Freezing a few second whenever a new zed type appears in a wave

[Vaecrius]

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED.

The intermittent freezes and the long loading time were the same problem. It seems that when I last tried to turn off precaching it didn't help because the audio precaching was making a much bigger difference and I was only messing with the video settings. Now that I've turned both off the game runs more or less fine.

Original post follows.

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I've noticed that when I play, when a new zed type first appears on a map my computer will freeze for a few seconds then continue to run normally. Usually it's an annoying but brief freeze, but if I join a server on a late wave the freeze gets really bad as it loads several zed types at once, and if I'm unlucky enough to join between two late waves so I'm in the game when the next wave comes in this freeze can potentially get me killed.

The freeze also sometimes happens when I grab a new gun, and a few other random times that seem to suggest to me it's got something to do with loading meshes into memory. But it always happens with the new zed.

Getting a flash drive and using ReadyBoost (which from the numbers I'm seeing nearly doubles my RAM) seems to help get rid of most of the "random" freezes.

Is this effect at all documented elsewhere? If so, is there any way to avoid it?


EDIT: Also is there a way to edit titles? Not only am I missing a plural s but "wave" should read "map". -_-

 

[Mateos]

I have the same issue, and I think the only way to not get it is or you upgrade your Pc, or game loads with the map the zeds models, skins and sounds. Personnaly, it appears on the 1st view of a zed. There could spawn a second time this one on a different wave, I'll not get the freeze. I suppose my and your PC try to fast-load what I said when it appears around you.

 

[Vaecrius]

Actually I'm not sure if it's when the zed first spawns... it tends to coincide with the first sound it makes though.

I also get a freeze the first time the trader warns you that the wave is going to end soon, so maybe it's a sound thing???

 

[Benjamin]

System specs? And do you have precaching disabled?

 

[Vaecrius]

Precaching is enabled, cache size set to 128 - turning off makes things very, very bad.

I can never find the specs to my computer so just off the top of my head, it's a widescreen HP Pavillion laptop 1.7GHz with 1 gig of RAM, about 50-60 out of 140 GB free on the hard drive, running Vista. Runs the UT2K4 demo perfectly.

In related news, the latest version of Defraggler just gave me this awful reading of red splotches everywhere. (The previous version I had installed seemed to think everything is fine.) I haven't had a chance to try anything since it's been defragging this whole time and from the looks of it will be done just after I have to leave the house for work. :| So I'm going to give it another try after I get home, though the update might also fix a few things (or make them worse).

 

[Vaecrius]

So I've defragged and updated KF and switched to DX9 and despite a somewhat longer load time in all this (back to almost always missing one wave as opposed to usually missing one wave) performance is entirely reasonable and I'm even getting framerates on Wyre I thought I'd never get especially with projectors on.

Still got the freeze problem.

I should have said this before, too, but I also freeze the first time on a map I hit Escape, or click on the settings button. Maybe it's that Unreal Engine hard drive thing that's been mentioned elsewhere?

 

[Vaecrius]

So after getting Game Booster and turning off Vista's automatic page file handling (which resulted in a crazily-fragmented page file) I've nearly resolved every other performance issue (although some maps like Crash's spawn area and most of Departed are unplayable).

I now very distinctly get the freeze when a new zed is loaded into the game... I don't know if it's the mesh or the AI or something else, but basically the husk (it's always a lot worse with the husk than anything else, except when I join in a late wave when everything has to be loaded at once) has the ability to stop me for 5-15 seconds in wave 2.

 

[Vaecrius]

This seems to be related. I've never played UT2k4 except for the demo, which doesn't have this problem.

EDIT: For me it turns out to be an audio issue.

EDIT2: Okay, now that I've set to False the following:

[D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice]
UsePrecaching

[ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
UsePrecache
UseEAX
Use3DSound
UseDefaultDriver

(grey=I'm not sure if this has any effect)

I take an obscenely short amount of time to load a map, and after a very jittery first 10-20 seconds everything runs as good as I can hope for it to run (which is pretty damn good as long as I resist the temptation to turn on projectors and antialiasing).

 

[Vaecrius]

Problem's back as of the new update. :/

(though not nearly as bad as when I posted the OP)

EDIT: And it seems to be resolved by turning on hardware 3D and EAX
EDIT2: To be more specific, here are all the parameters I messed with and their current settings:
UseEAX=True
Use3DSound=True
UseDefaultDrive=False
CompatibilityMode=False
UsePrecache=False
DisablePitch=False
LowQualitySound=True

EDIT3: And I messed with them again as of the Christmas update, turning off EAX and 3D sound and turning on DisablePitch and turning off LowQualitySound. As far as I know I may be imagining the resulting improvement.