Kamidori Alchemy Meister Unplayable Slowdown (Solved!) (AMD Radeon issue, apparently.)

[nisekam808]

v UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST v

 

While I hate to be someone who registers and asks for help in their first post, I am having an odd issue with this game that I have not seen anywhere else, and I'm slowly going insane trying to figure this out. Occasionally, (and occasionally in ways that I can recreate the issue 100% of the time,) the game will suffer from a near unplayable amount of slowdown. The game will start up fine, I will load into my save fine, the menus and everything will work just fine, then suddenly, the game will lag so hard that it turns into a slideshow detecting your inputs several seconds after they happen and frequently not registering mouse clicks or the like at all. It continues like this when opening menus and everything.

 

However, this also only happens in windowed mode. Running the game in full-screen, it will function normally. Even switching to full screen after the lag has started will cause the game to run normally again. For example, with my attached save data here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ppilig6m0ga0miw/SAVE.rar/file if I load this, go to the Sediment Corridor in the Mines, and wait for ~10 seconds, the slowdown will begin to occur 100% of the time. But, this only happens when entering the mines in windowed mode. And, if I do this > then go to full screen to fix the slowdown > go back to windowed > reload the same save and go back into the Sediment Corridor, it will not suffer from the slowdown there unless I relaunch the game itself entirely.

 

The only thing I can think of is that it's something that Windows is doing in the background to either cause and/or resolve the issue. As it's only when I switch from Windowed mode to Full Screen and exit the game that I get this popup: What changes is it making, what compatibility settings is it applying, I don't know. It would be real swell if it would just say what it did rather than, "By the way, Windows did things and stuff." I've screwed around with every possible combination of the compatibility options, and in my experience, nothing has resolved this issue, so I have no idea.

 

(For additional technical information: Currently using Windows 10 64-bit, with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 6-core, and a Radeon RX 560, so obviously while this is far beyond what the game requires, God knows whether or not any of these specific things are having a unique conflict with the game. As newer parts sometimes do with older software.) UPDATE: This was correct. See below.

 

A couple of things I've tried and found no change with: I've tried removing the rt.dat file (and save.dat file for completeness sake, in case there was anything corrupted in these files) and this did not affect the issue at all. I've also tried switching codec packs from the k-lite that I normally use to cccp and that did nothing as well. I've reinstalled the game a couple times. I've also attempted altering every Compatibility option known to mankind. All the OS's, full screen optimizations, DPI scalings, running it as admin, and every combination of everything.

 

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I love this game, and really wanted to play it again, but it's kind of a frustrating experience having to swap back and forth between windowed mode and full screen every time the game acts up, which is often. If anyone has any idea what is causing this, I'd be very thankful for your input.

 

Barring that, if anyone who is ~not~ having this issue is willing to take my save data, use it, go straight into the Sediment Corridor and wait for ~10 seconds to see if they suffer from it as well, I'd be very thankful if you let me know your results. (You will know if it happens. Even scrolling your cursor over the blue movement squares becomes like a slide show.) So that I can at least confirm that it is not my save data causing the problem, and can continue playing with my little workaround.

 

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UPDATE: And of course I find the solution as soon as I post this, despite the previous hours upon hours upon hours of troubleshooting.

 

The culprit is Radeon's Anti-Lag feature. Disabling this option removes the slowdown entirely. So if any passersby are suffering with the same issue and are using AMD hardware, try this: Open your Radeon software settings, click on the cogwheel, go to Graphics, and make sure the Radeon Anti-Lag is set to Disabled. Here is a visual aid for reference:

 

Time to get back to enjoying this wonderful game!

Edited June 12, 2022 by nisekam808