game suddenly too slow to play

[animary]

Have been playing H&H (this time) since last August with no problem.

This weekend a friend used my computer briefly and turned off Network Discovery, saying it was only used for local networks, not internet. Later I went online via Brave browser (he used IE) and all my extensions crashed, I turned on Network Discovery and all but one worked again; eventually had to update browser and reinstall that extension. Now everything I do online has a slight lag, not horrible but noticeable since i'm quite accustomed to this system. I have done Network Troubleshooting, checked all drivers, checked connection speed, done malware scan with three different programs, reinstalled Java (and removed old version). Everything online still noticeably, though slightly, slow (except Elvenar, which now crashes during loading - "Aw Snap, error: out of memory").

How does this pertain to H&H? Frame rates, if you can call them that, are now about one frame every 2-3 seconds; watch the flags over visitor gate, they move once every few seconds, click on ground for character to walk and it will be 10-15 seconds before they move, and they walk at the same rate; type an entire sentence in chat and hit enter before half the text has even appeared in chat window. Everything works in the game but now at this exceedingly slow rate, it would take 30 minutes to do what is normally done in five. I feel this is tied to Network Discovery being turned off and back on and something not being reset properly, and/or some issue with Java; but I've exhausted my limited knowledge of these areas.

FWIW, there is no local network, nor WiFi; system is connected via cable to modem/router. Problem only affects online activity, other programs/games are fine.

[Ignurof]

Sounds like your friend fucked up your computer.

[MagicManICT]

Best suggestion I have to you is to check your recent restore points and go back to there. There was a Windows update the end of the week, and that may actually be the culprit. One of the updates was to fix certain outdated bits of software bundled into a MS browser.

This weekend a friend used my computer briefly and turned off Network Discovery, saying it was only used for local networks, not internet.

This is correct. Given your network setup that you described (plugged directly into the cable modem), it won't be doing anything, anyway. You should be better to keep it off unless you have something specific that needs it... that said, sometimes software is terrible about putting out there what it relies and what it doesn't. Also, you should be able to completely uninstall IE from your system unless it is required for some website you use. I suggest doing so. Windows doesn't need it, and MS bundles Edge into all Windows installs.

As far as the performance of H&H, low memory will definitely cause bad frame rates as Java does a lot of house cleaning (garbage collection) if it detects low memory. This is very CPU intensive, and can keep software from crashing from running out of memory so fast, but can bog down a system if the memory available to the app is constantly near its limits. At least, given the OOM error you mention for another program, it's what I suspect at first sight.

[loftar]

low memory will definitely cause bad frame rates as Java does a lot of house cleaning (garbage collection) if it detects low memory.

This is true in a way, but should be correctly interpreted. Java does garbage collection when the Java heap itself is running out (which is a normal consequence of memory allocations), but it is not related to the state of memory use in the system as a whole. Being low on memory on a operating-system level does not lead to more or less frequent garbage collection in Java.

It may very well be that the memory aspect is the issue, though. Since that other game complained about being out of memory, it could well be that the system as a whole is low on memory, which could cause page thrashing, which would certainly account for extremely poor performance. I'd check Task Manager for swapping activity (and general memory use levels). If that doesn't reveal anything, please check your general CPU and/or GPU use levels and see if there's anything to be noticed there. On a sidenote, if swapping really is that bad, and you have an SSD, that could very quickly wear it down, so that's another reason to make sure.

No clue how any of this would be related to turning on or off network discovery, though.

[MagicManICT]

No clue how any of this would be related to turning on or off network discovery, though.

I think it has more to do with the Windows update that pushed over the weekend. I forgot to run it when I spotted it Sunday, so loaded it just last night myself. Windows Update being what it is, there's always a chance at some sort of system corruption. I'd put almost a 100% certainty it has nothing to do with network discovery, and a friend screwing with something they shouldn't have ranks higher.

And thanks, that's what I was trying to state about the memory usage, but not so well. I know with the custom clients and the command line launches, one could easily adjust memory allocated to Java for different usage. Any way to manually set that with the standard client? Might resolve the issues if there are no other problems with the computer.

[loftar]

I know with the custom clients and the command line launches, one could easily adjust memory allocated to Java for different usage. Any way to manually set that with the standard client?

