Advice for Stuttering with music playing?

[Shyster]

Hey all, with the new patch I'm sure many of us are excited about adding a soundtrack to our maps since it's easy to have a 30-60 minute track and a boatload of map space left over.

I am wondering if any of you have experienced a random sort of *leak-lag* or *you-didn't-preload-something* lag after adding music. If so do you know any solutions for this issue? As soon as I took the music out, everything was perfectly fine. Aside from it being a 45 MB file I can't imagine what would cause that. If that is the issue, I'm not sure why a file size increase beyond 30-40 meg is even a good idea.

Here is my music trigger. Also if there's a better way to do this that can deal with single player pauses (music plays but wait timer stops counting) I'd love to hear it.

-Shy

• Soundtrack
  • Events
    • Time - Elapsed game time is 0.01 seconds
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • Victory Equal to False
      • Then - Actions
        • Sound - Play TL2 <gen>
        • Sound - Set Music to 75.00%
      • Else - Actions
    • Wait 1726.00 seconds
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • Victory Equal to False
      • Then - Actions
        • Sound - Play TL2 <gen>
        • Sound - Set Music to 75.00%
      • Else - Actions
    • Wait 1726.00 seconds
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • Victory Equal to False
      • Then - Actions
        • Sound - Play TL2 <gen>
        • Sound - Set Music to 75.00%
      • Else - Actions
    • Wait 1726.00 seconds
    • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
      • If - Conditions
        • Victory Equal to False
      • Then - Actions
        • Sound - Play TL2 <gen>
        • Sound - Set Music to 75.00%
      • Else - Actions

 

[Tasyen]

Stop the current Played Music before starting yours, this avoids the Frame drop.

• Sound - Stop music Instantly

Edit:
A Timer is a good option for static Stuff like playing Music?
Well this will not count while paused.

• Play Music
  • Events
    • Time - Music_Timer expires
    • Time - Elapsed game time is 0.01 seconds
  • Conditions
    • Victory Equal False
  • Actions
    • Sound - Stop music Instantly
    • Sound - Play AmbientCeltic <gen>
    • Countdown-Timer - Start Music_Timer as an Once timer that will expire in (Length of (Last played music)) seconds

A Better Version of yours, If you want to avoid timers:

• Loop Music
  • Events
    • Time - Elapsed game time is 0.01 seconds
  • Conditions
    • Victory Equal False
  • Actions
    • Sound - Stop music Sofort
    • Sound - Play Musik
    • Wait (Length of (Last played music)) seconds
    • Trigger - Run (This trigger) (ignoring conditions)

 

[Dr Super Good]

A Timer is a good option for static Stuff like playing Music?

No its not as timers are based on game time and not real time. Music is based on real time and not game time. By default, on fastest speed, the timer will run 1.4 times or so faster than the music. In replays one can raise it up to 32 times faster. Ironically using waits is probably the best way to do music as TriggerSleepAction is vaguely based on real time and is reasonably speed invariant and even goes through pauses like music.

Warcraft III does not really have a good music system. In StarCraft II you can specify your own music play lists and queue up situational music to get around variations between game time and real time.

 

[Shyster]

Haven't gotten around to doing more testing just yet. It seems I was wrong about the pauses being an issue in real time, I just anticipated there'd be some. Yay at least that works XD

So anyway, it sounds like all I need to do is shut off the wc3 music first?

Also, I casually observed the frame drops in early game (0-10 mins guessing) and eventually the stuttering stops. Will stopping the wc3 music first fix all that? It's not just an initial spike, it happens every 10-20 sec.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Are you using a recent Western Digital hard disk? If so it might be parking itself causing bad I/O access latency when WC3 needs it. Eventually everything WC3 needs is in memory so the latency is no longer a problem.

 

[Shyster]

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not sure how to check but I would guess the answer is no. Also, I checked today to see if the music caused lag. I don't think it happens as much, but I did notice it a couple times still. :\

Edit: nvm it's happening the same as before

 

[Dr Super Good]

You can tell what hard disk you use either from its SMART information or by looking at its driver properties from device manager or disk management.

 

[Shyster]

Don't think I am then after searching. This issue happens for 8-10 minutes and then just stops afterward. Can't think of anything in the game that would shut off at 10 minutes, things are generally either on or not on at the beginning and that's it. :\

 

[Dr Super Good]

AI can cause stuttering if they cannot find an enemy to attack, eg if they are on an island.

 

[Shyster]

Nope nothing like that >.< it's an aos. Pretty straightforward. I'm still mystified in that it eventually stops. It's about 30 min, there's no lag at the start of any subsequent loops. Ugh. I'm not being much help here, kinda out of ideas

 

[Dr Super Good]

Do other players suffer the same problem?

 

[Shyster]

Do other players suffer the same problem?

Sadly I don't know anyone who plays wc3 anymore hahaha so, not sure. Based on past experience with weird bugs and crashes I'd be willing to bet others would get it too tho

 

[Dr Super Good]

Based on past experience with weird bugs and crashes I'd be willing to bet others would get it too tho

Cannot make such assumptions...

 

[Shyster]

Yeah you're right. What I'll do is include a highlight for testing this issue when the public beta is released. Thanks for your help as always