Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

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Havoc
Space Krill
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Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2016 12:02 pm

Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#1 Post by Havoc »

What causes the save button to be grayed out?

Also, why is there so much variation in the time it takes for turns to finish after about 120'is turns.

I had 15 races and 130 system/planets setting.

Sometimes turns would finish in two minutes, where other turns took 25 mins to finish.

Intel Core Duo 2.4, running 3.75 gig RAM.
32 bit Win Vista (PC soon to be retired in two months)

Is there some data on the workload limit the game can handle on the galaxy settings, as it seems the game engine is limited in the amount of threads it can work with.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Havoc wrote:What causes the save button to be grayed out?
It doesn't let you initiate a save until all the AI players have finished their turns. This is done to ensure that the AI clients can promptly respond to save state data requests that the server sends immediately before compiling the save data and serializing it to a file.
Also, why is there so much variation in the time it takes for turns to finish after about 120'is turns.
Because AI players take variable amounts of time to finish their turns, presumably.
Is there some data on the workload limit the game can handle on the galaxy settings...
There are various discussions on the forums of what settings made for acceptable or problematically slow gameplay experiences. The situation changes from time to time though, as things are optimized or made more complicated due to code or content script changes.

Havoc
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#3 Post by Havoc »

Doesn't matter if all the AI has finished their turn and finished updating the game state, after about 100 or more turns the save button remains disabled.

This is the public release 0.45 version.

Other than the mini eternity required on late game turns, I like the overall game's user experience and function.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

It won't update the button unless you close and reopen the menu.

Havoc
Space Krill
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#5 Post by Havoc »

I have always checked to make sure the menu is closed until the turn is finished for all.

Makes no difference, still grayed out even when I exit and return after the turn is 100% done.

If this was normal GUI quirks, I could probably figure out a workaround.

I develop software for proprietary hardware in the automation industry, so I am very aware of the difference in a legitimate GUI bug versus user error.

Unfortunately the coding tools I use to build and debug for work are of little use for an open source program or game.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I have no idea why that would happen. Maybe have a look in the log files? Or try updating to the latest test build; perhaps the relevant code has changed.

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MatGB
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#7 Post by MatGB »

One reason the rate buttons can be legitimately greyed out is you've just saved, if for example it's the beginning of a turn the autosave has it, if you've just loaded a save them there's been no game state change to save.

I don't know if it's intended behaviour or wanted behaviour but it's been this way as long as I can remember, do something simple like ordering a ship to move and it should then allow a save. If not you may have a bug.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Havoc
Space Krill
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#8 Post by Havoc »

Still remains grayed out, even when I give move orders to ships and update my research and production queue.

On a positive note, late game performance with 50 systems and only 5 AI factions reduced the turn wait to a reasonable 2 to 5 mins max.

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EricF
Space Dragon
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#9 Post by EricF »

I'm using the latest test build and I am on about turn 150 of a 6 AI 250 star game and I have not noticed this.
Are you *SURE* the AI has finished processing its turn?
It took me a while to get used to the turn processing order.
Normally (I mean in other games of this sort), you do your turn hit the 'Turn' button and then the AI opponents process their turns. That's the time you sit there and wait for your chance to play again.
However (and I don't know for sure because I haven't looked at the code) in this game, it seems that when the game says, "Starting Turn *" and after a few seconds it will say, "Saving", but no save game data is displayed, the turn is being started for all of you. The player can process his turn and the AI opponents also at this time do all their building/research/giving orders.
This is the time that the 'Save' button is greyed out.
After the AI opponents have finished processing their turns and have essentially hit 'Turn' you will then see the save game data being displayed (size of file, name and path to file and such).
It is at this time that you can enter the Menu and 'Save' a game manually.
If you never wait for this and just hit 'Turn' as soon as you are done with your turn you will never get an un-greyed out 'Turn' button in the Menu.
If I am wrong I am sure I will be corrected.

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Vezzra
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#10 Post by Vezzra »

The FO AI runs in its own client processes (one AI client per AI player), which means the AI players do their turns simultaneously with the human player(s). The save game messages you see are caused by the auto-save which happens at the beginning of each turn. However, why the messages indicating that saving the game has completed are shown only after all the AIs are done beats me. Maybe Geoff can offer more insight on this.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Disabled Save Button and load times for turns

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:...why the messages indicating that saving the game has completed are shown only after all the AIs are done beats me.
I suspect the AIs need to finish responding to most messages before they will respond to another. If an AI is playing its turn, it's responding to the latest turn update message. It won't respond to the a save state data request message until it's done playing its turn, be it from autosave or from player-induced saving.

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