Laggy controllers in upgraded XWA installations

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Laggy controllers in upgraded XWA installations

vorpalZ
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Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:59 pm

Post by vorpalZ » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:32 pm

Hey all,

Just found out about the upgraded craft packs from this site and Darksaber's site, so I dusted off my CD copy of X Wing Alliance and fired it onto my Win 7 64 workstation. Installed fine with the Moddb installation technique and gameplay was as I remember it. Everything working fine.

Next up, install the XWAU craft pack 1.5, no problems with swapping CDs for the install... adjust screen, fire up the game... and

Weird, mouse input on the menu screens has a definite lag as I move the 'flight gauntlet' cursor around the screen, push mouse, watch the cursor move after a heartbeat... hmmm. OK, into the flight sim to check out the upgraded ships and starfield... and

Wow... incredible graphics! Got destroyed in open melee just flying around checking out the upgraded view lol. OK, time to waste some TIE fighters, select nearest target and WTF, cannot get a lock at all, joystick has the same lag for input as the mouse, not huge, but enough of a delay that targetting a moving craft is impossible as controller inputs all have a 'molasses' quality of sensitivity.

OK, uninstall the craft pack... back to vanilla XWA... plays fine, no controller lag at all. Rack up 15 kills in the melee sim, targetting is smooth and precise.

Download and install DSUCP 2.5... install goes fine with CDs. Fire up game, and... yup, identical lag on mouse and joystick input. Fly the cargo retrieval mission, no problem as there isn't much to shoot at accurately. Go on to the gun turret training mission... again the joystick input lag makes targetting impossible, even on slow moving drones.

So, as this is a 4 year old basic HP workstation with a standard nVidia card (not sure of spec, will check when I get home). Video drivers are up to date. Joystick is Logitech Attack 3, works fine through Windows calibration and all my other games, XvT, etc.

Am I doomed to laggy inputs for modded XWA on this box? Seems odd that it would play the standard game fine with all options enabled but suffer controller lag only under the mods. Sound and video rendering are fine in the flight engine, when I turn and pan around in flight all the ships and backgrounds are fine. Also weird that the mouse has the same lag in the control menus as the joystick in the flight engine.

Any advice appreciated.

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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Fri Oct 12, 2018 1:19 am

System specs would be good to know, for instance: Are you using a toaster? If so, what kind of toaster are you using? If you have six slots you can toast three bagels simultaneously. If not, then you must be running an inferior toaster and need to upgrade. I jest of course.

Generally speaking, "we" don't have this issue as far as I "know", so more information would be helpful. Speculatively though I wonder if either A) your specs are too bad due to using a prebuilt PC, which while I grant should not be an issue I would think, but it could be. Or B) perhaps it could have something to do with directDraw.dll?

I mean, if it works fine with a default install then either your PC can't handle the XWAU (which I can't reconcile intellectually right now if it's only 4yo pc), or there's a software conflict somewhere post install. What you described though sounds like memory lag of some sort related to the controller input. But I'm metaphorically throwing spaghetti at the wall in an attempt to see what sticks here.

I frankly have no idea. I'm also not familiar with the Logitech Attack 3 control stick either.

Reimar
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Post by Reimar » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:34 pm

Several people have reported such issues in relation to the ddraw.dll.
Unfortunately I have not been able to reproduce it except on a really puny notebook-level integrated GPU with MSAA enabled (might want to check and make sure the game actually runs on that NVidia card? Though normally that's only a problem with notebooks).
You can also try the latest version of the ddraw.dll which disables MSAA by default.
Mine: https://github.com/rdoeffinger/xwa_ddraw_d3d11/releases
Jeremy's: https://github.com/JeremyAnsel/xwa_ddraw_d3d11/releases
Jemery is the original author, mine has a few more features, but some people reported fewer issues with his.
I'd be interested in any testing results.

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