**[Guide] Solutions to Reducing Lag in SAS4** Hello there! I am a developer at Ninja Kiwi on the SAS4 team. I have noticed that there are a lot of people reporting lag in SAS4 singleplayer and multiplayer games so I’ve come here to post some information that might help you fix the lag. There are a few different steps you can go through and some might be more complicated than others, so I’ll try to give some indication on how complicated they are when I will list these below,  **Power Setting Solutions – Laptops Only** _Power Setting Performance Mode: [Difficulty Low]_ If you are on a laptop then plugging in the power cord will allow you to get more power to the CPU and help it process the game faster. You can also go into your Energy Saving settings and set the energy mode to Performance to allow your laptop to consume more power and process things even faster.  **Flash Solutions** _Updating Flash: [Difficulty Low]_ Making sure you have the latest version of Flash Player is very important as in SAS4 we utilize multi-threading technology supported by the latest versions of flash but not by some of the older versions. If you have a CPU capable of multithreading then having the latest version of flash will help you a lot! But in general it is always a good idea to keep up to date with the latest version of Flash, this can be downloaded at the following address, [# Check your Flash version here](http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html) [# Get newest Flash player here](http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?no_redirect) On another note, _Disabling PepperFlash in Chrome: [Difficulty Medium]_ If you are using Google Chrome as your browser you can try the following steps to fix some additional lag. Google Chrome comes with its own version of Flash when you download it, it is called “PepperFlash” and will be your default Flash player when using Google Chrome. PepperFlash is known to have a lot of issues with Flash Games, so follow the steps below to help disable PepperFlash and reduce the lag! 1. Open a new tab 2. Type “chrome://plugins” 3. You should see something like the following  4. Expand all the information below by clicking the “+ Details” button in the top right hand corner of the window.  5. Locate “PepperFlash” by identifying the name in the “Location” field, this is partially highlighted in the image below.  6. Once you have found this click the “Disable” button that is pointed to in the images above. (Images provided by the kind user in the thread below) [Fix Chrome Lag](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/2609-sas-zombie-assault-4/topics/424315-fix-your-chrome-lag "Screenshot guide") 7. At this stage if you did not have another version of flash showing in this list you should go download flash from [Here](http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?no_redirect) 8. Your screen should look something like the image below now! PepperFlash is disabled and the other version of flash that you downloaded from the Flash website is now being used.   **Memory Solutions (RAM)** _Free Up Memory: [Difficulty Low]_ It is important with any game or software to allow them to use up the RAM they require without having other applications fighting over the RAM. When playing SAS4, if you experience issues with lag it might help to turn off/close other programs you have running, close down as many applications as possible so that the game has more available memory to use, if it needs. SAS4 only needs about 1gig-1.5gigs of RAM to run in high quality. But this also means you should have at least 2-3gigs ram minimum. If you have less than this then you will encounter issues.  **SAS4 Graphical Solutions** _SAS4 Graphics Settings: [Difficulty Low]_ If you are still experiencing issues then you can turn off “Gore/VFX”, this will stop any visual effects from displaying and will greatly increase system performance. Furthermore if you are still having issues you can go into option and turn Quality settings to “Low”. What this does is reduce the texture sizes for all art assets by 50% meaning that it will become a lot easier for your system to render the images.  **Technical Software Solutions** _Updating Drivers: [Difficulty Medium]_ Making sure you computers graphics card has the latest drivers is also very important! This can be done by going into Control Panel —\> System —\> Device Manager —\> Display Adapters and right clicking on your display adapter in this list (There should only be one, but some people might have 2 or more and I will explain later what to do if there’s more than 1) For most people you will see “Intel® HD Graphics” followed by some numbers which is the version of your graphics chip. Do the following, Right click “Intel® HD Graphics” —\> Properties —\> Driver —\> Update Driver —\> “Search Online for Software” – Then follow the instructions. After this is done you should restart your computer to make sure the new drivers are being used. _Manually Updating Drivers: [Difficulty High]_ If no drivers were found then you may be completely up to date, although more advanced users might want to search online through the Intel website to see if their Intel Graphics chip (The numbers following “HD Graphics”) has a newer driver available on the website. Gaming computer’s will normally have “NVIDIA” or “ATI (Catalyst)” listed under display adapters. For Nvidia and ATI you should go to the company’s website and download your drivers from there. For Nvidia users there is a piece of software from Nvidia called [Nvidia Experience](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience) if you download and install this program it will automatically tell you every time a new driver comes out. This happens about once every 3-4 months or so. For ATI users you can use the name of your ATI graphics card that was displayed in the “Adapters” list and search their website for the respected drivers, they may have their own driver detection software as Nvidia does (Nvidia Experience) but I am not an ATI user so I’m not completely sure if this is true or not. LINKS [# Nvidia Experience: Automatic driver updating software for Nvidia Users](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience) [# Intel® HD Graphics Chipset: Manual driver update link for Intel users](https://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx?lang=eng) [# Nvidia Graphics Cards: Manual driver updating link for Nvidia Users](http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx) [# ATI Radeon (Catalyst) Graphics Cards: Manual driver update link for ATI users](http://support.amd.com/en-us/download)  Hopefully this helps! Post your success stories! - NKSpool

