Closing UI windows makes sound skip #1539
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Example / WIP: |
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As far as I remember we put this in on purpose, we had a lot of ppl running out of memory and experience crashes without it because gc would not happen often enough distant terrain definitely needs it, without it is basically crashing for most ppl after a few minutes because memory usage goes up and never goes down again |
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I'm not advocating removing those calls altogether, because they're probably required (mainly because DFU doesn't use LoadScene() much I suppose). Distant Terrain also contains a call to Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() when origin is moved, as long as it does it's not concerned by how frequently we call UnloadUnusedAssets from DFU itself. |
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alright, makes sense ;) |
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Something that may help is the incremental garbage collection that recent versions of Unity now feature (assuming it's GC that is actually what takes time in Resoures.UnloadUnusedAssets()). |
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I'm waiting for 2019.4 LTS to be the "final" version that carries us to 1.0 and into the foreseeable future. If that incremental GC feature is out of preview in that version, I'd be happy to enable and see how it rolls. |
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I can't seem to reproduce the issue, but I attempted a fix with #1782. |
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Just found this: |
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UnloadUnusedAssets is called by UserInterfaceWindow.CloseWindow so that would explain why there are complaints of stuttering on window close. |
Yep, scroll up and check Pango's first post :) It's not everyone though. I've never experienced this personally, even on my old 2012 clunker that most of DFU was built on prior to upgrading last year. We do need to unload asset bundles and clean up intermittently though, as DFU never changes scenes (which is when most Unity games do this). DFU generates a TON of procedural assets that will sit around in memory unless purged every so often. The trick is finding a good spot to do so. On closing UI seemed reasonable at the time, but I'm not married to it. Happy to move this to indoor/outdoor transitions or after fast travel if that helps reduce the problem and still provide periodic cleanup. |
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I did not experience this bug until 0.10.22 and it's made the game borderline unplayable with audio on. Closing any window causes the skip/stutter and it's maddening. I loot, sound stutter, I talk to an npc, sound stutter. |
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@HankTheDrunk thanks for letting us know. Can you tell us your specs? Is it a full stutter that freezes the game or is it just the audio? Does it occur immediately when you start playing, or is it more like 15 minutes into gameplay? If it is immediate, does it also happen when going from the setup wizard to the video? |
I think the original proposal by @petchema is a good idea for a simple and effective fix. Even if it might be only a partial solution, it should still be helpful given the number of reports that have been made recently and doesn't stop us from further discussion and improvements in the future. |
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People who use a lot of mods are far more likely to experience this problem.... To test I spam clicked Escape on my keyboard. This activates the clearing call over and over. I run about 25 individual mods. The reason I decided to try this simple test. I figured interkarma ran with minimal mods or none at all and hense he never has this stutter problem. So all the people annoyed about sound stutter are very likely running a lot of mods. However I am unsure if their system specs determine how many mods they can pile on before the stutter starts to happen noticeably. @jefetienne I can't share my system spec's this account isn't secure, very sorry. |
Daggerfall Unity needs to explicitly call Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() because it barely uses SceneManager.LoadScene() which is the way games usually indirectly call it. This is currently done in two places, including while closing UI windows, a path taken often enough during normal gameplay to prevent unused assets to pile up too much. However this can be a lengthy operation that blocks the whole environment as it calls GC.Collect() internally, and can make sound skip which can be pretty annoying once you noticed it (issue Interkarma#1539). This patch makes sure the call to UnloadUnusedAssets() does not happen more than once every 3 minutes, a tradeoff sufficient to make that issue much less noticeable, yet should prevent unused assets to stay around forever. It should be noted that, for optimal efficiency, all code using Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() (say mods) should call either ThrottledUnloadUnusedAssets() or ForcedUnloadUnusedAssets() instead to prevent unnecessary collections.
Sounds good enough for me, I submitted it as a PR |
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Another workaround that just occurred to me, if the only thing that can block in Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() is indeed the call to System.GC.Collect(), then starting with Unity 2018.3 we could temporarily set GarbageCollector.GCMode to GarbageCollector.Mode.Disabled around the execution of UnloadUnusedAssets() so that GC.Collect() does nothing and UnloadUnusedAssets() is really as asynchronous as it claims to be. |
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I've wanted to move to 2019.4 LTS for a while now, it's just not available yet. What about moving to latest 2019.3 for now then it's only a short step to 2019.4 LTS once available? I just want to minimise the number of engine shifts as it breaks mods. But that shift is coming and I see it as a vital step towards 1.0. |
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If binary compatibility is guaranteed between identical major versions, then that could be a plan. |
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I'm only hoping the final jump from 2019.3 to 2019.4 LTS won't break mods again. I honestly can't guarantee that. My preference would be to wait for the LTS version, but I'm willing to try an incremental approach. The shift to linear lighting is another step that will break some mods. So fun times ahead leading into beta, I think. We can create a 2019 preview branch. It could get a bit sticky though as the number of changes required is going to result in a lot of conflicts with new PRs. It's a safe way to explore problem space however, even if never merged directly back to master. |
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I've created a test branch for 2019.3.10f1 now. I don't plan to merge this one directly back to master, only to explore upgrade process further and release test builds to help modders prepare. |
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This problem was mentionned in the forums again (about 0.10.22 for the record) |
Describe the bug
Using Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() in UserInterfaceWindow.CloseWindow() makes sound skip or stutter for many people, even with no mods (hence minimal memory usage).
Forums: https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10&p=25780#p25780
To Reproduce
Listen to sound while closing any UI window.
Expected behavior
Music and sounds to play seamlessly while using UI
Desktop (please complete the following information):
Tested with 0.10.7 on Linux, but it can be noticed on many gameplay videos
Additional context
Resoures.UnloadUnusedAssets() is supposed to be called automatically by Unity when new scene is loaded, I guess explicit call was added because Daggerfall Unity doesn't load many scenes (beside very early during execution). But could it be called in places that would be equivalent to scene loading: loading game, fast travel, teleport, entering/leaving buildings?
Alternatively, I personally used a patch that leaves the call in UserInterfaceWindow.CloseWIndow() but throttles garbage collection so it doesn't happen more than once every 5 minutes, which is sufficient to prevent eventual long term memory usage runaways.
Distant Terrain mod also seems to call Resoures.UnloadUnusedAssets()
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