I started System Shock Enhanced Edition today, but I'm running into a very frustrating performance issue. At random intervals, the game will freeze or lock up, not allowing for any input, and causing the music to sustain a single note. After a moment (around 6-7 seconds) the game will resume.

I can't figure out what's causing this issue. I thought maybe it had something do with the music, so I tried toggling the game to the Microsoft Wavetable and shutting down Virtual MIDI. That didn't work, so I tried switching the renderer from Direct3D to OpenGL. Still, I'm getting the lockups. The game hasn't outright crashed or anything like that, but it makes it frustrating to play because of the freezes.

Has anyone run into this issue, or might know why it's happening?

remember, the KEX port requires fairly decent hardware to run properly, an integrated gpu might not cut it for example.

I don't think I'm running off the integrated GPU. My system stats:

Windows 10 Home 64-bit
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-A-USB31
ASUS VP247 (1920x1080@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (EVGA)
465GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500G (Drive the game is currently installed to)

Since I made the post I've:

+ disabled V-Sync
+ switched the game to run in 'Borderless'
+ switched the driver back to Direct3D
+ Set Detail (software) to 'High'
+ Set Shade Table (GPU) to 'DOS'

Enhanced voxels and anti-aliasing are both set to 'Off'. Smooth Viewpoint is set to 'On'. I also restarted my computer to see if that would help (assuming it's maybe related to memory/RAM)

I think setting to Borderless might have improved it. I did that before trying to play it, and I was able to play for a good amount of time before running into a freezing hiccup. When that happened, I turned the detail down from 'Max' to 'High' (which might not have done anything, since it sounds like that's tied to the software renderer), and I set the Shade Table to 'DOS' (though I switched it back to 'New', and it didn't seem to hamper performance) I've been able to play it for a good time without any hiccups. However, it has frozen up twice while I've had it alt-tabbed off-screen to write this post, albeit with a very long gap between the two hiccups. The second time it happened, I noticed there was a delay with the text was inputting. Don't know if that hints toward the problem, but maybe it's affecting my whole system when the hiccups happen.

It seems like setting the game to run in Borderless made the difference, but I can't confirm it. I also think doing the restart might have been a factor, because I had a similar problem with another game, and a restart addressed it. At the most, it seems like the freezing hiccups are far less frequent.

A while ago, I opened up the console by mistake when trying to hit Escape, and I noticed these two lines repeating quite a few times:

>kexPlatformAppSDL::SetWindowSize: Changing to 1920x1080
>kexPlatformAppSDL::SetWindowSize: Aborted (no change)

Could it be the game is trying to change to resolution on its own, and that's whats causing the issue?

hard to tell - if you tried all the usual fixes like running windowed/not windowed, lowering/increasing your resolution, switching renderers, turning FSAA on/off, and not forcing anything in the gpu control panel, then maybe you can try out the opensource Shockolate port, see the free demo here.

you can upgrade the demo to the full version easily by replacing the DATA and SOUND folders under \res with their counterparts from SS1 Classic (available for free to all who have purchased EE).

Maybe I'll give that a try. I haven't tested the game anymore since I made my first post, but Shockolate sounds interesting.