144hz+ (High Refresh Monitor Issue)RMMV

[Manjini]

So, this seems to be a very known issue in the past threads here and there and everybody who has a decent high refresh monitor will probably have encountered similar issues like performance issues, stuttering etc. etc.
The question is, is there a proper fix for it?
I can run my game on the 60hz Monitor and everything works perfectly fine. Every timer, switch and the entire performance is working great.
But dragging the window onto my 144hz Monitor, that's where the party starts! Timers from plugins which are based on the RPG Maker MV's Playtime are way faster and would mess up the entire game experience! Timers made by existing engine switches etc. run properly BUT!!
Only because I am using Yanflys FPS Sync. If I would not use it, even my character moves like bee's continously sting his little chibi butt!
While this is indeed funny, it is obviously not intended! So again, is there any type of proper fix for this?

Edit: When I open a older new project from a older RPG Maker MV version, this oddly does NOT happen. I just found a folder from 1.3x times.

Plugins I am using:

 

[MushroomCake28]

Currently in class so can't really post the fix, but I have a fix for that (didn't release it tho, just using it in my game). If you know how to code a bit, it's fairly easy. This issue happens because the time is linked to fps, and that even if the game is running at 60 fps on a high refresh rate monitor, it isn't really running at 60 fps: it's running at the monitor's refresh rate but it's only rendering the canvas 60 times per second. So the solution is simple: create another frame count in the Graphics object and make it add +1 everytime the game renders the canvas.

 

[Manjini]

I am not really familiar with Javascript, therefore I do not want to actually mess around with the .js files too much. But one issue was definitely that I used Yanfly's FPS Synch Option. It made things worse about movement of the Player when you turn the option off in the Options Menu. I disabled the plugin and now at least the movement is fixed when I turn it off in the options. Problem is, without the Plugin the FPS are so unstable and all over the place, it isn't funny.

But as you stated it above, even if the game itself runs at 60fps NOW on my 144hz monitor, the timers are still way too fast. It would be great if you could give me a little walkthrough on how exactly I could fix this once and for all. I will credit you even. Because this is definitely a game breaking thing.

Edit: This is not needed in a rush! So do it whenever you got time. And maybe it will be also useful for other people in the future!

 

[Andar]

This was a problem with the 1.0 versions and Kodakawa made an update to prevent the monitor refresh from affecting game speed relatively fast - that is what you see with the 1.3 core not being affected by high refresh monitors.

I haven't done much with RMMV in the last year, but the question I have now is what changed to make the monitor rate the basis again - it could either have happened by a plugin or by a core update.
Can you check if a new project without any plugin is affected as well? if yes it needs to be posted as a bug, if not you need to test all your plugins to find out which one creates that dependency.

 

[Manjini]

What I can say as of now is, that any plugin altering timings of Events etc. are completly affected. Be it a new project or an older one from old versions of RMMV. I just tested this much since I posted this. So using for example Galv's Event Spawn Timers plugin would not work as intended. I asked Galv already and he said that his plugin makes use of the RMMV timer.
Quote:
Galv says:
January 13, 2019 at 6:51 pm

The timers run on the game’s playtime value, so it sounds like either an RPG Maker issue or perhaps another plugin conflicting. If it’s updating more often because of a monitor refresh rate, then your playtime must be going that fast, too.

Quote End

And since I tested his plugin on a blank project, then dragged the window to both my screens, I can confirm that on my 144hz monitor it finishes an event which usually takes 10 seconds in around 4 seconds.
While again my 60hz screen is not affected by it and works as intended.

So there is no other plugin interfering in this test.
About my project, I stated all plugins I am using above. And the only Plugin which slightly would affect performance is the Yanfly's FPS Synch Options plugin. But after disabling it, the results are still the same with Plugins which make use of the basic RMMV playtimer.

Note: Here I can only quote what Galv stated. Since I personally did not check any codes nor would most likely understand what's going on within them, I cannot confirm anything on that matter.

 

[Archeia]

I actually wrote about that here too
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/tips-and-tricks-tutorial-ver.97011/

 

[Psychronic]

I have experienced this, I do not use the Yanfly Sync FPS plugin, it doesn't work as well as TDDP_FluidTimestep.

