Constant stutter or pausing during Blood Moon

[Aesirkin]

I've been running a dedicated server for a couple months now.  We had a variety of performance issues with our VM host, so I built my own dedicated server and am hosting it on a business ethernet connection in my office.  I'm connected as a player from a machine in the same room, connected via Cat6 cables; so I essentially have a gigabit ethernet connection to the server.  All issues have disappeared except for one.

 

When new zombies spawn in, the game 'pauses' for half a second or so, even for me (so I don't think it's a connection issue).  This is perfectly manageable in everyday play.  However, during blood moon, zombies are spawning constantly.  As such we get continuous pauses to the point that the game appears to stutter.  FPS seems fine between the pauses.

 

I ran perfmon on the server during the last blood moon and CPU usage never exceeded 10% (on a 6 core cpu), and no individual core exceeded 30%.  Over half of the available 32GB of RAM remained free at all times.  Network usage rarely exceeded 1MB/sec.  The server has a very fast M.2 SSD and % disk time never goes above a couple percent.

 

I just did a blood moon with three friends and it was pretty bad for everyone .  By 2/3 of the way through it was nearly unplayable, and at times felt like I was getting 1FPS or less for several seconds, and then fine until the next stutter.  But again, I don't think this is a framerate issue but rather a repeated 'pause' issue.  This blood moon was, by far, the worst we've experienced.  Here's what's different from the previous ones:

• Max zombies increased to 64 from 32
• Smaller base; zombies often were running around within a few blocks of us
• Base was made almost entirely of railings to create a cage
• Base was designed for heavy molotov and pipe bomb use, so more fire than usual
• I had 3 SMG auto turrets running; I usually don't use them.  Stutter remained after they ran dry.
• Dynamic mesh is turned on; it was off for a while on the old server but that didn't seem to make any difference.

 

It's worth noting that all players are playing on very different machines in terms of performance, but we all experience very similar severity of this issue.

 

How do we reduce or eliminate this pausing?  Or can anyone at least explain what causes it to give me somewhere to start trying to figure out a solution?

Edited August 28, 2022 by Aesirkin
Added information (see edit history)

[Beelzybub]

Is there security software running on the server? If so, add folder exceptions for the game and save folders.

[Aesirkin]

31 minutes ago, Beelzybub said:

Is there security software running on the server? If so, add folder exceptions for the game and save folders.

 

Thanks.  I'm using AVG Free and did this already.  I also made sure the Firewall had exceptions for 7DTD.  I'll try it on my local machine and see if that helps.

[SylenThunder]

A server log would be useful.

[Beelzybub]

1 hour ago, Aesirkin said:

I'm using AVG Free and did this already.

Where I'm from, running this on an enterprise server would get you fired.

[Aesirkin]

33 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

A server log would be useful.

 

I'm guessing this is the right log file?  

 

26 minutes ago, Beelzybub said:

Where I'm from, running this on an enterprise server would get you fired.

 

I'm not running an enterprise datacenter; I'm just a guy with a server in his basement trying to fumble my way through this.  😛

I welcome suggestions for improvement.

[SylenThunder]

Nutrition Buffs by Aesirkin - Shows a number of errors. Did you update this for 20.6?
kic's RangerMod ver .3 for a20 - This mod hasn't been updated in 6 months. Is also giving an error.

Executing command 'bm-playerunderground' by WebCommandResult_for_bm-playerunderground - This is spamming the logs. A feature of Botman I suppose?

 

As far as server performance goes, it all seems just fine. Issue is likely caused by a mod. Either one of the mentioned errors above, or a mod that changes entities.

[Beelzybub]

5 hours ago, Aesirkin said:

I built my own dedicated server and am hosting it on a business ethernet connection in my office. 

 

1 hour ago, Aesirkin said:

I'm just a guy with a server in his basement

I'm confused.

1 hour ago, Aesirkin said:

I welcome suggestions for improvement.

Just as a test for the hardware setup, I'd run a Vanilla Navezgane map.

You can do this without messing up your current world just by making copies of the starting files.

So make a vanilla serverconfigNAV-Test.xml and a startdedicatedNAV-Test.bat to start up the

basic server. Then connect locally and see if you still have the stuttering. If not, then you know your

problem is a mod or the world. If yes, then you know it's a hardware/network issue, and not a mod

problem.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Beelzybub (see edit history)

[Aesirkin]

19 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

Nutrition Buffs by Aesirkin - Shows a number of errors. Did you update this for 20.6?
kic's RangerMod ver .3 for a20 - This mod hasn't been updated in 6 months. Is also giving an error.

Executing command 'bm-playerunderground' by WebCommandResult_for_bm-playerunderground - This is spamming the logs. A feature of Botman I suppose?

 

As far as server performance goes, it all seems just fine. Issue is likely caused by a mod. Either one of the mentioned errors above, or a mod that changes entities.

 

Thanks.

 

The Nutrition Buffs just has some lines to append values for foods in various other mods, and I'm not using all those mods.  Those appends will just be ignored.  The RangerMod appears to just be an ignored append line as well.

 

I have no idea what bm-playerunderground is but I assumed it was Botman too.

 

I'm using the en_zombies mod, which adds many many new zombies.  Are you thinking that could cause the issue?  If so, any thoughts on where the bottleneck is?

 

2 minutes ago, Beelzybub said:

 

I'm confused.

 

Sorry, meant to say business internet.

 

I had residential FIOS.  They told me the only way to get a static IP was to upgrade to business FIOS, which was $20 more per month.  I was paying more for the VM than $20 month.  So I decided to upgrade the internet, order in some parts, and build a server.  I stuck it in my office and am trying to sort out the issues now.

[Star69]

On top of what Beelzybub said about trying a vanilla map, if it runs smooth, add in one mod at a time and check for stuttering. Once you get the stuttering you’ll know which mod or mod combos are the problem then reach out to the mod author on how to resolve the stuttering.

[Jugginator]

Yeah and try running it with no mods, including botman, and see how that runs instead. If it's smooth, then add botman and only botman and do it again.