Mouse "lags" when playing Doom game

[doomfreak0001]

Hi, If this topic is unrelated to this forum area, please either move it, or let me know in the future on where I can post tech-releated issues. Again, sorry if this is in the wrong forum area.

Whenever I play the old classic game of DOOM, with the source port being ZDoom, my mouse lags. So in other words, when I turn or move around using the mouse, the actual movement appears (in the game) after around 4 seconds of moving the mouse itself. My PC details are below. The mouse works perfectly fine when I am not playing the game such as browsing and etc....What can I do? I just CANNOT play like this...Luckily, all works fine on my notebook. But its just my desktop PC.
Pls help, Thx.

By the way - I had another mouse, and did the same thing as well.

Win XP Pro.
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD
RAM: 2.86GB
CPU: Intel 3.2GHz
Mouse: Laser Sensor type. USB - WIRED

[GreyGhost]

Don't have that problem with my USB mouse, does it affect other games and/or source ports? Here's a little patch that might help.

EDIT - First try un-ticking "Enhance pointer precision" in Mouse Properties.

[doomfreak0001]

OK, I had a spare mouse around the house and this one seems to work.
However, I will try and experiment with the other mouse as well with the patch you mentioned.

EDIT >>>> Still the same issue when I restarted DOOM and plus I disabled the Pointer Precision box as well.

I also noticed, that when starting the game for the very first time after rwhen PC boots, it works fine. But once the game is restated, goes bad again.

Thanks

[Maes]

Does this occur with other games too or only with with ZDoom?

By the way, what version of ZDoom are you using? (I initially thought of issues with Doom95, but then I read you specifically mentioned ZDoom).

Also, do you have ANY mouse management suite running (e.g. one of those Logitech suites for -usually crappy- extra functions) that may interfere?

[doomfreak0001]

I had been doing some tests here.

The mouse works OK in the game right after a PC boot.
But when closing the game and re-running the game, I get the same issue with the mouse.

What can be the issue here?

I have Dell and an HP mouse.
Zdoom version is 2.5.0.
And yes, I am running the old version of Doom.
But this does not happen on my notebook. It runs smoothly there.

[Maes]

doomfreak0001 said:

I have Dell and an HP mouse.
Zdoom version is 2.5.0.
And yes, I am running the old version of Doom.
But this does not happen on my notebook. It runs smoothly there.

Too much guesswork on my side perhaps, but putting all these conflicting statements together I read them as:

• "Dell and an HP" mouse could mean anything from an old DOS machine, to a Pentium III to some prebuilt Dell PC. Be more specific. Specs? RAM? CPU? OS? etc.
  
• You have ZDoom installed, but not actually using it.
  
• Instead, you are running what could be either vanilla DOS, Doom95 or something else, which obviously breaks things (again, Doom + mouse problems usually spells Doom95).
  
• Or, you mean you're using DOOM.WAD instead of DOOM2.WAD? That in itself doesn't matter assuming that the problem lies in whatever executable you're using, and of which you're still very elusive.
  
• You have a "notebook", which for all we know could be running Windows 98 or Millenium, and we can only take wild guesses up to what source ports you're using there, let alone the hardware. Again, specs, RAM, OS and software used would help somewhat.
  

[Wagi]

If it helps, many users experience output lag when using vsync and having the framerate uncapped, and this often gets confused for mouse lag. I've had a problem like this before and disabling vsync helped. Try going into the console and typing in "vid_vsync false" (I think that's the name of the cvar) and see if that helps?

[Ladna]

Are you using ZDoom or GZDoom? If you're using GZDoom, try using just ZDoom at a low resolution (640x480) to see if that helps.

[doomfreak0001]

Ok, I did alot of searching around in the meantime while waiting for more replies here and I stumbled onto this here.
http://flandre.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16414

Take a look at the post were it says this:

So, to skbraddy, DONT GO BACK TO 2.1.7!! FOLLOW THE LIGHT! To fix your problem, go to the console, type "vid_forceddraw 1", restart, and RESPONSIVENESS RETURNS!

And according to these instructions, I went to the DOOM console and entered the command of VID_FORCEDDRAW 1 and I hit EXIT, RESTARTED ZDoom, and started the game the 3 times already with no lag....I will report back later after I do more testing.

Now.....in order to have these same settings for the "lag" to go away forever, do I need to keep on going into the DOOM console and always have to type in that command BEFORE actually playing a game?

[Kappes Buur]

In the zdoom-username.ini file you can set

vid_forceddraw

to either false or true (0 or 1)

[Barking Sands]

Kappes Buur said:

In the zdoom-username.ini file you can set
vid_forceddraw
to either false or true (0 or 1)

I'm 90% certain that his "vid_forceddraw" variable is already fixed to "1" in the .ini file since he set it in his console. I often use my ZDoom console to bind my keys and they remain bound every time I exit and restart.

[Gez]

Yeah; if it is set it is set, for all games and forever.

Some variables are not archived (e.g., type am_cheat 3 in the console, leave, restart, look at the map); but vid_forceddraw is a global archived variable.

