Feedback after long game

[xlightwavex]

Playing a newer version 11-22

The conditions of the game i played were as follows :
I got up to like turn 350 recently in a long game so i got to test end game stuff.
This was a 165 star disc galaxy map, with everything on high, except monsters i turn those off.
For the first 100 turns one of the ai players attacked me non stop with occasion help.
Meanwhile his apparent ally on the far side of him, whom i allied, gobbled up the map.
So i got all the tech (but the you win final tech) and the ai pretty much did too.
During this long test i found some misleading info descriptions as well as bugs.

Some problems i encountered were
Invisible ai planets when i had maximum tech that i couldn't invade.
Inability to save late game.
Inaccurate tech descriptions.
Apparent rescorce lock ups.
Gpu to Cpu texture thrashing in the old sense of the term.

Minor ones first:

The tech that allows you to make a solar hull ship requires
That you make the ship at a black hole system and that you have to have a solar container.

The tech that lets you convert the star into a black hole is only usable at a red star.
However that is missing in the tech description.
In general it was difficult to figure out how to build a solar hull ship.

Artificial black hole
Tech description...

By introducing a tremendous amount of artificial gravity into a star without increasing its energy, it can be made to collapse in on itself and form a Black Hole. This technique is limited to red stars however, as overcoming the internal pressure of a hotter star would require an absurdly powerful gravity generator. This process can be enacted at an outpost

This needs the requirement in the description it was a curveball.

For the neutronium armor tech there is no way to make a neutron star.
That needs a tech that allows you to create one at least sometime after you obtain it.
On the map i played there was exactly one neutron star which i quit before i got to.

Major:

After about turn 280 i got a error writing to disk messege.
Now this is a brand new hard drive, so i don't think its a cnc error.
Additionally by this point the game was maxing my cpu and stuttering cpu gpu lag.
...
When i deleted some saves it then allowed me to save.
However later it messed up again, and i couldn't get around it.
I noticed that the load save dialogs took a long time to open as well.
I dunno if each file is read in full to show the description or what but...
That would be a lot of data to load if it was not released.
I found it to be very weird that deleting a few saves earlier allowed me to save.
...
On exiting the game at this point, major resource's were released as i could hear the cpu.
As well as what i suspect was gpu rescource's / textures being released / disposed.

I suspect that there is a problem with not reusing or freeing memory while the game is running.

#2 major problem...
The radar draws at end game these really laged with gas off i still had to turn these off.
The real problem with them is that they were being drawn on the fly.
I do have a suggestion / solution to fix that...
A common trick used in 3d for mirroring applies to this.
...
Draw these onto a image of a starmap then take a snap shot of that render and use that for the background image for the entire turn.

Ill prolly reload and test some more.
The save error has me a little baffled, im not entirely sure its not my drive, even though its new.


Overall single player game play impressions.
Things that strike me most is the game flow is not smooth.
Its like early on its a waiting game then later there is too much distractions from fighting.
The problem i think mostly is tech wise and automation.
Early on is a click fest thru turns with little action later is too much to manage.
...
Basically the problem is say you have 15 planets.
You get 2 new techs researched, that gives 2 new buildings that's if your unlucky its something nearly every planet needs.
So that 30 planets... click click click search click click que que decide no i cant do it all now un-que click que ect ect...
If you have 2 planets or more per system that requires microing 60 to over 100 planets.
for those techs and that's besides all the regular stuff in just one turn.
Then you think about strategy.


The focus tabs are great, in fact early on they are great but you have few units.
The same problem you have with micro-ing little things that the focus picker solves.
Becomes a problem again with all the buildings later on.
For example with terraforming this stands out.
It would be nice to instead have a building that does this on the planet each turn over a long period of time, remember aliens.

Optimally it would be nice to have a building focus tab in addition to the regular one.
That would use unspent rps for buildings of either type.
Military such as spaceyards and the like or Economic such as industry or non at all.
So that whatever industry points you didn't spend would go into the planets building que.
That way you can focus on just a couple planets and your picks would get priority.
Then click next and the rest of the industry is spent on safe things automatically.
The player gets sucked back into to much mandatory micro-ing with the building que later on.

