very frequent stutters when playing taiko

[Genjurowo]

For the past 2-3 weeks i've been having performance issues while playing taiko. The stutters do not happen consistently so I haven't found a way to reproduce them other than just playing a couple of maps until it happens. other taiko players (ney, conor) can confirm that they are also experiencing the same problem

video showing the problem on a fresh installation of osu (go to 1:05 for the stutters): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL1ajdXNk3I video showing a more severe example of stuttering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpDTROYJ2oE video showing stutters + task manager: https://oldholborn.s-ul.eu/CMlYuSe6 video showing stutters + ctrl f11 thingy: https://oldholborn.s-ul.eu/PWLV4Cgq

after trying all of the suggestions on the troubleshoot page, a post on the help subforum and an hour long chat with nukrid (one of the moderators for the game who told me to post here) i still haven't found a solution to my issue so im posting here

nukrid chat log: https://oldholborn.s-ul.eu/67UKKJsH my pc specs: https://puu.sh/J2PrB/f18e02de3f.png

[peppy]

https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Performance_Troubleshooting

video shows white lines, means something else on your pc is causing a stall.

[Genjurowo]

then how come this only affects the taiko mode if the problem is caused from an external source? also wouldn't reinstalling windows and the game itself fix the issue if that was the case?

[peppy]

How are you testing other modes? Using the same input devices and setup? Note that if you're using autoplay for one but not ther other, you are ruling out the potential of your input drivers, or other applications responding to your cursor movement.

[Genjurowo]

I am using the same keyboard for every mode yes (well the only exception is that standard requires you to use a mouse/tablet so I use my mouse along with my keyboard), I am not using autoplay ofc.

I have played around 10 hours of catch the beat in the past week and I haven't had any problems.

[peppy]

Please try and think of anything you are doing differently when playing taiko, as it is likely related to the issue.

If you'd like confirmation from my end that it is an issue outside of osu!, you can run cutting edge and turn on performance logging in settings, then attach log files. Do note that this will cause any stutters to be much worse than normal.

[Conoronoronor]

as of the past few stable updates my performance in taiko has also been taking a hit

it becomes increasingly worse when i miss notes while still making inputs (it also becomes worse without making any inputs during misses but nowhere near as bad as still trying to play)

it takes a while to settle back down to normal after i stop missing notes but playing maps that are above my comfort zone for example can cause these stutters to stack on top of one another if i frequently misread sections or miss a lot of notes on spammy 1/6 sections etc

i played for roughly 30 minutes and also recorded 1 map replicating this problem intentionally to show how bad it can get

performance.log https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5QOtct_Z5g (0:35 - 1:15 mainly being my example)

[peppy]

please see my last response. videos are not helpful apart from confirming the issue is something external to osu!.

try rolling back any driver updates and closing applications like discord.

[Conoronoronor]

the problem still persists even when osu is the only application open on my computer. i can try rolling back driver updates later.

if it's worth anything i can't replicate this problem on any other mode

mashing all of my inputs on a dense 6k mania map causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.55ms~ mashing through stream maps on standard causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.60ms~ intentionally dropping a lot of notes on ctb causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.70ms~

everything above is obviously an extreme case but doing any of this on taiko almost causes the game to break and even in the slightest case the performance takes a huge hit (my average frame render time when i'm not recording is 1ms and it starts ramping exponentially to 50ms+ with misses and the game starts to stutter/have heavy fps drops/horrible input delay)

the only solution i have is to simply not miss any notes on taiko (in other words it plays completely fine like the other modes if i SS the map)

below is the performance log of me doing what i described on the other modes and then doing it again on taiko (std > ctb > mania > taiko in order)

performance.log

i can also add that playing taiko on the lazer client is completely fine and i can't replicate any of these problems or see any noticeable performance issues

[Genjurowo]

"Please try and think of anything you are doing differently when playing taiko, as it is likely related to the issue."

nothing is different, only happens when playing taiko! using DT seems to make the lag appear more consistently but im not 100% certain whether thats the case or it just happened to lag more while i played DT today (i cant reproduce the lag consistently after all). can't possibly be a driver issue because i have been using the same version of my drivers since before the problem showed up (i did however update them yesterday as this was recommended to do on the troubleshooting page).

either way, even if it's gpu drivers or windows itself causing the lag, wouldn't you as a developer want to ensure that the game is compatible with the latest versions of common operating system and graphics cards? i mean you need both of those in order to run the game in the first place. if it was only me who had this issue i wouldnt be posting here because it would most likely be from my end, but a lot of players are experiencing the same problem with taiko so i figured its something you should know about

im clearly willing to help but im not sure what i can do to find what it is that is causing the stutters

i could replicate the problem quite consistently today by playing this map with DT converted to taiko https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/529815#taiko/1123314

[smoogipoo]

A few more things to try:

• Check with the default skin.
• Ensure you have no background apps like keyboard/mouse/input hooks open.
• Ensure you have no background apps hooking into osu! open such as StreamCompanion.
• Don't provide task manager graphs, they are beyond useless. You instead want to be sorting the details tab by CPU usage.

