Game freezes for 5-10 seconds every few minutes
My game has been freezing a lot - every few minutes it freezes for 5-10 seconds, sound continues and I can move the mouse or alt-tab out of the game but no inputs have any effect on the game. This sometimes causes a lot of problems since the game keeps running and my suit or ship will crash into things. This has been going on for several months at least. I play mostly on one of the official servers so it's not a local autosave issue. I've also tested in single player and the same thing happens. There's another symptom, when I press escape to get to the game menu, the game also exhibits the same freeze for up to ten seconds.
None of this happens when I run the game on my laptop, just the desktop pc.
I've verified local files several times, reinstalled the video driver with four different versions up to one year old, ran .net repair, reinstalled latest vcredist. Video card is a Geforce GTX1080, system has 32GB RAM, the game files are on a 500gb nvme drive. Dual 4K monitors but the game is running 1080p fullscreen on only one monitor. I have a VPN which does increase my ping but not my ability to connect to servers.
Any suggestions?
Is there some connection to a non-keen server that it's blocking or delaying? E.g. elasticsearch heartbeat that shows up in the log files.
There are also errors in the log files related to 'missing textures' but since I've verified local files several times I assume this is just an internal bug.
I have the same bug
Hello, hobbes409,
I am sorry you are experiencing this issue. Can you please provide me with a log from the time you experienced this freezing?
Can you also please try to turn off your VPN and let me know if it helped or stayed the same?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
I am sorry you are experiencing this issue. Can you please provide me with a log from the time you experienced this freezing?
Can you also please try to turn off your VPN and let me know if it helped or stayed the same?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Here are the log files.
The laptop also has the same VPN and does not experience this problem.
Here are the log files.
The laptop also has the same VPN and does not experience this problem.
Hello, hobbes409,
thank you for the logs. I have several suggestions for you:
- type %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming. Rename the folder Space Engineers to Backup-SpaceEngineers. Then try to launch your game again. A new save file will be created. Please report back to me if it helped.
- Have you got enough space on your NVME disk? When there is not enough space on the disk, the problems you are having can arise.
- Can I ask you why are you not playing in 4K when you have 4K monitors?
- Elastic search heartbeat is part of the our game and does not mean any error.
Thank you for letting me know if it helped.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
thank you for the logs. I have several suggestions for you:
- type %appdata% into your Windows search bar and you will be redirected to the hidden Roaming folder. After that just follow: \Roaming. Rename the folder Space Engineers to Backup-SpaceEngineers. Then try to launch your game again. A new save file will be created. Please report back to me if it helped.
- Have you got enough space on your NVME disk? When there is not enough space on the disk, the problems you are having can arise.
- Can I ask you why are you not playing in 4K when you have 4K monitors?
- Elastic search heartbeat is part of the our game and does not mean any error.
Thank you for letting me know if it helped.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
I created a backup of the Space Engineers folder and tested it. The game freeze still happens. There is also a long freeze of 10-15 seconds when I press escape to open the game menu.
The NVME drive is 1TB (927GB actual) and has 360GB used and 566GB free.
I play at a lower resolution because I prefer a higher framerate. I mentioned it in case there is some bug in SE with dual monitors.
I created a backup of the Space Engineers folder and tested it. The game freeze still happens. There is also a long freeze of 10-15 seconds when I press escape to open the game menu.
The NVME drive is 1TB (927GB actual) and has 360GB used and 566GB free.
I play at a lower resolution because I prefer a higher framerate. I mentioned it in case there is some bug in SE with dual monitors.
Hello, hobbes409,
based on the information you provided me with there seems to be no problem in the logs or your setup. Have you noticed this freezing in other games as well? Have you got other applications opened at the same time or does your computer overheat while you play?
Can you try to lower your game settings? Has this freezing happened after an update or any change in your setup?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
based on the information you provided me with there seems to be no problem in the logs or your setup. Have you noticed this freezing in other games as well? Have you got other applications opened at the same time or does your computer overheat while you play?
Can you try to lower your game settings? Has this freezing happened after an update or any change in your setup?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
The freezing does not happen in any other game or application.
I usually have a browser open at the same time, but the freezing in SE happens even with no other applications open.
After playing for 20 minutes, CPU temp is 66C and GPU temp is 64C. These are both at the low end of recommended temperature ranges.
I'll test lower graphics settings next. As I mentioned, I already run at 1080P instead of 4k.
The freezing does not happen in any other game or application.
I usually have a browser open at the same time, but the freezing in SE happens even with no other applications open.
After playing for 20 minutes, CPU temp is 66C and GPU temp is 64C. These are both at the low end of recommended temperature ranges.