I assume you're referring to the heap-size setting, and unfortunately it needs to be set at the time when the JVM is started and cannot be subsequently changed, so it cannot be done without giving the launcher a whole settings GUI, and since that would sacrifice how it's currently completely automatic, I wouldn't really want to do that unless there's at least some quite strong case for it. Either way, I don't think it would help OP, since if he has a memory issue, it's probably that he doesn't have enough room for even the used part of the heap, so making the total heap smaller would be unlikely to help, I think. On the other hand, there may be at least a weak case for increasing the default heap-size, since, while rare, out-of-memory exceptions aren't completely unheard of (which, to be clear, are to be distinguished from out-of-GL-memory exceptions, which are more common, but also harder to really do anything about).

[animary]

System is Win7 Ultimate 32bit, only upgrades it got were a few security updates missed in past few months. Game was playing fine until last weekend, occasional lag and stutter that many (with better systems) complain of.

I mentioned turning off Discovery, and back on, because that was the only change made to the system between the time the game was working and when the frame rate plummeted.

Fraps shows 1FPS outside now (probably doesn't display any lower, lol), 24 inside (limited in video options to 24), in native resolution of system, 1920x1200; but I can take it down to 1440x900 and there's no difference, still 1fps. Yesterday it was almost back to normal, played nearly four hours with no problem; logged in today to the 1fps again.

Have also run dxdiag and sfc, and tried with firewall and AV temporarily disabled. Have tried everything I can think of to no avail, and all tests show no problems. Could my ISP (ATT) be throttling the site?

[animary]

....
It may very well be that the memory aspect is the issue, though. Since that other game complained about being out of memory, it could well be that the system as a whole is low on memory, which could cause page thrashing, which would certainly account for extremely poor performance. I'd check Task Manager for swapping activity (and general memory use levels). If that doesn't reveal anything, please check your general CPU and/or GPU use levels and see if there's anything to be noticed there. On a sidenote, if swapping really is that bad, and you have an SSD, that could very quickly wear it down, so that's another reason to make sure.

Thanks to CoreTemp I know during gameplay cpu usage is 50-70%, rarely briefly spiking to 100%, RAM usage totals around 1.7g (2g installed with 3g swap file). And game was playing fine. (Other game actually uses less RAM, and was also working fine.)
Worst problem previously was H&H would begin to stutter after an hour or two, exiting and reloading usually cured that (at worst wait fifteen minutes and log back in).

Yes, it's an old computer (Inspiron 1720, bought at yard sale a couple of years ago) but it has since August been running H&H quite satisfactorily. (One day I'll rebuild my desktop rig, but medical bills come first.)

No clue how any of this would be related to turning on or off network discovery, though.

Seemed odd to me also, but that was the only change to the system between the time the game was running acceptably and when it wasn't. Though it could be pure coincidence (once spent a week trying to eliminate crackles and pops from the sound after updating vid drivers, just coincidence that the sound card died during the reboot).

[Mashadar]

Thanks to CoreTemp I know during gameplay cpu usage is 50-70%, rarely briefly spiking to 100%, RAM usage totals around 1.7g (2g installed with 3g swap file). And game was playing fine. (Other game actually uses less RAM, and was also working fine.)

Yeah, you're definitely running out of memory. I mean, the client already uses 1.6 GB after just 5 minutes of playing on my system. Memory scarcity affects Java applications harder than normal ones, presumably because the garbage collection constantly touches memory pages, effectively preventing unused pages from being paged out.

You'd benefit a lot if you could add an extra 2 GB of RAM to your system, you can probably get it for five bucks on eBay.

[animary]

Thanks to CoreTemp I know during gameplay cpu usage is 50-70%, rarely briefly spiking to 100%, RAM usage totals around 1.7g (2g installed with 3g swap file). And game was playing fine. (Other game actually uses less RAM, and was also working fine.)

Yeah, you're definitely running out of memory. I mean, the client already uses 1.6 GB after just 5 minutes of playing on my system. Memory scarcity affects Java applications harder than normal ones, presumably because the garbage collection constantly touches memory pages, effectively preventing unused pages from being paged out.

You'd benefit a lot if you could add an extra 2 GB of RAM to your system, you can probably get it for five bucks on eBay.

I know this old system is borderline in the memory department, but the fact remains I've been playing the game quite well on it since August ....and suddenly this past weekend the frame rates bottom out.

I more suspect now my ISP is throttling me, they no doubt consider a couple hours a day of massive activity at this site to be torrents; tried free VPN from one of my email accounts but it was "terminated because this server does not allow P2P connections". So I'l probably have to pay to test my theory.