Early defense would be much better if a colony ship left a in system armed scout behind.
Lord knows the colony ships are expensive enough to leave a armed system ship in orbit.

I think you prolly should start with like 4 colony ships (not kidding).
A civilian transport ship is needed as well to transfer population.
That should be the way to turn a outpost into a colony.
More colony's at the start would make for a better game.

Colony ships are way to expensive.
In fact i think there should be no colony ships at all only setup outpost ships.
Then special transports should be needed to move population.
When you drop off population its status is raised to colony.
They should need to be in a system with a planet that has a spaceport to load up.
Maybe you should even have to press load on your own planet.
This way you can simulate the advantage of having close colony's vs far ones.
So that far away colonys leave your population transports vulnerable.
Yet transporting between near ones is not so difficult.
In fact the evacuation thing should probably work of something like this.

All wasted industry points should automatically go towards building any sort of safe items.
to say it shouldn't go towards building a gateway to the void but a space elevator sure.

It would be nice to have a system to be set to auto govern itself with the focus included.
Which is basically the above with the addition that it would in system terraform and colonize.
Though all military related buildings would be the players responsibility.

Gateway to the void is one of those techs that is op or useless, it is a bit harsh.
I think there should be earlier versions as well as a marker on the star map to show it is in effect.
A tech that simply slows ships and or one that just damages them would be maybe more effective.

As well with gateway i feel it should be altered so it doesn't kill allies or be a later tech.
It should also have some symbol on the starmap to note it is in effect, it is really OP.

Late game you get a nova bomb that can destroy a system its massively expensive.
But were missing a planet killer i know its not moo2 but...
You should have a planet killer tech before you have a system destroying tech.
I want my deathstar lazer beam.

Late game tech needs a planetary gun that can kill a single ship typically the biggest one.
Lone ships wreaking havok in the back or bypassing planets.
Ships that you cant intercept because they don't stop at your planets is very annoying.

Giant battle rocks ... i hate this idea a rock is not structured armor it would be massive and dead slow unable to turn or maneuver i don't think end game super rocks fit i hate this idea.
They would make for great in-system defense bases. rocks should be super slow like 20 speed.
Late game ones should actually have weaker armor...
Somehow i don't think giant rocks should be end game (10k year old civilizations) goto op star-ship.
Everyone knows plasma cannons shatter meteors like in starship troopers let alone death rays.

Spinal mounts and things like death spores say zero damage how do they work ?

Btw... we need effector field weapons that derive from shields...
If you never read any of the "culture books from lian m banks", there pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

[Slay]

This technique is limited to red stars...

technically, the description in the Pedia is ok :p

but you were unlucky with the Neutron stars, i've always had ample choices in a galaxy your size.

i've not had a hard disk error, but i did notice that i needed to delete saved games to speed things up.

no problems with radar. my machine is a bit sub-par now but only struggles with the production queue endgame, depending on the size of the galaxy.

...buildings that's if your unlucky its something nearly every planet needs...

possibly you are building every shipyard upgrade at every star system? nahhh XD

i'll have only a small number of planets with a shipyards, some actually build ships, most are some strategically located drydocks. many of the buildings you need only one.

(i avoid if possible having 2 shipyards in the same system in case i forget to choose the planet that has the species bonus i want. (eg: egassem and mu ursh in the same system....)

focus settings. one change i usually make is setting my homeworld from research to production when i'm ready to pump out robocruisers. and will stay on that setting the rest of the game.

the resource meters take very long to fill otherwise.

an exception could be stargates, but by the time i have them it's end game and laggy to switch focus (same as using the production queue). so to get around that i'll take any old tiny/small/asteroid and have the stargate always on.

Colony Ships
colonising is much improved now. much improved. are you sure that's the version? Nov-22 from this year? :S doesn't sound right...

try the new version, i'm having fun with it

Ships that you cant intercept because they don't stop at your planets is very annoying.

build a decoy and set it to angry mode(no shipyard required)

All wasted industry points should automatically go towards building any sort of safe items.

new Colony [Add to Top of Queue]. just research Industrial Center [Add to Top of Queue] etc etc. there's not really that much more to managing the production queue, assuming you have no problems with production points. :S

[MatGB]

Basically the problem is say you have 15 planets.
You get 2 new techs researched, that gives 2 new buildings that's if your unlucky its something nearly every planet needs.
So that 30 planets... click click click search click click que que decide no i cant do it all now un-que click que ect ect...

