Stutter and Hit Boxes

One of the issues I’ve encountered more frequently of late is what has colloquially been called “stutter.”

I’m not a programmer, but the visual experience is something like frames skipping or even jumping ahead during the movement of the champions on screen.

There are moments in a fight when the “feel” is such that I know stutter is coming on—almost as if whatever code loaded in for that particular fight and my device are “straining” to render the visuals of the fight consistently.

“Stutter” occurs frequently for me at what I would call the point of impact—basically, when the two hit boxes of the champs are approaching each other. That is significant, of course, because that’s often the moment when a player is preparing to evade or parry or block. As an example, it’s almost an ironclad law that it will occur on nodes that reflect stuns, and never (that I can recall) to my benefit.

This is (maybe) the memory leak issue. I don’t know, and would appreciate members like @DNA3000 chiming in. What potential causes are there for this? Is this just part of the experience of playing an increasingly complex game on a smartphone? Is there some specific interaction occurring during this specific interval that makes “stutter” more likely? Is this an item that *could* be ameliorated by the ongoing team efforts to repair the game?

Thanks in advance…

Dr. Zola

Comments

Crine60

I have a question I believe is related (if not I am sorry for posting it here). This only occurs sometimes so I am not sure if it is also an issue of the frame skipping type of problems we can have, but is the Special Attack button not triggering specials and having to hit it multiple times (at which point you have either probably begun to take a combo to the face or the enemy has gone into block) to get it to fire off an issue with the same or a related cause and would the memory leak fix (which I have seen no improvement of so far with the October update) that should be finalized next month something that can fix that as well?

DrZola

@Crine60

Good question and I don’t know.

I wonder if there is a connection issue involved. I often get what I call “dead map,” where I cannot move to the next node no matter how many time I tap. There’s no WiFi icon, but it operates like the game is frozen, even though the background and energy clock continue to move.

Is this like the dead special button? It doesn’t seem like it would be, since I recall being told long ago that each “fight” is downloaded when you press the fight button—that is, it doesn’t involve any server communication once the fight begins.

Which is why I would think it’s a “within the fight packet” control issue, not some kind of connection-related issue.

So I think it likely the “memory leak”
issue, but I’m guessing. But I would love to understand both our issues better.

Dr. Zola

World Eater

The stuttering / game lag has been really bad this month. It seems to happen when abilities are triggered or when in game texts are supposed to pop up, like unstoppable, unblockable , etc… It reminds me how the game was back in 2016-2017.

Chikel

@Crine60

Good question and I don’t know.

I wonder if there is a connection issue involved. I often get what I call “dead map,” where I cannot move to the next node no matter how many time I tap. There’s no WiFi icon, but it operates like the game is frozen, even though the background and energy clock continue to move.

Is this like the dead special button? It doesn’t seem like it would be, since I recall being told long ago that each “fight” is downloaded when you press the fight button—that is, it doesn’t involve any server communication once the fight begins.

Which is why I would think it’s a “within the fight packet” control issue, not some kind of connection-related issue.

So I think it likely the “memory leak”
issue, but I’m guessing. But I would love to understand both our issues better.

Dr. Zola

Each fight is downloaded? I play on mobile data and I have noticed that when for some reason my internet slows down significantly during a fight, the game starts lagging and stuttering till it picks back up. It's like playing a slide show. I have tested this by pausing the game and try other apps that use internet even running a speed check.

DrZola

@Crine60

Good question and I don’t know.

I wonder if there is a connection issue involved. I often get what I call “dead map,” where I cannot move to the next node no matter how many time I tap. There’s no WiFi icon, but it operates like the game is frozen, even though the background and energy clock continue to move.

Is this like the dead special button? It doesn’t seem like it would be, since I recall being told long ago that each “fight” is downloaded when you press the fight button—that is, it doesn’t involve any server communication once the fight begins.

Which is why I would think it’s a “within the fight packet” control issue, not some kind of connection-related issue.

So I think it likely the “memory leak”
issue, but I’m guessing. But I would love to understand both our issues better.

Dr. Zola
Each fight is downloaded? I play on mobile data and I have noticed that when for some reason my internet slows down significantly during a fight, the game starts lagging and stuttering till it picks back up. It's like playing a slide show. I have tested this by pausing the game and try other apps that use internet even running a speed check.

I believe that’s essentially the assertion that has been made for a while—that there’s not some in-fight communication between your phone and the game servers that steers the course of the fight. I have no idea if there is some minimal data collection going on (probably is).

But I’d love to have confirmation of that.

Dr. Zola