FreeOrion

Boys,

Your game is ALMOST wonderful. I played the original MOO about 20 years ago and never forget it. This week I downloaded FREE ORION and got several days plenty of pleasure.

And did a small contribution too!

But I am not capable to finnish the 1sg game I would win. I am getting more than 3 minutes of dalay each turn!

But it is not the worst. Each windown resize, each focus change, almost eack click takes about 4-10 seconds.

It becomes impossible to play it.

I am at turn 450 on a game with 7 AI players. 2 of them I already killed.

You must please discover a way to make it work painless.

I just saw Mr. Dilvish graph and lost my expectance of be happy with it.

I was also a programmer, and I know this kind of problem can be solved with a bit of creativity and some work. If you are thinking it will cost a complete redesign of the whole algorythm, probably you are not in the right direction.

Is anyone working to fix it?

TIA!

Dario Mor

dariomor wrote:Is anyone working to fix it?

Well, it used to be a lot worse in the past, there has already been done a lot of work to optimize the relevant algorithms, but you're right, we're still not there yet. So I expect that we will take more stabs at this problem in the future, it's just that it's far from easy - the main culprit is the effects system, which allows for very powerful and flexible scripting, but at the cost of some very expensive processing...

Btw, which version of FO do you use?

Until I wrote that I was using the last official windows release: FreeOrion_v0.4.5_2015-09-01.f203162_Test_Win32_Setup.exe

Yesterday I uninstalled it and installed the newest beta: FreeOrion_2016-06-06.4187172_Test_Win32_Setup.exe

It could not load my saved game, so I started a new one.

[ ]s

Dario Mor

Alternate fix: game time limit, it's both time and effectsgroup dependent, the more systems and warships there are, the more lag you get.

But turn 400 should be enough to complete a game for up to 300 systems, which is twice the default. If you want to play really massive maps, on the other hand, a warning for lag ought to be there somehow?

A rough and ready temporary thing: if by turn X, determined by a similar formula to Experimentor Start Turn but with maybe 50 extra turns, you haven't won a conquest victory, the AIs ally against you and you've got X turns to win?

We know the game doesn't like it if you go long, and we know you can win conquest before the start turn (many do), so having that as a soft limit might encourage faster play (if we can't fix the underlying problem easily, then limiting the game to reduce it makes sense)

I'm at turn 512 and notice very little lag.
Reason? I play against 4 AI in 150 systems on cautious level (I guess?). AI don't build as many ships etc.
I was also wondering what impact hardware specs has on performance?
Some of you probably sit on high-end PC's (mine is quite solid, but outdated in the gaming world), so I wonder if the lag described is experienced on modern rigs - or old weak rigs?
I'll test a more demanding game with time, problem is, I'll probably die before turn 50...

Bromstarzan wrote:I'm at turn 512 and notice very little lag.
Reason? I play against 4 AI in 150 systems on cautious level (I guess?). AI don't build as many ships etc.
I was also wondering what impact hardware specs has on performance?
Some of you probably sit on high-end PC's (mine is quite solid, but outdated in the gaming world), so I wonder if the lag described is experienced on modern rigs - or old weak rigs?:

Well, I certainly get it at times and typically also do 4 AI's and 150 systems. Though not cautious level.

AMD FX(tm)-4350 Quad-Core Processor (4.2ghz), 16GB memory, Nvidia GTX660, 3 monitors though only play on one 1920x1200 (1920x1180 game window).

I use 150/4(aggressive) most of the time, as it makes for a reasonable length game. Generally I'll finish conquest between turn 150 and 300, depending on circumstances. I experience some lag in turns, but usually not horrible. Sometimes I'll do a reboot and that often helps a bit.

I'm still using the last official release.

defaultuser wrote:I use 150/4(aggressive) most of the time, as it makes for a reasonable length game. Generally I'll finish conquest between turn 150 and 300, depending on circumstances. I experience some lag in turns, but usually not horrible. Sometimes I'll do a reboot and that often helps a bit.

I tend to play bigger maps, 300-400 systems with 8-10 AIs, sometimes more, if I go to High planets then I reduce the system number (the AI seems to be better with high planets but I find the games less fun), I do get lag nearer the end but I'm virtually always at 'assured conquest' by the time it's a real problem, if not actually just waiting for the Experimentors to show up.

I'm still using the last official release.

Heh, seriously, try the latest Test builds, if not, please do swithc to RC-1 when it's ready, we'll need bughunting and similar and feedback on all the changes will be very useful (oh, yeah, the changelog, that'll be a pain, and quite big, been a VERY busy year).

MatGB wrote:Heh, seriously, try the latest Test builds

I know. I'm kind of waiting on the new release, then dive in a learn a bunch of changes at once. Makes it like a new game!

it's been several months since i played endgame, but i seem to remember solving a lag problem by clearing out my save folder. i can't remember if it was the endgame-turn generation lag lag.... or just a load/save lag lag....

The number of saved games definitely affects lag on load/save. In fact too many can make that almost unusable. You can delete the save files from your normal file system if things are too unwieldy.

defaultuser wrote:The number of saved games definitely affects lag on load/save. In fact too many can make that almost unusable.

What version are you using, and how many saves do you have? If I copy start a 500 star / 10 AI game, let the AIs play to about 50 turns in, copying the autosaves every few turns, then copy-pasting these into the same directory so I have about 300 save files, then navigating into that directory in the Save/Load GUI takes about 2 seconds to update. Seems about the same if they're on an SSD or HDD.

Geoff the Medio wrote:What version are you using, and how many saves do you have?

I should clarify that my comments reflect my experience from quite a while back. I used to save a lot more often, but now just rely in the auto save for crashes or whatever. I only make a specific save when I want to preserve an interesting game state or problem that I want to use on the forums later.

funny, I too save the interesting situations resulting in 250-300 saves per game

It seams that there's more to the slowness of changing turns then just the complexity of the game.

I'm on 0.4.5 (i doubt the issues i described were alredy fixed.)
(the default package in linux mint 18 / ubuntu 16.04)

There is just too much lag in the UI.
There is too much constant CPU usage all the time, why?
Other weird thing, it seams it's over using opengl stuff, even in the start menu. If i force it to use software rendering, on linux you do it like this:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 freeorion

Even in the start menu, i get 50% CPU????
But It doesn't do ANYTHING there, it should be 0. With normal hardware rendering, i see nothing special. 50% for doing NOTHING is just way to high.....
I also use compiz (composition effects for the desktop, like rotating cube and wobly windows). When i play free orion, the desktop effects get slowed down a lot. I have a shity 10+ year old graphic card, but that shouldn't chocke it like that. I don't see any fancy graphics. For example naev, with more eye candy then freeorion, with sparkles and combats, doesn't stress my pc at all.

And why the GUI is so laggy? Simply opening windows and picking items in menus is choppy. Trying to double click can fail because the timings are recognized all wrong, or windows are opened a few seconds after a click.
I notice, that when i try to change turn, the cpu doesn't go up 100% right away, but might take a lot of seconds. Surely, if it was the complexity of the game, it would just shout up to 100% and stay there until it finishes...