Name one building that gives the impression that's the case. I'll change the in game description to make it clearer you shouldn't be doing it immediately.

There are no buildings in game that every planet needs. None.

The closest we get to that is Terraforming, and that only applies to a subset of non-Good environments and we're discussing ways to change the way it works to remove that requirement.

Neutronium Extraction is a deadend tech not a prerequisite for anything. If there aren't any available neutron stars, don't research it. You can possibly still get lucky and find a Synthesiser in a Ruins.

Regarding savegames, the preview pane does scan all files in that folder, if you're switching versions it's worth dumping old saves into a subfolder to speed things up. I have no idea if the memory is released again, I'd hope so but the code is beyond me.

This technique is limited to red stars however

I'm very aware that sometimes the tech and building descriptions are incomplete or out of date. This one doesn't appear to be.

Can't comment on rendering lag, Geoff's done a lot to improve it recently, not sure if he's got to the detection circle rendering yet.

I think you prolly should start with like 4 colony ships (not kidding).
A civilian transport ship is needed as well to transfer population.

No it's not, Supply Lines are your civilian transport ships, you complain about too much micromanagement then ask we introduce a lot more?

That should be the way to turn a outpost into a colony.
More colony's at the start would make for a better game.

Different game. Not necessarily better. Feel free to edit your own game and try it.

I'm actually thinking two outposters instead of one colony ship would make more sense but we've not agreed anything on that yet.

All wasted industry points should automatically go towards building any sort of safe items.
to say it shouldn't go towards building a gateway to the void but a space elevator sure.

Gods no, vehemently opposed to automatically selecting buildings I don't want in places I don't need them, most PP in the mid to late game should go to feed the war machine, I don't want the game decide I need a pointless building for me instead. And Space Elevators are meant to be rarely, if ever, needed, I have one in my current game as there's a dead zone with few planets in, that's it.

Late game you get a nova bomb that can destroy a system its massively expensive.
But were missing a planet killer i know its not moo2 but...
You should have a planet killer tech before you have a system destroying tech.
I want my deathstar lazer beam.

Probably a good idea, no one's suggested it before and no one at all has scripted it, should be relatively easy if someone wants to give it a go.

The game isn't finished, and I suspect you may have found a bug for which a dedicated Support thread would be useful, I've never had the savegame problem you mention but every system is different and we want to squash bugs.

[Geoff the Medio]

Can't comment on rendering lag, Geoff's done a lot to improve it recently, not sure if he's got to the detection circle rendering yet.

The visibility radii rendering is as optimized as I know how to make it, using preallocated vertex buffer objects. If rendering them is slowing things down a lot, then it's a graphic card / driver limitation on blending / transparency rendering, I suspect.

[xlightwavex]

Were to look for the code on drawing the starmap i.e. related class files.
Some things lagging when you have tons of stuff on screen it feels gpu related and it really shouldn't be.
Seeing the screen speed up just from turning off the radar circles was unexpected.
Though honestly im not sure i can handle c++ my eyes start to spin, im spoiled from c#;

Anyways the idea i was speaking of is more akin to blitting them to the screen as part of the background.
Or performing a trick to make sure unnecessary drawing is not done.
Are the radar circles drawn in via one giant circle or 4 quadrants ?
Are the circles or parts culled if not visible ? or is the draw still called ?
Are draws skipped if the update is behind or is the screen draw called anyways on a timed thread ?

[Geoff the Medio]

Anyways the idea i was speaking of is more akin to blitting them to the screen as part of the background.
Or performing a trick to make sure unnecessary drawing is not done.
Are the radar circles drawn in via one giant circle or 4 quadrants ?
Are the circles or parts culled if not visible ? or is the draw still called ?
Are draws skipped if the update is behind or is the screen draw called anyways on a timed thread ?

