Little Fighter 4 Turbo Help

[Twiixtor]

I used to play this game years ago on my old Windows XP computer. I remember it working perfectly fine with good FPS even back then.

Now no matter which version I try to download, it either has poor FPS during combat and crashes every time when the freeze pokemon move is used.

Years ago I remember it worked but even then it (out of nowhere) stopped working too.

I'm wondering if there is a working version somewhere out there or would it be due to my hardware (FPS problem).

I got a friend with a much better system to test the game for me and his FPS was fine but the game would still crash after the Freeze Pokemon Move was used.

I have spent the past hour searching for a fixed version but could not find any. The closest I got was to a post on this forum asking about the same issue.

Thank you very much for any answers in advance.

EDIT: I would even be willing to pay someone to fix the FPS issue and Freeze Pokemon Crash. I absolutely love this mod and it's a real shame it doesn't work properly.

[Silverthorn]

Hey Twiixtor, welcome to LFE!

As for the crash, I'm fairly certain that it's the same bug as in this thread. You might want to try if that fixes things.

I am not certain about the FPS-issue, though. Does it happen only with LF4T or with other LF2-games as well? Especially the original 1.9 or 1.9c-versions as, if I remember correctly, LF4T is based on either one of them.

[Twiixtor]

Hey Twiixtor, welcome to LFE!

As for the crash, I'm fairly certain that it's the same bug as in this thread. You might want to try if that fixes things.

I am not certain about the FPS-issue, though. Does it happen only with LF4T or with other LF2-games as well? Especially the original 1.9 or 1.9c-versions as, if I remember correctly, LF4T is based on either one of them.

Thank you so very much for the fix! The crash no longer happens. But the FPS issue is still here. It happens during a lot of character's more intense moves, when I open a chest and punch a lot of the items dropped, when just a box breaks, when a lot of characters are hit at once. It's kind of random really what affects it and what doesn't. It does not happen in any other LF2 games. The originals run very smooth. Although this COULD be the problem.

I can post my specs if that could help resolve the issue.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.1 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
RAM: 12GB 1333MHz

[Silverthorn]

Thank you so very much for the fix! The crash no longer happens.

Great to hear!

But the FPS issue is still here. It happens during a lot of character's more intense moves, when I open a chest and punch a lot of the items dropped, when just a box breaks, when a lot of characters are hit at once. It's kind of random really what affects it and what doesn't. It does not happen in any other LF2 games. The originals run very smooth. Although this COULD be the problem.

I can post my specs if that could help resolve the issue.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.1 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
RAM: 12GB 1333MHz

(tl;dr: see last paragraph)

Hmm, LF2 in general doesn't make use of multiple cores, so the higher the base clock, the better it runs. RAM is important during loading; some mods pack so many bitmaps into their objects that it can easily clutter up around 700 MB (which was a serious issue for computers back at school), although this shouldn't matter much in this case. GPU's influence is minimal and usually just leads to mirroring-bugs that can be counteracted but is not necessary here.

I don't know how well you're accustomed to the workings of LF2 (or care, for that matter), but let me sum up how in-game mechanics work: every 1/30 second, the screen is redrawn to reflect all interactions that have happened between the last redraw and now. An "interaction" means that any element on screen (characters, weapons, projectiles, ...) may have collided with any other object. In total, LF2 can deal with 400 objects in total, meaning that if new ones are spawned, older ones will get overwritten or sometimes, the spawns don't happen at all, which can cause quite awkward gameplay. However, when we start to scratch that 400-mark, this means that there are potentially up to 400² = 160,000 interactions happening within 1/30th of a second. Now, this is a very ambitious number but you'll probably catch my drift: with more and more objects to care about, the game may have issues dealing with them on-time.

Now, what happens if the computer cannot process all these within the specified time-frame? Quite simply, the redraw will be delayed as long as the previous operation hasn't been completed. That causes these lag-spikes when suddenly, a large quantity of objects is on the field.

To be honest, though, there isn't much you can do about that apart from playing mods with less objects. Something which you could try is something that's frequently done for online matches, which is to artificially delay this 1/30-timer, effectively letting you play the game in slow motion. Note that this will likely not get rid of situations running slow, it's just that the rest of the time, the game will not run as fast. You might want to give such an FPS-changer a chance. Rammichael's should work for LF4T.

