[D2R] Huge problem going from 3 to 4 instances...

Hello,

TL;DR As soon as I click through the splash screen on the first instance, game locks up/has to be force quit. Only when launch 4-man, not when launching 3.

I've been running a 3-man team with no issues at all. All clients launch one by one, played for 48 hours.

Added a 4-man setup and BOY it does NOT like that. I launch D2R as normal, just the other team, and I get the 2 splash screens, and as soon as that is over, mouse stuttering, CPU usage cranks up, program shows not responding in task manager. Haven't even launched 2nd/3rd/4th instance.

Restarted multiple times, completely nuked and remade my 3-man and 4-man teams from scratch, etc. Same results. It just hates launching the game when I had a 4-man team

Please if anyone knows why....

Innerspace Build 1.18 6800

Some screens...

Here is the furthest I've gotten with the 4-man. Just hangs, locks, goes to not responding, etc etc etc. Never clears this screen ever, no matter how many launch.


And here I am with my well behaved 3-man team, no problems

[bob]

The main issue is going to be the 100% CPU usage.
CPU requirements are difficult to predict per game as they just don't scale linearly, and when you get to a certain point, they can end up spending more time doing maintenance tasks than actual processing.
For D2R the best strategy appears to be "no strategy" (or Select no CPU's, let the game do it).

Beyond that, you're looking for things to reduce CPU usage, like other apps, other overlays, background processes, game settings.

I think you misunderstand or I wasn't clear what the problem is.

Launching just the first instance of the client with the 4man setup results in massive frame drops, mouse stuttering, and game not responding. The screenshots I attached probably don't convey that very well.

Launching all 3 of the 3 man is smooth, no issues at all. Problems instantly arise as soon as I launch the first game client on the 4man setup.

I have deleted/remade the profile over and over, identical between the 3 and 4 man, except the 4th character. I cannot imagine why this happens.

[bob]

Seeing as you have already stated you have Innerspace build 6800, the only other setting within ISBoxer that is known to potentially have impact as you are describing is the CPU strategy. As above, try the "Select no CPU's, let the game do it" strategy.

If that doesn't help then it will be necessary to dig into game settings and look at other background applications. Your window layout implies you are using 1920x1080 resolution monitors. If you are in fact running 4k monitors, the scaling may be a cause.

Seeing as you have already stated you have Innerspace build 6800, the only other setting within ISBoxer that is known to potentially have impact as you are describing is the CPU strategy. As above, try the "Select no CPU's, let the game do it" strategy.

If that doesn't help then it will be necessary to dig into game settings and look at other background applications. Your window layout implies you are using 1920x1080 resolution monitors. If you are in fact running 4k monitors, the scaling may be a cause.

Interesting take. I did some experiments and I think you're definitely on track. P.S. I nuked the graphics in game just so I could establish a baseline, don't hate on the ugly character models...
All tests are windowed

Here's just a baseline test of a single client running:


3 clients, no strategy, windowed:


4 clients, no strategy, windowed. I did run into an issue here where the CPU load wonked out to 100% for a few seconds, one client stuttered/froze, never crashed. I think if I relaunched it might have settled. This however does push the CPU to the 100% range during game launch and going to character create screen. Probably just hit the limitations on what a 6600k is comfortable with.


Overall I would say if I had newer hardware or did some more tweaks it would run pretty smooth. After that, the max connections per IP is.. 4? So VPN or VM would be the way to go?