http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21165
--- Comment #33 from atomic.quark@gmail.com 2010-08-24 10:22:47 --- (In reply to comment #32)
(In reply to comment #31)
... Changing settings seems to have little to no effect (resolution, game/foliage/texture quality, etc) all seem to be independent of framerate, which makes me feel that there's a bottleneck not directly related to the rendering. ...
Being cognizant of the performance issues we've all been experiencing I've been formulating a theory as to their source. After playing many times with my father, and watching certain types of artifacts occur with different settings, I am growing suspicious that somehow it is the processing of audio that is causing the slowdown.
Evidence:
- When loading games there is a black screen before the "wormhole effect" that
consumes roughly the same time as the effect itself. 2) Only when playing using the ALSA driver do I see the "zoom crosshair doesn't show up" bug, and when I do see the crosshair under these conditions it is always timed with the end of an audio event (ie. hearing gunshots or footsteps). 3) When standing still the framerate appears to be much better than when walking, and it is even worse when two people are walking within earshot of each other.
I don't exactly have the time to track this down right now (I have a backlog of patches I need to update), but I'm hoping this information will be useful to someone else.
That's an interesting thought. I forgot to mention that in winecfg I was unable to select ALSA and had to select OSS (I believe this has to do with the fact that I'm using 64-bit Debian). However, after the wormhole effect I usually see a black screen as opposed to before it. I have noticed that when standing the framerate can be better, but I never linked this to the sounds. I tested the sound thing a little and found that at least some of it is linked with how the graphics are rendering, or so it seems. I tried starting a new character and without moving I noticed that where I looked had a somewhat significant impact on my framerate. If I faced the town like you start, I was getting 15fps at most, but if I turned around I could get far more by facing essentially nothing. So while sound may affect things, it seems doubtful that it's the primary thing slowing the game down. It'd be nice if there was a way to mute the game (so it did no sound processing at all) to see if this really was the problem.