TL2 stutter / hiccup / freeze / lag fix (for me at least)

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Max

31 Oct, 2016 @ 8:23am

TL2 stutter / hiccup / freeze / lag fix (for me at least)

Background

I love this game, the artwork isgreat, the mods extend its gameplay by years, it looks pretty, its is truly unique among the ARPG crowd, but.....it stutters / pauses / hiccups / freezes like a SOB, for me at least.
Actually, if one types in TL2 stutter you get lots of results, seems I am not alone.
Its a strange problem too, does not affect everyone.
Note, its is NOT an FPS issue, its hard telling people that, there is a big difference between framerate and stuttering, you can have high framerate and still stutters, microstutters, freezes etc, people often call it "lag" which it isn't but try and convince people on the internet of that...

I tried everything, I could write a page of what I did. From unparking cores, locking cpu and gpu clocks at max, registry tweaks, driver updates, turning of AV and all other software, reinstalling, not running mods, lowest settings, moving it between different cores, process affinity and priority.... etc etc etc.

Most of it I tried knowing it wouldn't change anything. Why, because my PC is a good one.
i7-4790k, 24GB RAM, AMD 390x, 4x Samsung Evo 850 SSD's (my Win10 x64 OS is on one SSD, the pagefile on another and games on the other two) etc... Probably at least 5x more than enough to run this game at max settings.

I even wrote to Runic games, sent them videos to show the issue. They were kind, responded quick etc just unfortunately could not offer a solution.

The problem was best shown by when I would use my mage and fire prismatic bolts, just before they would hit the target the game would stutter so bad it was like hitting the pause unpause button twice quickly. This happens also on any character in combat, it was driving me nuts.

I went searching through all file locations for TL2 including the registry, is there anything else I could change?

The Fix

Before boring you even more it all came down to one thing. The combat log.
I can't tell you if the game is writing the combat log to a memory buffer and then later to a file but in either case, again with my computer hardware and SSD's there should be no issue, however, it was exactly that.

Make sure the game is not running before performing the following or exit if it is.
To fix it go to "Documents\My Games\Runic Games\Torchlight 2" there is a file called "local_settings.txt".
In there is a variable "COMBAT LOG", it was set to 1 meaning enabled. I changed it to 0 therefore turning it off, save, exit.

Fire up the game, buttery smooth, no hiccups / stutters / freezes, nothing.
Wow, its like a whole different game and definitely worth playing through.

I hope that helps somebody else out there, it was driving me crazy and I was just about to uninstall the game.

Game on!

Last edited by Max; 22 Oct, 2020 @ 11:54am

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Showing 1-15 of 25 comments

Graywolf777 has Torchlight II

1 Nov, 2016 @ 4:16am

Thank you. My Dad and I have been playing Torchlight2 over a LAN connection and my computer has been jittery for the longest time. Saw this, and now it runs smooth as glass. Again, thanks a whole lot.

Max

1 Nov, 2016 @ 5:32am

Originally posted by Grayshield:
Thank you. My Dad and I have been playing Torchlight2 over a LAN connection and my computer has been jittery for the longest time. Saw this, and now it runs smooth as glass. Again, thanks a whole lot.

My pleasure, great to hear it helped!

nraven

22 Oct, 2020 @ 11:46am

I know this thread is old as dirt, but I would like to thank you for posting this all the way back then. Because it did fix my problem in the here and now. :)

(keep in mind that the game has to be closed while editing the settings file or the change won't stick)

t1op

4 Jan @ 10:47am

Thanks for the help. I was really excited to find this... Unfortunately, my combat log was already set to 0 and though my computer in 2024 is way overpowered for this game the stuttering continues. It does not happen every time, but occurs when frequently when opening chests, killing bosses that drop loot, or changing my shoulder armor.

6 Jan @ 12:20pm

Originally posted by t1op:
Thanks for the help. I was really excited to find this... Unfortunately, my combat log was already set to 0 and though my computer in 2024 is way overpowered for this game the stuttering continues. It does not happen every time, but occurs when frequently when opening chests, killing bosses that drop loot, or changing my shoulder armor.

try using dxvk, it fixed the stuters for me.

HiFive

8 Jan @ 8:44am

It's seems counterintuitive, but capping the fps at 30 fixed all of this game's issues for me on my gaming computer. I've now done that for a bunch of my older games because they were designed to run on 30 fps, since that's all most computers could do back then. It's fixed a lot of game "bugs" for me on this game and my other games.

Last edited by HiFive; 8 Jan @ 8:45am

8 Jan @ 8:52am

Originally posted by HiFive:
It's seems counterintuitive, but capping the fps at 30 fixed all of this game's issues for me on my gaming computer. I've now done that for a bunch of my older games because they were designed to run on 30 fps, since that's all most computers could do back then. It's fixed a lot of game "bugs" for me on this game and my other games.

did you first try to use dxvk? it fixed the stutters and bad perforamnce for me without the need to cap my fps to 30.