Thanks for all this but I find a lot of the issue comes from the amount of zombies that spawn. Myself and alot others just crash on maps like savior and vaccine. Some of these people have great specs for their computer and everything up to date. Something I find odd is the fact that the game takes alot of resources ( as much as most MOBAs) and people would say that it has to do with a memory leak in the game. (not sure about it) I know you and the other devs are doing your best to fix the lag but what was posted above was mentioned by others multiple times in both forums and players are still suffering from lag even in solo.

> *Originally posted by **[XSweetsX](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8352571):*** > > Thanks for all this but I find a lot of the issue comes from the amount of zombies that spawn. Myself and alot others just crash on maps like savior and vaccine. Some of these people have great specs for their computer and everything up to date. > > Something I find odd is the fact that the game takes alot of resources ( as much as most MOBAs) and people would say that it has to do with a memory leak in the game. (not sure about it) > > I know you and the other devs are doing your best to fix the lag but what was posted above was mentioned by others multiple times in both forums and players are still suffering from lag even in solo. Yeah, so in this case disabling Gore/VFX should help with lag as it will not be rendering all the special effects on the zombies. You may only want to turn this off though if the lag with zombies starts happening with there’s only 20 or so on the screen. There is a zombie cap currently set at 60 max, most computers can run this fine but there can be issues depending on what perks the zombies have. There is definitely some optimizations that still need to be made! We will work on it.

Well, I’m afraid this isn’t working for me. My game lags when there’s a lot of zombies on screen, even with the lowest graphical settings, and my PC is not so old…

More links: [Check your flash version](http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html) [Manual Intel driver update download](https://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx?lang=eng)

> *Originally posted by **[kingofrsjr](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8352849):*** > > More links: > > [Check your flash version](http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html) > [Manual Intel driver update download](https://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx?lang=eng) Many thanks, added to OP.

Just wondering will there be a fix to the memory leak of the game itself? When I first open the game it runs fine but over time the game slowly begins to drop in fps more and more. Not enough to make it unplayable but it is definitely noticeable. Refreshing the game fixes this, but I’m just wondering if the development team are aware of the memory leak in the game. Thanks for your time. ~Skarrface

Can you make the game preload maps? Wrong place but still. Btw i can only do update flash.

Thanks for the help with the lag issues, i find that if i just get rid of enotuh space then it would work fine, the only problem/problems with game lag is that 1:too many zombies in one area 2:lag likes to hang around and make your movement and ur gameplay slower.Those are the only problems with the game.But thanks for Helping us out with these issues.

> *Originally posted by **[Skarrface](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8353466):*** > > Just wondering will there be a fix to the memory leak of the game itself? When I first open the game it runs fine but over time the game slowly begins to drop in fps more and more. Not enough to make it unplayable but it is definitely noticeable. Refreshing the game fixes this, but I’m just wondering if the development team are aware of the memory leak in the game. Thanks for your time. > ~Skarrface Hey, I’m not aware of any memory leaks for SAS4 currently. At least there’s no major big leaks, there could be some minor ones that have crept in lately. I will look into it over the next few days. Cheers. > *Originally posted by **[Loop\_Stratos](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8353914):*** > > Can you make the game preload maps? > Wrong place but still. > Btw i can only do update flash. The games pre-load the maps in the lobbies, during the “Building” phase. We cannot pre-load maps before this stage because at that time we do not know what map you are going to play. If we pre-loaded all maps into memory it game could take up quite a lot of RAM (We are talking upwards of 2-3gigs) which is rather crazy. Is this because your computer is very slow at loading, or because people join your multiplayer games with very slow loading times and make the games initializing/building phases take ages? We will be adding features to timeout users who take too long to load maps, if you yourself are taking ages to “build” then reducing your graphics quality to Low will make them load faster.