I'll test lower graphics settings next. As I mentioned, I already run at 1080P instead of 4k.
Hello, hobbes409,
did lowing the graphics help? If not can you please uninstall Space Engineers from Steam? You can create a backup of the Space engineers folder before you do that so you do not loose anything. It is in the same \Roaming folder, and just copy paste it into some other folder on your computer.
After you delete it from Steam, make sure the whole \Roaming folder got deleted as well. Then reinstall the game and try to launch it again.
Thank you for letting me know if it helped.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
did lowing the graphics help? If not can you please uninstall Space Engineers from Steam? You can create a backup of the Space engineers folder before you do that so you do not loose anything. It is in the same \Roaming folder, and just copy paste it into some other folder on your computer.
After you delete it from Steam, make sure the whole \Roaming folder got deleted as well. Then reinstall the game and try to launch it again.
Thank you for letting me know if it helped.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Lowering the graphics settings had no effect.
There is a new issue caused by a recent update, when I connect with the VPN active, the game does not finish loading and I appear to be stuck inside the center of the earth, but no user interface elements load in and while I can move the view around, I can't take any other action.
To address a previous comment, ElasticSearch Heartbeat is a function provided by a third party software to report connection status to a different server. I used TCPView from Sysinternals and found that the game was occasionally trying to connect to IP addresses that don't seem to be related to Keen or the game server I was playing on. The timing seemed to coincide with the freezes but it needs more testing to confirm for sure.
This is disappointing but I will try to work around it. This issue is NOT solved - it is caused by something in the game networking code.
Lowering the graphics settings had no effect.
There is a new issue caused by a recent update, when I connect with the VPN active, the game does not finish loading and I appear to be stuck inside the center of the earth, but no user interface elements load in and while I can move the view around, I can't take any other action.
To address a previous comment, ElasticSearch Heartbeat is a function provided by a third party software to report connection status to a different server. I used TCPView from Sysinternals and found that the game was occasionally trying to connect to IP addresses that don't seem to be related to Keen or the game server I was playing on. The timing seemed to coincide with the freezes but it needs more testing to confirm for sure.
This is disappointing but I will try to work around it. This issue is NOT solved - it is caused by something in the game networking code.
Hello, hobbes409,
thank you for the update. Can you please let me know when you gather more information?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
thank you for the update. Can you please let me know when you gather more information?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
To duplicate the problem:
Enable a VPN. I've tested both NordVPN and Private Internet Access. The game will freeze every 5-10 minutes for between 10-20 seconds. I haven't been able to figure out why it didn't seem to be a problem on my laptop.
Even with the VPN enabled my ping is <140ms which is quite playable. The game is making connections to some IP that is not the game server, which causes this freeze.
Other network adapters being disabled or enabled seemed to have no effect.
To duplicate the problem:
Enable a VPN. I've tested both NordVPN and Private Internet Access. The game will freeze every 5-10 minutes for between 10-20 seconds. I haven't been able to figure out why it didn't seem to be a problem on my laptop.
Even with the VPN enabled my ping is <140ms which is quite playable. The game is making connections to some IP that is not the game server, which causes this freeze.
Other network adapters being disabled or enabled seemed to have no effect.
Hello, hobbes409,
if you can play with VPN on your other laptop it is likely not the problem. I am also playing with VPN and I have never encountered this issue.
Unfortunately I cannot see your hardware setting. But what you can try to do is to launch the game offline (airplane mode without any access to the internet). If you still experience this freezing then VPN or internet connection is not the cause of it.
Another thing you can try is to press Alt + F11 and turn off trash collecting because there are a lot of grids being deleted in your log, which could cause freezing.
It would be also useful if you knew the exact time the freezing happened. Then you can send me another log from that time and I can look up the time there and see what exactly happened.
Thank you for letting me know the outcome of these tests.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello, hobbes409,
if you can play with VPN on your other laptop it is likely not the problem. I am also playing with VPN and I have never encountered this issue.
Unfortunately I cannot see your hardware setting. But what you can try to do is to launch the game offline (airplane mode without any access to the internet). If you still experience this freezing then VPN or internet connection is not the cause of it.
Another thing you can try is to press Alt + F11 and turn off trash collecting because there are a lot of grids being deleted in your log, which could cause freezing.
It would be also useful if you knew the exact time the freezing happened. Then you can send me another log from that time and I can look up the time there and see what exactly happened.
Thank you for letting me know the outcome of these tests.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello engineer,
As there has been no reply to this thread in some time, we will close it. If you're experiencing this issue, please create a new thread.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
Hello engineer,
As there has been no reply to this thread in some time, we will close it. If you're experiencing this issue, please create a new thread.
Kind regards,
Keen Software House: QA Department
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