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thegada

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3 Badges
Jun 11, 2022
12
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  • Prison Architect
  • Prison Architect: Psych Ward
  • Island Bound
The game runs fine until I enter the utilities tab, then it starts to lag really bad, even if I haven't built anything yet. The fixes I found online (resolution to auto, filtering off) aren't working.
 
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I loaded that game in my iMac, then in my modest Windows rig, no problem in the Utilities tab in either case!

How does the lag evince itself for you? Is there anything in particular you need to do in there to cause it?
It just starts lagging when I enter the utilities tab, once I exit it instantly returns to normal.
 
I frankly don't know where to go with this one. It's clearly not affecting everyone, and the one other confirming report here is quite different to yours in that it only affects them in a blizzard.

It seems there is something different about your machine or setup contributing to this, but I'm not seeing what it is!

You are a bit short of free space on your C: drive so you might try freeing some up.

Assuming that doesn't help, does Task manager-performance show that the CPU, GPU or memory are maxing out when this happens?
 
I frankly don't know where to go with this one. It's clearly not affecting everyone, and the one other confirming report here is quite different to yours in that it only affects them in a blizzard.

It seems there is something different about your machine or setup contributing to this, but I'm not seeing what it is!

You are a bit short of free space on your C: drive so you might try freeing some up.

Assuming that doesn't help, does Task manager-performance show that the CPU, GPU or memory are maxing out when this happens?
I freed up some space, it's now 25.8 GB of free space (lag is still there)

Task manager results:

Not in Utilities, running perfectly fine:
CPU 25-30%
RAM ~1.2 GB
GPU 98-100%

In Utilities, lag:
CPU 5-10%
RAM ~1.2 GB
GPU 98-100%

So nothing changes except for the CPU usage dropping by about 20%
 
I also see no difference in RAM / CPU / GPU usage between lag-free and laggy / sluggish game player. I created one more prison which I build up from scratch and I still have the same annoying lag during blizzards -- but only if I have prisoners in my prison.
 
Sorry, I didn't really have anything more to contribute or suggest. With only two reports, that differ in significant detail, and being unable to reproduce it from the same save doesn't leave me anywhere much to go!

Can you test an affected save game on any other machine you might have access to?
 
I can successfully reproduce the behavior on any machine. It appears to be related to the snow effect / workers cleaning up the snow. This will greatly slowing down / causing lag in the game. So far my theory. Here is why:
  • If you completely zoom out, so you see the whole map, the snow effect won't refresh or go away, even if the blizzard is over. When you then carefully zoom in again, the snow is suddenly gone, even though the weather has changed hours ago.
  • If you zoom in one of our buildings, and stay there for a minute or so, the game will run just fine. Now zoom out again until you see the snow, the lag will come back after a minute.
So as I tried to explain, it appears to be related to the weather effect e. g. snow. I however cannot reproduce this with any other weather event.
 
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