HiFive

8 Jan @ 8:57am

Originally posted by Ba Ba Bi Bu Bu Ba ♪:
Originally posted by HiFive:
It's seems counterintuitive, but capping the fps at 30 fixed all of this game's issues for me on my gaming computer. I've now done that for a bunch of my older games because they were designed to run on 30 fps, since that's all most computers could do back then. It's fixed a lot of game "bugs" for me on this game and my other games.
did you first try to use dxvk? it fixed the stutters and bad perforamnce for me without the need to cap my fps to 30.

Nope. Never heard of dxvk until recently. The 30 fps limit works perfectly for me, but perhaps that is because I have an older monitor. The games look exactly the same as when they were running at a higher fps. They just run very smooth now.

8 Jan @ 9:00am

is your monitor refresh rate only 30? if not it could be worth it to use dxvk to get higher frames when your monitor supports higher refresh rates, but if you dont mind gaming on 30fps then you dont need to bother with it, just happy this game works for you so you can enjoy this classic game too.

HiFive

8 Jan @ 12:37pm

Originally posted by Ba Ba Bi Bu Bu Ba ♪:
is your monitor refresh rate only 30? if not it could be worth it to use dxvk to get higher frames when your monitor supports higher refresh rates, but if you dont mind gaming on 30fps then you dont need to bother with it, just happy this game works for you so you can enjoy this classic game too.

The refresh rate is definitely higher, but again, my older games look exactly the same at 30 fps as they did at rates in the hundreds and even thousands, and they all Perform much better at 30 fps.

#10

8 Jan @ 3:11pm

idk what you mean, i can clearly tell if my game runs at 30fps or 120fps, even if they are older like tl2, boderlands 2 or older games like oblivion. maybe you did not change your refreshrate in the windows settings, thats why you cant tell the difference. im just telling you that you dont need to play at 30fps since with dxvk this game will run much better even with higer frames, but as i already said if you are happy with how it runs for you then everything is cool bro, just wanted to point out that you can have higer frames with no stutters if you want to.

#11

HiFive

12 Jan @ 2:21am

Originally posted by Ba Ba Bi Bu Bu Ba ♪:
idk what you mean, i can clearly tell if my game runs at 30fps or 120fps, even if they are older like tl2, boderlands 2 or older games like oblivion. maybe you did not change your refreshrate in the windows settings, thats why you cant tell the difference. im just telling you that you dont need to play at 30fps since with dxvk this game will run much better even with higer frames, but as i already said if you are happy with how it runs for you then everything is cool bro, just wanted to point out that you can have higer frames with no stutters if you want to.

As I said, the games look EXACTLY the same for me. However, my monitor is at least 10 years older than the rest of my gaming rig so maybe that is why. And the games run GREAT with the lower fps.

Last edited by HiFive; 12 Jan @ 2:22am

#12

12 Jan @ 1:29pm

Originally posted by HiFive:
Originally posted by Ba Ba Bi Bu Bu Ba ♪:
idk what you mean, i can clearly tell if my game runs at 30fps or 120fps, even if they are older like tl2, boderlands 2 or older games like oblivion. maybe you did not change your refreshrate in the windows settings, thats why you cant tell the difference. im just telling you that you dont need to play at 30fps since with dxvk this game will run much better even with higer frames, but as i already said if you are happy with how it runs for you then everything is cool bro, just wanted to point out that you can have higer frames with no stutters if you want to.
As I said, the games look EXACTLY the same for me. However, my monitor is at least 10 years older than the rest of my gaming rig so maybe that is why. And the games run GREAT with the lower fps.

good to know

#13

Asuramaru

17 Jan @ 12:43pm

I mean.... idk if i face the same issue? i play with my friends on lan atm...we both use the archer skeletons spell equiped on us also on the pets...when we face a largea area of mobs and also spawn our skeletons we play in like 15-20fps... all of us idk if its fixable or not though? Perhaps the game can't simply take that many entities in a single place? Any thoughts?

#14

steffire3

17 Jan @ 5:16pm

Originally posted by Asuramaru:
I mean.... idk if i face the same issue? i play with my friends on lan atm...we both use the archer skeletons spell equiped on us also on the pets...when we face a largea area of mobs and also spawn our skeletons we play in like 15-20fps... all of us idk if its fixable or not though? Perhaps the game can't simply take that many entities in a single place? Any thoughts?

Single-core Cpu with no mullti-thread or Gpu support hence Particles and Entities can get heavy for this game.
Here's a work-around editing the Settings files outside the game:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/TLM2H/discussions/10/601893317626618900/

#15

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Torchlight II > General Discussions > Topic Details

Date Posted: 31 Oct, 2016 @ 8:23am

Posts: 25