Everything is drawn using OpenGL API calls. The visibility circles are rendered by initially setting up the geometry on the graphics card after the turn update, and then rendered using two GL render calls per empire (colour): one for the fill, and one for the outlines. Each circle is rendered as numerous (up to 50) triangles and one line segment. The graphics drivers do the relevant culling based on the geometry and viewport. Doing extra culling beforehand that needs updating each frame or after panning or zooming the map would be substantially slower (or at least no better) and more complicated than having the graphics hardware do it. The slow part on your system might be blending the transparent fill colour with whatever is under it. That's only done on visible pixels, and what is under it will depend on all the stuff that's drawn under them, such as the starfields and gas textures.

Not sure what you mean by "update is behind". What update, and behind what? This isn't an action game where the geometry is being recalculated and changing each frame. There is a frame rate limiting feature that sort of works, depending on your graphics card / drivers.

[xlightwavex]

Well im trying to give compiling this a go now to check it out.
but its taking a long time its pretty huge and its erroring so.

The visibility circles are rendered by initially setting up the geometry on the graphics card after the turn update,

Does this mean the vertice buffer is being changed each turn ?

then rendered using two GL render calls per empire (colour): one for the fill, and one for the outlines. Each circle is rendered as numerous (up to 50) triangles and one line segment.

So all the above is done anyways and only needs to be done once but.
The cards culling checks are still being cycled each frame regardless if your not scrolling or zooming ?

If so the thought is that those culls are pointless and can be further eliminated when your not scrolling or zooming.
The currently known common trick to reduce that pressure goes like this and can apply to other areas.

The idea is as so, after you move or zoom...

1) You clear the screen
(possibly with transparent black as the background or not and deal with that later in a shader)
2) You draw the visibility circles alone one time onto that cleared screen.
3) You snap shot that to a gpu render-target whatever the equivalent is in opengl and hold it.
4) Clear the screen again and proceed to draw everything as normal but the radar.
5) Then when its time draw it, use this held render target instead, via just two triangles over the visible screen.
(instead of the 50 some lines and triangles that were being called every frame)
6) when you scroll or zoom again repeat
(The increased step while moving should be insignificant compared to the decreased pressure on the command buffer)

This is actually similar to what is happening in any game you played with reflective water in it or a mirror every frame.

If you did this so its not overlaying the starlanes ships and planets it would be even better.
You could draw the starfield the gas and the radar and combine them and tell the gpu to store it in a render target or texture or buffer ect.
Using this as the background to clear the screen each frame until you the user scrolls or zooms

The graphics drivers do the relevant culling based on the geometry and viewport.

This is a notion many have that is not necessarily true, especially under a highly loaded scene.
As far as i know unless this has change in dx and gl.
If even one triangles vertice is in the view frustum, culling is done at a per pixel level against the rest.
Even if the other two vertices go far off the screen unless im wrong i could be.
As far as i know there is no automatic geometry culling at the triangle level if at least one vertice is in range.
In the case of 2d the viewport is still a frustum, 2d is under the hood basically simulated in 3d.
Its subjective to say its culling at all then as bad edge cases can become common.
This apply's to pretty much to all scene drawing.

Doing extra culling beforehand that needs updating each frame or after panning or zooming the map would be substantially slower (or at least no better) and more complicated than having the graphics hardware do it.

The advantage of the steps outlined is that its done on the gpu.

The slow part on your system might be blending the transparent fill colour with whatever is under it. That's only done on visible pixels, and what is under it will depend on all the stuff that's drawn under them, such as the starfields and gas textures.

Doubtful more likely the lod is too high at end game and the command buffer is bottlenecking.
i can play most new 3d games pretty well.
Even simple 2d games need to be aware of scene lod at some point.

Not sure what you mean by "update is behind". What update, and behind what? This isn't an action game where the geometry is being recalculated and changing each frame. There is a frame rate limiting feature that sort of works, depending on your graphics card / drivers.

I just mean are the updates timed like to a specific ms to reduce ui lag not all games do it.
i.e. will it skip the next draw entirely if either a draw and update takes to long.