> *Originally posted by **[NKSpool](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8355847):*** > > *Originally posted by **[Skarrface](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8353466):*** > > > > Just wondering will there be a fix to the memory leak of the game itself? When I first open the game it runs fine but over time the game slowly begins to drop in fps more and more. Not enough to make it unplayable but it is definitely noticeable. Refreshing the game fixes this, but I’m just wondering if the development team are aware of the memory leak in the game. Thanks for your time. > > ~Skarrface > > Hey, I’m not aware of any memory leaks for SAS4 currently. At least there’s no major big leaks, there could be some minor ones that have crept in lately. I will look into it over the next few days. Cheers. > > > *Originally posted by **[Loop\_Stratos](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8353914):*** > > > > Can you make the game preload maps? > > Wrong place but still. > > Btw i can only do update flash. > > The games pre-load the maps in the lobbies, during the “Building” phase. We cannot pre-load maps before this stage because at that time we do not know what map you are going to play. If we pre-loaded all maps into memory it game could take up quite a lot of RAM (We are talking upwards of 2-3gigs) which is rather crazy. Is this because your computer is very slow at loading, or because people join your multiplayer games with very slow loading times and make the games initializing/building phases take ages? We will be adding features to timeout users who take too long to load maps, if you yourself are taking ages to “build” then reducing your graphics quality to Low will make them load faster. dude,just to be sure that the memory leak incident doesnt happened again like what hapened at sas3,make sure that there is non,cause back at sas3,evewrytime i play and return,i get reseted to lvl 1

> *Originally posted by **[runeman64](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8356209):*** > > dude,just to be sure that the memory leak incident doesnt happened again like what hapened at sas3,make sure that there is non,cause back at sas3,evewrytime i play and return,i get reseted to lvl 1 These issues you speak of were not related to Memory Leaks. Memory Leaks is what happens when something is loaded into RAM and is then not deleted and loaded in again over and over. With the same thing being loaded into memory multiple times, if not repeatedly, means the game will take up larger and larger amount of RAM until you eventually run out of virtual memory and the program crashes. The issue you were speaking off were some server errors that SAS3 experience from time to time. Normally this would happen when you did not have a stable connection to the game servers. This will not happen in SAS4 and all game data is saved after every mission. If the save failed then it tells you on the screen and gives you the option to retry.

…Woah. A dev post removed by a mod? Btw, it’s not that it’s slow, but i thought it would decrease “Loading” time. k then.

a mod deleted a dex post thts wrong but it does get slow after playing for a bit

Great game. Lags keep killing me. My PC seems to be too outdated for this flash game.^^ Frustrating. So i have to force myself stop playing. Bye, until u find a solution for the cause of this issue. Bye. **edit** : btw i found out that its NOT the sheer number of Zombies but rather the Type…espcially bosses. :(

Thank you very much. This game went from basically unplayable in multiplayer to pretty much perfect when I disabled the ‘pepperflash’. This is a great game, and this advice post is spot on.

> *Originally posted by **[epicbluedude](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8364218):*** > > Thank you very much. This game went from basically unplayable in multiplayer to pretty much perfect when I disabled the ‘pepperflash’. This is a great game, and this advice post is spot on. Glad it helped!

The issue isn’t LAG specifically. It’s command buffering. when it DOES slow down, it keeps taking input at full speed, and not matching command response to onscreen execution. This is causing a build up of keyboard and mouse commands. It gets worse when you reload, as it seems every mouse click while reloading is still queued as well, so as soon as the reload is done, it fires repeatedly (when using semi auto). You can wait a couple seconds while lagging, stop any inputs, and watch as the character continues with the last few seconds of mouse motion and keyboard commands. I find that when it starts lagging, i hit esc for the pause menu, wait a couple seconds, hope I survive that long, and then wait a few seconds after the pause menu comes up to let it catch up with itself graphically, then unpause and play.

> *Originally posted by **[LeakingPen](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8377226):*** > > The issue isn’t LAG specifically. It’s command buffering. when it DOES slow down, it keeps taking input at full speed, and not matching command response to onscreen execution. This is causing a build up of keyboard and mouse commands. It gets worse when you reload, as it seems every mouse click while reloading is still queued as well, so as soon as the reload is done, it fires repeatedly (when using semi auto). You can wait a couple seconds while lagging, stop any inputs, and watch as the character continues with the last few seconds of mouse motion and keyboard commands. I find that when it starts lagging, i hit esc for the pause menu, wait a couple seconds, hope I survive that long, and then wait a few seconds after the pause menu comes up to let it catch up with itself graphically, then unpause and play. This is a problem with Flash itself and there is nothing we can do about that apart from developing with something other than Flash.

Unity :D

> *Originally posted by **[kingofrsjr](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8377465):*** > > Unity :D Indeed!

wait so does this mean sas 4 is comming to Unity Player? :D

> *Originally posted by **[kingofrsjr](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8377781):*** > > wait so does this mean sas 4 is comming to Unity Player? :D Lol no, that would require months and months of work. I’m just saying Unity is cool.

> *Originally posted by **[NKSpool](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8377862):*** > > *Originally posted by **[kingofrsjr](/forums/2609/topics/425787?page=1#posts-8377781):*** > > > > wait so does this mean sas 4 is comming to Unity Player? :D > > Lol no, that would require months and months of work. I’m just saying Unity is cool. aw lol, Perhaps hire a second team to port sas to unity?