[Twiixtor]

(tl;dr: see last paragraph)

Hmm, LF2 in general doesn't make use of multiple cores, so the higher the base clock, the better it runs. RAM is important during loading; some mods pack so many bitmaps into their objects that it can easily clutter up around 700 MB (which was a serious issue for computers back at school), although this shouldn't matter much in this case. GPU's influence is minimal and usually just leads to mirroring-bugs that can be counteracted but is not necessary here.

I don't know how well you're accustomed to the workings of LF2 (or care, for that matter), but let me sum up how in-game mechanics work: every 1/30 second, the screen is redrawn to reflect all interactions that have happened between the last redraw and now. An "interaction" means that any element on screen (characters, weapons, projectiles, ...) may have collided with any other object. In total, LF2 can deal with 400 objects in total, meaning that if new ones are spawned, older ones will get overwritten or sometimes, the spawns don't happen at all, which can cause quite awkward gameplay. However, when we start to scratch that 400-mark, this means that there are potentially up to 400² = 160,000 interactions happening within 1/30th of a second. Now, this is a very ambitious number but you'll probably catch my drift: with more and more objects to care about, the game may have issues dealing with them on-time.

Now, what happens if the computer cannot process all these within the specified time-frame? Quite simply, the redraw will be delayed as long as the previous operation hasn't been completed. That causes these lag-spikes when suddenly, a large quantity of objects is on the field.

To be honest, though, there isn't much you can do about that apart from playing mods with less objects. Something which you could try is something that's frequently done for online matches, which is to artificially delay this 1/30-timer, effectively letting you play the game in slow motion. Note that this will likely not get rid of situations running slow, it's just that the rest of the time, the game will not run as fast. You might want to give such an FPS-changer a chance. Rammichael's should work for LF4T.

Thank you very much you have been a lot of help. Last question: Would upgrading my PC specs improve the FPS? I'm talking an i7 7700k and 16 GB of 3200MHz RAM? Then I could deal with the bad FPS for now as I do plan on upgrading my PC very soon but if not, I would have to look into other ways. Maybe even for now would it be possible to decrease the amount of objects for LF4T?

[Silverthorn]

Thank you very much you have been a lot of help. Last question: Would upgrading my PC specs improve the FPS? I'm talking an i7 7700k and 16 GB of 3200MHz RAM?

To be honest, I have no idea. I've heard about people buying new hardware and suddenly not being able to run LF2 at all, over those where LF2's performance decreased, up to where everything runs smoothly now. It's kind of a hit and miss deal. In theory, it should run better but LF2 rarely runs predictively...

Maybe even for now would it be possible to decrease the amount of objects for LF4T?

That would require you to modify the data of several characters and/or projectiles (and thereby, potentially directly affecting gameplay). I mean, it is possible, it just requires a whole lot of work finding all those stray

opoint:

s that aren't absolutely crucial and removing those. It's a pain and I personally would rather live with reducing the FPS. Then again, I've gotten so used to slowed down gamespeed that the original is way too fast for me anyways.

[Twiixtor]

To be honest, I have no idea. I've heard about people buying new hardware and suddenly not being able to run LF2 at all, over those where LF2's performance decreased, up to where everything runs smoothly now. It's kind of a hit and miss deal. In theory, it should run better but LF2 rarely runs predictively...

That seems to be very true now that I think about how well it used to run on my Windows XP machine. Real shame :/

That would require you to modify the data of several characters and/or projectiles (and thereby, potentially directly affecting gameplay). I mean, it is possible, it just requires a whole lot of work finding all those stray

opoint:

s that aren't absolutely crucial and removing those. It's a pain and I personally would rather live with reducing the FPS. Then again, I've gotten so used to slowed down gamespeed that the original is way too fast for me anyways.

That sure sounds like a hassle. I'll just hope that new hardware will fix the issue. If not then I might as well put the work in. For me, it would definitely be worth it!


Anyways, thank you for all the help! Too bad I didn't find this place earlier :p

[Twiixtor]

UPDATE: Just got my new PC and thank god, it fixed the lag. Game runs very smooth at all times, even when there is a lot going on.

New specs in case anyone is wondering. They are the main ones really:

i7 7700k
GTX 1080
16GB RAM