[doomfreak0001]

I hope this setting works!!!!! I will keep on running tests and see.
Anyways, thanks to all of your support!!!!!

But one thing I dont get here....On my notebook, the vid_forceddraw is set to FALSE, and no lagging at all and plays very smoothly...

Is this because the hardware and graphic displays are different than on the desktop PC???

[Karakurt]

Greetings.

Sorry to bump the topic but since I've recently started playing with vid_forceddraw I found out that in Software I'm experiencing a mouse delay, like I'm getting 100 ms delay in the movements. However when testing it in OpenGL the mouse response (as in the click) is better.

Tested it in both Zandronum's latest version (2.1.2) and Zdoom's latest version (2.8.1)... issue resulting with similar results.
When playing in uncapped I'm also locked to 60 fps in Software when I should get 200 especially since the Vsync is forced off from both the game and Nvidia Control Panel. The framerate problem only applies when I'm in fullscreen (not in windowed).

So far I get no problems in OpenGL with whether uncapped and fullscreen.

Config:
Nvidia GTX 550TI
Intel I5 2500K
8 GB RAM
Windows 10

PS: I already tried to mess with various commands like vid_displaybits 8/16/32

Thanks.

[Quasar]

Karakurt said:

Config:
Nvidia GTX 550TI
Intel I5 2500K
8 GB RAM
Windows 10

PS: I already tried to mess with various commands like vid_displaybits 8/16/32

Thanks.

Do you happen to have a hidef display?

[Karakurt]

It's a 60HZ 1680x1050 monitor (75 when using low res). An old Packard Bell one basically.

I tried the lowest resolutions the framerame still get locked at 60/75.

[Karakurt]

Nobody? :c

[Edward850]

You'll want to look into why your framerate is apparently getting capped in the first place, even though you claim vsync is forced off, such as any GPU utilities that add artificial framerate caps as such a thing will likely interrupt input.

Side note, make absolutely sure ZDoom is running in hardware acceleration mode (make sure vid_forceddraw off, use d3d_showpacks to check if it's working), otherwise you're relying on 8bit directdraw on a modern system, which is nothing short of insanity nowadays.

[Karakurt]

Hello,

The point is that I actually wanted to stick to forceddraw @ true since I find it more responsive aim-wise, but I'll try!

Thank you for your reply.

'Good day.

[Karakurt]

What is d3d_showpacks supposed to do? I see a couple of mini screens showing weapon animation sequences.

[Edward850]

That means D3D is working and ZDoom is using it successfully. (It shows all texture pages loaded into VRAM.)

[Karakurt]

Oh ok, thanks!

However I'm contrained to use vid_forceddraw for the reason I mentioned above, sadly I still have no what causes mouse delay, but I believe it's hardware related since some people claimed using vid_forceddraw in Software with no mouse delay reported.

I just can't stick to OpenGL so as to fix the problem since alt-tabbing is kinda annoying with it. :\

[Edward850]

Karakurt said:

However I'm contrained to use vid_forceddraw for the reason I mentioned above, sadly I still have no what causes mouse delay, but I believe it's hardware related since some people claimed using vid_forceddraw in Software with no mouse delay reported.

"Some people claimed" is not the same thing as you experiencing any problem. Do you actually have an issue with the mouse in hardware mode (which would tend to suggest something you've mucked up on your on hardware, i.e changing settings in your GPU control panel that you didn't understand) or are you just doing it based on the advice of others? Normally I find that anybody who has mouse latency problems can solve it instantly by restoring their drivers to default settings (normalizing settings such as pre-rendered frames and triple buffering where they aren't needed).

The hardware surface was added to ZDoom because directdraw is actually an unnecessary performance soak in modern Windows and hardware. You actually cause more problems then you solve by switching that off.

[Karakurt]

I have no latency-related issue with hardware mode, as far as vid_forceddraw is at false there's no latency but I won't be able to aim just like in ZDaemon/Zdoom 1.23.
Also yes, I tried everything I had in hand like restoring default settings from Nvidia's panel, Pre-rendered frames set to 1, default config but nope, latency won't go away.

PS: Every time I launch the game with software/forcedraw it freezes for about five seconds while loading: http://hpics.li/01c4148

[Edward850]

Karakurt said:

I have no latency-related issue with hardware mode, as far as vid_forceddraw is at false there's no latency but I won't be able to aim just like in ZDaemon/Zdoom 1.23.

If there's no actual latency issue, then any issue you are having is entirely placebo. There is no actual difference in mouse input between directdraw and D3D, as the rendering has nothing to do with that.

Karakurt said:

PS: Every time I launch the game with software/forcedraw it freezes for about five seconds while loading: http://hpics.li/01c4148

Then stop using directdraw! It seems like you're just inventing problems at this point.

[Karakurt]

I can tell you that the difference is obvious enough to be noticed.

It has even been stated on here: http://zandronum.com/tracker/view.php?id=480&nbn=2

[Edward850]

That's someone complaining about input latency, which you clearly already stated you don't receive anyway. And the bug report was discarded.

[Karakurt]

Thank you for your very useful information, you definitely helped me there.

'Good day.