.local file (you will actually see it grow in size when you do) and you want to do this RIGHT AFTER YOU FORCED/EXPERIENCED SOME STUTTERING because of new shaders being compiled.

Q:so where's that magic button ?

When you are in game, first open the debugging menu:

ctrl + ù for french keyboards
ctrl + \ for UK keyboards.
strg + ö for german keyboards.

Then press "dump shaders" because that is the magic button to save the results.

Q:What's the best way to test or use it ? You do it like this:

1. Upon feeling horrible graphics stuttering, stop running and start looking around 360°, move a bit back and forth and explore the very smalll area around your feet a bit until all stuttering stops and everything is fluent (this is when the computer has finished compiling the shaders of that area and has the results freshly in memory)
2. open the debug menu and press "dump shaders" to save the results to the file on your harddrive. You're safe now for next time you come across this small area
3. keep on repeating this everytime you experience stuttering in new area's
4. Check the size of your cache file before and after pressing the dump shaders button. If there's compilation data generated, it will grow. It can't hurt pressing it often.


Q:hey I tried it and it's indeed 5-10 times faster but when I restart AOC, it's not immediately ultrafluent. There still is some kind of mini-stuttering for like 1 sec or less everytime I first visit a previously saved area after starting the game. Is this normal ?

Yes this is normal, in fact this is as good as it gets. The client no longer needs to do all calculations but gets them from the precompiled results in your shader.cache.local file instead which is waaaay faster. Still it has to get them so it's normal to generate a small load, but nothing like what you experienced before so be happy and enjoy


Q:why doesn't Funcom provide us with a shader.cache.local file that contains ALL the shaders in-game so everything's smooth from the start ?

That is in fact their plan but it's not that easy: different cards and chipsets compile to different results so it's hard to make 1 file that has everything compiled for ALL videocards in the world. However, Funcom does plan to include shader.cache.local files with precompiled shaders for most known cards at around releasetime probably. In the meantime help yourself and make your own so you can play without stuttering !

Note: remember to backup that cache file regularly. If you reinstall the game or if a patch destroys it, you will want to copy your backed up version back to your gamedir to avoid going through all stuttering again

RAM