Hitching on Mac OS X

[McGlu]

Not sure if this is specific to my OS X version, but the game is unplayable. I get major hitching after about 10 seconds of gameplay. I tried adjusting all kinds of game options.

The hitch happens at a regular interval, about once a second or so. Not sure if it's a garbage collection occurring or what. Activity monitor shows nothing unusual - no high CPU usage, memory is constant, etc.

Anyone on Mac seeing this?

I installed under Parallels, Win10 and the game plays great.

iMac 27-inch Late 2012
3.2Ghz i5
16Gb Memory
nVidia Geforce GTX 675 1024Mb
Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.03

EDIT: P.S. This game is fun. Got to normal floor 5 on my 9th run and died horribly in a laser room. Music, sprites, bullets, controls, are all slick. Good job.

[Thul]

Just so you don't feel crazy - I see the same thing, every 2-3 seconds it totally freezes, which makes it very difficult to change orientation because the screen didn't update as my mouse moved…

Running El Capitan on 2012 15" Macbook Pro.

[ptarth]

Strangely, some other Mac users reported that changing the screen resolution resolved this. You might give that a try and see if there is a particular resolution or set of resolutions that are doing it.

[x4000]

There's an older beta version in steam that is on an older version of unity.  It lacks many other bugfixes, but I would be interested to know if that resolves this issue.  Did this issue appear just in recent versions?  Possibly my change to have macs use true fullscreen mode is an issue.

[McGlu]

One thing I've noticed is if I hit command+F to switch in and out of full screen, it resets the problem and takes about 10-15 seconds or so for it to kick in again. Windowed mode also stutters, so not sure if full screen mode is the issue.

The Beta build is better, but it still occurs. I was able to get it mostly stable by hitting command+F a few times.

[Sounds]

I'm using a 27 inch mid 2011 model with an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024Mb running OS 10.11.2 without a problem in both full screen and windowed.

Can't recall when retina displays came in, but my mine is non-retina. Is the late 2012 a retina based screen?

[x4000]

If you hit F3, and watch where it says the amount of ram in use up there (have to hold command key on osx and then hit f3 for it to count), then do the hiccups correspond with the amount of ram in use dropping?

Are you running the 32bit or 64bit version of the game?  You might want to try manually running the 64bit version (or vice-versa).  I think I have built it as a universal application.  You have to right-click the .app file in finder, and then hit show package contents.  Then it's in a couple of folders: StarwardRogue.app\Contents\MacOS

Though... looks like only one file there, so it must be the 64bit.  Interesting.

[WhiteSeraph]

I actually encountered a similar problem when playing The Last Federation, and it might have something to do with graphics cards.  Normally, my laptop uses its discrete card (an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M) when running Starward Rogue or Last Federation, and I encounter the same type of hitching.  However, when I force it to use my integrated card (an Intel HD Graphics 4000) with either game, there isn't any hitching to speak of. 

[x4000]

That is very surprising -- I would have expected the other way around.  But yes, the graphical load is low enough that potentially it is slipping back and forth between discrete and integrated cards, causing those blips.

[McGlu]

Possibly on machines with both cards, but my iMac has only card. It's an nVidia card.

I'll just stick with running under either Parallels or BootCamp, since it works fine.

Although, I would think that Mac users without these options will be disappointed. Unfortunately, that is probably a Unity or Apple issue. This isn't the first instance of odd behavior with Mac gaming that I've run into.

[Sounds]

Possibly on machines with both cards, but my iMac has only card. It's an nVidia card.

I'll just stick with running under either Parallels or BootCamp, since it works fine.

Although, I would think that Mac users without these options will be disappointed. Unfortunately, that is probably a Unity or Apple issue. This isn't the first instance of odd behavior with Mac gaming that I've run into.

As I said "I'm using a 27 inch mid 2011 model with an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024Mb running OS 10.11.2 without a problem in both full screen and windowed." So seeing how mine is an older iMac than you're own, and you can run it under a virtual environment, something seems amiss. If it was a window's box I would have said looks like a driver issue or an interrupt glitch/clash. Do you know if you're running the 32bit version?

I recall on a hardware forum a year ago there were video issues with some 32bit binaries under OSX, that required a patch from apple to fix - not sure it would be required today since most patches/fixes are rolled into El Captain. Just curious whether other iMac users are hitting this issue?

[x4000]

Okay, I think I figured this out -- your comment about hitching on 32bit programs gave me the idea.  Turns out that when I updated the unity version, it changed my build settings from a universal build to a 32bit build.  I just did an update (no version number change) that switches this back to being a universal build.  Hopefully that will fix it up for you!

[lessster]

Okay, I think I figured this out -- your comment about hitching on 32bit programs gave me the idea.  Turns out that when I updated the unity version, it changed my build settings from a universal build to a 32bit build.  I just did an update (no version number change) that switches this back to being a universal build.  Hopefully that will fix it up for you!

I have exactly the same issue (major hitching every few seconds) but I am on Linux instead of OSX.
Can you please provide the same bugfix for Linux as well?

[x4000]

I have put in a beta branch option to use version 1.009 if you wish to do so.  That would be useful in some respects for determining if 100% for sure it was introduced in 1.010, and that it wasn't actually slightly earlier (for instance if you missed 1.009 without realizing it and went 1.008 --> 1.010).  Not that I think you are wrong, but it's nice to be able to confirm that.  I am going to look at some diffs in those versions and see what I can figure out.  Sorry about that!

Is anyone having this on a non-linux machine?

[lessster]

There we go! Switched to beta 1.009 and everything is smooth!
So this is it.