My game is broken and I need help please

Myrlin · Dec 24, 2016

Hello everyone,

I recently downloaded the latest patch through Steam (as I always have) and now my game is very slow. When I start a new game in any game mode the game will be normal and then after a short while it slows dramatically and everything is as if in slow motion. My frame rate goes all over the place, anywhere between 7 and 128 that I have seen. The game may randomly speed up but then slow down again. weapons start clipping into forearms so that I'm fighting a zombie in slow-motion with an iron spike impaled in my wrist...

No other programs are open on my computer while this is happening.

Before this, I could play the game on the highest settings without problem in any game situation.

This is what I've tried to remedy the problem:

1. update graphics card driver. No difference to game.

2. lowest possible graphics setting. No difference.

3. Uninstall and reinstall the game through steam. No difference.

4. I've searched for others with the same problem on this forum and elsewhere but have had no luck. I also cannot find a bug report forum here either.

This is my system:

Alienware M17XR4
Intel Core i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70GHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M
11.9GB usable RAM
64-bit OS
Running Windows 7.

If anyone can help or make a suggestion that would be very much appreciated.

Best,

Myrlin

P.S. if any Dev's read this, I'd just like to say I absolutely love this game, kudos, and thank you.

Syllabear3 · Dec 24, 2016

So it is happening after the last patch???

The weirdest thing that i am experiencing is that after a few alt tabs my character will get warpy and its fixed by restarting the game.

Myrlin · Dec 25, 2016

Correct, though I had not played it in about three or four months prior to updating it with this patch. In the past it has always worked perfectly on full graphics settings. Only after updating it with the last patch, which happened automatically through steam, did I play it and it is as above.

I tried reinstalling the game, let alone restarting, and every time it still happens.

C0rvin · Dec 25, 2016

It might be a problem with laptops. I did see similar behavious on my friend's laptop. Game was in slow-motion and very glitchy. On my PC and Laptop it worked fine. Pretty weird actually.

Myrlin · Dec 26, 2016

Thanks for your replies and suggestions. I agree, it is weird. I certainly don't understand it. I feel its a problem on my end rather than with the game which is pretty frustrating as I am not that savvy with such things.

Is there an official way to report such bugs? I cannot seem to find any.

Tony · Dec 26, 2016

The game speeding up and slowing down is usually a CPU problem; your processor can't keep up with the physics calculations so the game slows down until it catches up. You may want to run the game in windowed mode with task manager open so you can view your CPU usage while playing. Check to see which applications are using a lot of CPU cycles and also check to see if the CPU is being used 100%.

Ideally you want very low CPU usage from all other running applications (under 5%) so that it leaves the majority of the CPU available for the game. You may try closing other applications that are using a lot of CPU cycles and you can also use task manager to increase the process priority of Exanima.exe (right click on Exanima.exe, select "Set priority" and change it to "High").

I doubt this is related but if nothing else helps then you may try renaming the Exanima folder located at %appdata%\Exanima (paste this into the Windows search box). Renaming this folder will cause all of your save files to no longer work since it'll force the game to recreate the folder upon launching the game. This is just to test if perhaps some file is corrupted and causing issues. If this doesn't help then you can copy the files from the old renamed folder back into the new folder to restore your saves.

Myrlin · Dec 27, 2016

Thank you very much Tony, that's a huge help. I will try this asap (probably in 24 hours from now) and reply to this post with how it went.

Syllabear3 · Dec 27, 2016

Is it posible a memory issue???
If you are having troubles with that and since you have windows 7, check if your svchost.exe is consuming more resources than usual. I recently have been having problems with that.
I solved it just ending the windows update service.

You right click svchost in task manager, "go to services" and end the windows update one (it says that in the description, i forgot the name of the subprocess).

Even if it is not the problem, you will feel your pc quicker

Orlacktherof · Dec 28, 2016

Didn't the devs take out slowdown and speedup? I think one of the updates even says that

Tony · Dec 29, 2016

Orlacktherof said:
Didn't the devs take out slowdown and speedup? I think one of the updates even says that

They attempted to reduce the chances of it happening by implementing new optimizations, yes, but it'll still happen if your CPU can't keep up.

Jimmini · Dec 30, 2016

I like how Madoc, this ingenious mastermind, implemented the physics calculations to happen in parallel with the rendering. Made a pile of objects recently, the game went slow motion but rotating the camera and even dragging objects was smooth as always. Also resulted in some interesting battles.

God, how I love this game!