[peppy]

mashing all of my inputs on a dense 6k mania map causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.55ms~ mashing through stream maps on standard causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.60ms~ intentionally dropping a lot of notes on ctb causes no stutter/fps drop and i have an average frame render time of 0.70ms~

We cannot provide support for unlimited frame limits. Could you please start by setting this setting to a sane value? It is highly likely that it is contributing to the issue in a negative way.

[peppy]

FWIW looking at the performance logs, we now have two users with different arbitrary separate performance issues reporting them in the same thread.

One is BetweenFrames (aka definitely something else on system), the other is Draw (aka drivers or hardware are likely overwhelmed by rendering too many frames).

Please consider using https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Performance_Troubleshooting first. It already lists the steps that have been proposed above by @smoogipoo and will help save us time if you can find your issue there.

[Conoronoronor]

A few more things to try:

• Check with the default skin.
• Ensure you have no background apps like keyboard/mouse/input hooks open.
• Ensure you have no background apps hooking into osu! open such as StreamCompanion.
• Don't provide task manager graphs, they are beyond useless. You instead want to be sorting the details tab by CPU usage.

playing with the default skin at least fixes the problem for me and brings my average frame time render down to 0.60s~ (very much in line with my performance on the other modes)

i also tried with a few skins i just grabbed from other players and couldn't reproduce the problem (including on default)

what element could be causing this? i've been using the current version of my skin for a while now (a few months) and this problem only appeared recently

the taiko elements are extremely small in size (around 1mb~ in total) and the same exact skin is used by a decent handful of taiko score farmers and the elements themselves can be found in almost every taiko skin you download

when i have the time i will recreate my skin and add each element 1 by 1 to find out where the problem lies but if you have any ideas then i would like to hear those first (i find it odd that the average frame time render even with no notes/nothing happening on the screen is already an average of 1ms which is double what i usually have on any mode/skin). it also has no pippidon elements and the taiko-hit0 is the same one i've used for years

it may also be worth noting that this is the same skin i use on the lazer client and it has none of these issues

We cannot provide support for unlimited frame limits. Could you please start by setting this setting to a sane value? It is highly likely that it is contributing to the issue in a negative way.

as for this i tried with the frame limiter set to optimal (which is 600fps for me). the average frame time render sits at 2ms for all modes but repeating any of these steps still leads to the same result (nothing detrimental happening to std/ctb/mania and instant worsening performance when misses happen on taiko)

and sorry if i caused any confusion or problems by posting here. the problem i had seemed to be very similar in nature to what other taiko players have started to experience recently and it completely went over my head that it could have been skin related (at least in my case)

[peppy]

Please attach the skin. Filesize of elements means nothing and we cannot give any advice without actually having the assets.

[Conoronoronor]

conor v2.zip

[smoogipoo]

Thanks, can repro with that skin.

[peppy]

You realise your skin has a 3024x4032 pixel cat image as menu-background? This alone would be consuming 50mb of vRAM, which in a low memory scenario could be adding considerable overhead.

[Conoronoronor]

i removed the menu background and reloaded the skin and the problem still occurs

i'm also playing offline while i attempt to troubleshoot this so to me this element shouldn't even be loaded or causing any problems as it's tied to having osu!direct. my gpu also has 8gb of gddr5 vram and memory usage overall has never been an issue for me across games

i will remove more elements 1 by 1 to see if i can find the root cause but besides from taiko-hit0 and taiko-hit100 (the ones i use are pretty much universal throughout taiko skins) i'm honestly just stumped as this issue only occurs when making incorrect inputs during misses on taiko (hitting notes with the opposite keybinds) and the amount of elements used are very few in general. i also don't use a pippidon so the problem shouldn't be there either (rapid changes between pippidonfail and pippidonidle/clear for example are pretty much not on the table)

[smoogipoo]

We've figured out the cause, it's the 1x1 taiko-slider and taiko-slider-fail. I've made a fix for it which should be in the next release, but you can remove those elements for now.

[Conoronoronor]

this fixed my problem. thank you very much.

[Genjurowo]

Since my issue is entirely different as it has nothing to do with the skin I will post some new information.

I reinstalled windows 10 again, except this time i completely wiped all of my drives so the only things currently installed on my pc are osu and obs. obviously obs itself can't be causing the issue because i made sure the stutters are present before i installed obs.

A few more things to try:

• Check with the default skin.
• Ensure you have no background apps like keyboard/mouse/input hooks open.
• Ensure you have no background apps hooking into osu! open such as StreamCompanion.
• Don't provide task manager graphs, they are beyond useless. You instead want to be sorting the details tab by CPU usage.

