Per wrote:The problem is that path-finding in 2.1 is screwed, and the AI base is clogged up with a hundreds of droids desperately trying to go somewhere. If you play the same savegame in trunk, you will quickly be overrun by the AI, unless or until its damaged units create massive clogging on their way back to repair. The stutter should then clear as the AI gets less units stuck.
Looks like we need to backport the new threaded path-finding code to 2.1 before release...
Ok, thx, that you looked into that problem.
So, this confirms my suspicion, that the problem lies in the 2.1 code.
Hope you guys can fix this for the release version.
If you need somebody for long-time gameplay test, just let me know
My testing points to a different direction of the source of this bug. It seems that the slowdown does not necessarily point to the amount of AI currently active (and seeking a path).
I've tested this by starting a game and almost eradicating the enemy, leaving just one unit alive. Then I order all of my units (~30) to hold their positions. I am assuming these steps will prevent the path finding algorithm to run (much). However, my major conclusion was that this does not solve the slowdown issue.
Other interesting tidbits:
Saving the game and restarting Warzone 2100 and then reloading the game temporarily stops the game from slowing down. (In my testing, for about five minutes.)
The complexity of the game (e.g., number of AI players) does not seem to affect the slowdown issue.
Varying game, graphics and display options (such as resolution, AI complexity level and others) does not affect the issue.
The slowdown appears to happen later in the single player campaign mode. However, in single player skirmish mode it takes about 10-15 minutes to appear.
Memory usage is constant throughout the game.
Previous discussions of the problem seem to attribute the problem to an inefficient algorithm, but my testing shows that that is not the (only) issue. Moreover, my suspicion is that the path finder algorithm may be run for units that are perhaps already destroyed. But this is just speculation, there could be another cause for this CPU leak.
Since a couple of versions back the trunk version has a lot of problems with construction queues for trucks. Often (in the latest version, almost all of the time) the whole gui hangs when you shift-click to construct several buildings after the other. This has happened to me with any building, but you most often encounter it when you try to build several VTOL rearming pads (since that's when you use the function most, as you cant just hold and drag a field to build them on like you can do with walls, but have to place every pad by themselves). I think I started to get the problem in some trunk version released last week, and has happened in every version since.
The whole gui hangs, you can't click any buttons, issue any orders or anything, though you can still move the pointer around and you can see that the 3D world lives on, all units that already have orders are doing what they should.
The only way I've found to get out of the hanged gui is to repeatedly press the right mouse button and esc, after some time either the gui starts working again with the truck totally ignoring to build the structure you wanted it to make and instead move to the position you had the mouse pointer at when everything gets working or the menu background pops up (without any content, that is, no options to select, just the blue square) which you can escape out of and the game works again.
Desktop: AMD Athlon X3 440 3.0ghz, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD4200, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Laptop: AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 2.1Ghz, 3GB RAM, Radeon HD3200, Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit & Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit
fisk0 wrote:Since a couple of versions back the trunk version has a lot of problems with construction queues for trucks. Often (in the latest version, almost all of the time) the whole gui hangs when you shift-click to construct several buildings after the other. This has happened to me with any building, but you most often encounter it when you try to build several VTOL rearming pads (since that's when you use the function most, as you cant just hold and drag a field to build them on like you can do with walls, but have to place every pad by themselves). I think I started to get the problem in some trunk version released last week, and has happened in every version since.
I can confirm this. I'm using a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz, 2 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GT, which explains why I've never seen any stutter before, but on the latest versions of trunk, I'm also noticing hanging when I try to queue building.