I know that RPG Maker company said that they added it in by default now, but I don't see that behavior when I create a new game.

This plugin will auto-sync so the game speed is the same across all refresh rates, but looks smoother on 144hz because of more frames.

http://mvplugins.tordamian.com/plugins/fluidtimestep/

FOR THE JITTERING/HANGING/ETC:

I have been troubleshooting this for a while since I have the same issues. I have found a few things that help but it's kind of odd that it should have any effect at all.

1. Close all browser windows. On the back-end, RPG Maker MV shares resources with whatever shared pool of memory involves websites or your game. Maybe it's WebGL but it seems to split the resources between all browser windows and RPG Maker.

2. Also if you have any video on the screen, even if it's paused, it will also cause RPG Maker to jitter. If you use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) or something to record your game, make sure it's minimized, after you hit record, otherwise you'll get mega jitter.

3. This one is odd but I noticed it increased my performance significantly. When you're editing a game in windows, it uses a different javascript engine than the final deployment. Final deployment uses Pixi.JS, but when it's running on Windows it uses something called NW.js. Where is nw.js?

It's in the final deployment of Windows version of your game, OR it's in the RPG Maker MV engine folder. Screenshot of what I mean. If you open up your game in test mode, you will see a process called "nw.js", you need to right click on it, and select "open file location":



Once in the folder, you'll see something that looks like this, this is the version of NWJS that RPG Maker MV uses. I thought to myself "maybe there's a newer version of NWJS that I can just paste into this folder and see what happens...":



The next step is to find NWJS online, it's available here:

https://nwjs.io/

When you go there, download the latest "normal" build (it's right on the front page).

After the build is downloaded as a zip file, you can open it up, and you'll see something like this:



You'll notice that the files and dll's are the same names of the files as in the RPG Maker MV NWJS test folder. Now simply take all the files from the zip file, and dump them into the /RPG Maker MV/nwjs-win-test folder. Replace all the files in that folder with the ones from the zip.

Now rename nw.exe to Game.exe

That's it, you should notice increased performance as a result, it made my game run a lot better, the only problem now is that I can't open the dev console, but either way it still shows me the error so no big deal. Kind of weird but it worked for me.

4. Also just like NWJS, PIXI.JS has a newer version as well than the current version of RPG Maker, and also noticed improved performance from it. it can be acquired here:

https://github.com/pixijs/pixi.js/releases

Download latest version of pixi, and take all the files from the zip, and replace them in your game's project folder under the /<your-game-name>/js/libs/ folder.

 

[Archeia]

NWJS is node js. It's the game player. We're using one of the latest ones in 1.6.1. It's the thing that runs your RM Game. Pixi is a graphics rendering engine.

RMMV also uses PIXI 4 but for the sake of stability and plugin environment, we do not just update. We use a special version of Pixi made for RM by one of the programmers in it.

So just updating by yourself might give you serious issues later unless you know what you are doing. So don't just do this will nilly.

 

[Psychronic]

Always make a backup of course. Worst case scenario you have to reinstall RPG Maker or swap back out the old JS files. So far though it seems to be working well for me. Maybe there's something I missed though that I'll find out about later.

 

[Manjini]

@Archeia nailed it in one little code line. Why is this not added by default?
An Rpg Maker game does not have to run higher than 60 fps in my opinion! And it does not work as intended anyways without capping it

"chromium-args": "--limit-fps=60"

This line now works totally well with Yanfly's FPS Synch Options Plugin as well. So everybody who has issues with higher framerates, go to the link Archeia provided

I actually wrote about that here too
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/tips-and-tricks-tutorial-ver.97011/

About Psychronic's method, I did not test any of this because after fixing my issue, the performance is also totally acceptable in my deployed build.
And to prevent issues with future patches of RPG Maker MV and several plugins I also rather do not try this method personally.

But thank you a lot guys.

 

[mlogan]

This thread is being closed, due to being solved. If for some reason you would like this thread re-opened, please report this post and leave a message why. Thank you.