All of these things were already taken into consideration except for the last one, so here's a recording of the details tab sorted by CPU usage while the stutters are happening

https://oldholborn.s-ul.eu/TfjcQgwr

Timestamps of the stutters so you don't have to watch the entire thing: 0:10, 0:18, 0:57 (multiple times), 1:08, 1:43, 1:55, 2:07 (multiple times), 2:25, 2:32 (multiple times)

Please try and think of anything you are doing differently when playing taiko, as it is likely related to the issue.

If you'd like confirmation from my end that it is an issue outside of osu!, you can run cutting edge and turn on performance logging in settings, then attach log files. Do note that this will cause any stutters to be much worse than normal.

performance.log

The logs are from the same session as the recording above. It should be noted that it took a while for the stutters to show up after opening the game, which I assume can be seen in the log itself. lastly I closed the game right after playing the map shown in the video so it should be the last one in the log.

I can see the log itself showing BetweenFrames which as you mentioned is definitely something else on the system, but I don't know what to make of that when osu is the only thing on my system. Could it perhaps be a hardware issue? I don't have any performance issues with any other game I play (Elden Ring, League of Legends etc.) and I bought all of my PC parts relatively recently so I doubt that would be the case. I know I've mentioned this already but I am not the only person who experiences these stutters. Is there another way to for me to troubleshoot and find what is causing the problem, because I don't really know what else I could try at this point.

let me know if i was supposed to post a new issue as this one was marked closed even if it ended up solving a different problem.

[smoogipoo]

@Genjurowo does it happen with auto play? If it does, perhaps you can use that while unplugging your mouse + kb + any other peripherals. Perhaps it’s a driver for one of those.

[Genjurowo]

it doesn't happen with auto, it only happens if i play (literally) the map. so even if i don't use auto but decide to not press any of the keys then there won't be any stutters. it won't necessarily always stutter when playing, but i can still confirm that it only happens with taiko.

could a faulty driver affect the performance of my game only when playing taiko tho? i've had the same peripherals and drivers since before the issue appeared anyways.

[peppy]

This definitely sounds like either a bad driver, or something else on your system processing and delaying system-wide input (more likely).

If you have "drivers" which are actually user-space applications (ie. razer synapse) start by removing that. They will be the most common culprit.

[Genjurowo]

the drivers have been the same since 2006 but the problem only appeared recently, doing update drivers doesn't do anything since they are the latest version and the other option just means i can't use the device at all. again i already said that osu is the only thing i installed, everything else is factory windows 10 things and drivers that get automatically installed when you plug in the keyboard, there's no software like razer synapse for my brand of keyboard (BFKB113PBK) to begin with

honestly i dont think this will lead anywhere but there's one last thing i wanna try, is it possible to run an older version of the game? like a stable version from a month ago or something? i could try playing on that version for a few days and observe the behavior to see if there's no stutters there, anyways thats all from me i cant think of anything else to try

[smoogipoo]

As another thought, could you try logging out of the game?

[Genjurowo]

I tried that and the stutters were still occurring.

I wanted to make sure that I really am not doing something different when playing other modes so I had a recording of a taiko map of my phone, which is a map that makes my game stutter when playing it and "pretended" to play on the pc (think of how people dualscreen to cheat) and my game didn't stutter at all. then i got an idea, i played taiko maps except i hit don instead of kat and kat instead of don essentially causing me to miss everything, no stutters at all. i even tried mashing the keys as fast as i can for the entirety of a map and again there were no stutters. makes me think it might have something to do with the game registering 300s and 100s in taiko, really no idea what else it could be :(

[peppy]

Are you using the same key bindings for osu! and taiko plays?

[Genjurowo]

yes ofc

btw i worded my previous post a bit poorly although you probably figured it but i meant that i pretended to play a taiko map while a map of a different mode is actually being played in the background just as a way to conclude that the keypresses themselves are not the cause of the stuttering

would it be meaningful in any way to try playing on lazer to see if the stutters occur there as well?

[peppy]

And to confirm, you're still using the default skin? Can you confirm this happens on both stable and cutting edge?

Can you provide performance logs once more using cutting-edge to confirm that you're still seeing the same issue?

• Switch to cutting edge
• Start game and play once to cause the stutters
• Exit game and attach performance.log and runtime.log

[Genjurowo]

I'm using the default skin. The stutters occur in both stable and cutting edge performance.log runtime.log

[peppy]

Could you please try again on the latest cutting edge release (just pushed a new one today)? I doubt it will change anything but may give us some more leads.

[Genjurowo]

didn't change anything. well im going to ask again is it possible to try a release from like 1-2 months ago?

[peppy]

It's a bit pointless, as I can say with utmost confidence that it will not change anything, as we have not changed anything.

Please make sure you restart cutting edge once or twice after switching to it, and maybe for good measures restart your PC. It would be helpful if you can zip your whole logs folder (all files in it) after doing this and trying one more time.

[Genjurowo]

i played for 3 days on cutting edge and the stuttering seems to have been significantly reduced. it only happens like a couple of times in an hour of gameplay so it doesn't really bother me enough to consider it an issue anymore

[peppy]

Did anything change at your end? Any windows / driver updates?