Occasions freezes in game and really slow performance with large fleets

[Bud Backer]

I don't seem to recall the game hanging in-game until v8.xxx. Lately it stops and I get the spinning beach ball and the only way out is to Force Quit.

The other issue is that the game is really REALLY slow when I get fleet over 1000 ships and the lag is noticeable even with 800. Battles are a bit of an pain really. Manageable but choppy and less fun than I recall in v7.xxx.

I'm running this in a MacBook Pro, retina edition

I7 quad core, 2.7 ghz
16 gb ram
Nvidia gt650m, 1 gb VRAM

It runs graphically and memory intensive stuff really well and I don't think AI War is that demanding. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe it's something else.?

[Aklyon]

What ship cap are you using?

[Bud Backer]

What ship cap are you using?

I had it at default.

[Bud Backer]

*friendly bump*

[Hearteater]

What is your performance setting at? Click on Stats to check what it is set at.  See the attached for reference.

[Bud Backer]

What is your performance setting at? Click on Stats to check what it is set at.  See the attached for reference.

Originally it was set at High 50ms) but even set at the slowest/longest ms time (166ms) I get a warning that game speed is too slow (14%!!).

I run Empire/Rome Total War at max graphics settings, as well as Wargame Airland Battle, Europa universalis, Civ 5, all at rather demanding settings, with textures etc. Wargame seems to have less denanding graphics than those. Which makes me wonder if there is a change to the engine since the last version, where it ran smoothly, and I could even up to higher (better) settings than 50ms.

[keith.lamothe]

The lag is probably related to the engine version change, yes, though if so it's presumably an interaction between that and some specific aspect of your machine as while we've gotten a number of reports of lag in 8.x it's certainly not everyone.  So it's hard to pin down, etc.

The freezes might be related to the "submit high scores to steam" option on the game tab of the settings window.  If you're running this from steam, anyway.  A lot of people have been having problems with the steam overlay in AI War over the past few weeks.  Running the game directly might help.

If you're already not running it with the overlay (or through steam at all) do you have any alternate machine to try the game on?  Just wanting to see if anything is different to help isolate the cause.

[blackied]

I'll jump in this thread too, since we seem to be having the same symptoms - it starts lagging when I can see more than 500-600 ships moving/attacking at once. If the camera isn't actually on the action it's fine, be it in the same planet or elsewhere. CPU usage also jumps up to ~100% on all cores. Surely I would have thought that the actual moving data was handled by the GPU?

My specs are:
Q9550
8GB
6950 x2 in CF
Win 7

[keith.lamothe]

100% on all four of a Q9550's cores?  The game only does significant calculations on 2 threads!

But yea, if it's graphics-related then Unity's multi-threaded renderer could be going full bore on all of them, I suppose.  It's a black box to me.  Chris knows more, I'll ask if he has any ideas.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, it might be the switch to the multi-threaded renderer in the newer unity version.  Here are a couple command line switches you can try (just run AIWar.exe with these) :

-force-gfx-st

-force-gfx-direct

(from http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html )

If anyone experiencing performance issues in 8.x could try those two switches and let me know how it goes (good or bad) that would be a big help

[blackied]

Assuming I added the arguments correctly, no luck. Tried moving a fleet of ~1100 ships and FPS went to 4.

Some notes on the CPU usage:
When not playing it's idling from 5-20% over the 4 cores.
on the galactic map (~80 planets) it jumps to 65-90
Planet view zoomed in with nothing much on screen is 40-70
Planet view zoomed out with lots of draws is 75-95
Core usage is fairly balanced over the four.

Planet with buildings and turrets etc but overall low object count scrolls smooth zoomed out
Planet with fleets and stuff on it scrolls badly zoomed out (zoomed right in is better)

Definitely seems to be a render issue.

Don't know if it's relevant but I noticed that the game is only using I-draws but zero D-draws or D-swaps.

[keith.lamothe]

Pity, I'd hoped that those switches would help.

Just to help isolate exactly where things went wrong, it would help a lot if you (anyone having these problems) could:

1) download http://aiwar.s3.amazonaws.com/AIWar7047-oldengine.zip

2) unzip that and run it.  It's a self-contained version of the game from before the engine switch.  You'll need a license key to get out of trial mode but perhaps even in trial mode you can see if the problems are present for you or not.

3) play around with it a bit and see if any/all of the problems you reported are present, and let me know.

[Bud Backer]

The lag is probably related to the engine version change, yes, though if so it's presumably an interaction between that and some specific aspect of your machine as while we've gotten a number of reports of lag in 8.x it's certainly not everyone.  So it's hard to pin down, etc.

The freezes might be related to the "submit high scores to steam" option on the game tab of the settings window.  If you're running this from steam, anyway.  A lot of people have been having problems with the steam overlay in AI War over the past few weeks.  Running the game directly might help.

If you're already not running it with the overlay (or through steam at all) do you have any alternate machine to try the game on?  Just wanting to see if anything is different to help isolate the cause.

Hi Keith,

I'm so glad you responded!

First - I have disabled the High Scores to Steam option long ago, so that's not likely causing the issue.

Second - I disabled Steam Overlay as it would cause black screens (I think reported in another thread?) that disappeared once that was turned off. Discovered that during my own troubleshooting and then read about it here. So I was on the right track!

Unfortunately, I don't have another machine to load AI War onto to do further testing.

Now you gave a number of switches, but I think that is for the Windows version of the game, I  would not know how to implement them in OSX. Let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

You also gave a link to another (older) version of the engine. Can you tell me if that is for OSX, or simply the gentleman with the Windows version? Secondly, since I bought the game through steam, how do I enable the licence without keys?

Please do speak to Chris as you mentioned. I hope this can be resolved, I was so take with AI I got all the expansions and would love to continue enjoying this unique game.

[keith.lamothe]

Now you gave a number of switches, but I think that is for the Windows version of the game, I  would not know how to implement them in OSX. Let me know if I'm missing something obvious.

From this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1308755/launch-an-app-on-os-x-with-command-line

It looks like this will work:

open -n ./AppName.app --args -AppCommandLineArg

So in our case I think that would be

open -n ./AIWar.app --args -force-gfx-st -force-gfx-direct

You also gave a link to another (older) version of the engine. Can you tell me if that is for OSX, or simply the gentleman with the Windows version?

Hmm, I'm only seeing a windows executable in there, yea.  I can try to hunt up the mac one, but either way I'm interested to know if those command line switches do anything for you.

Secondly, since I bought the game through steam, how do I enable the licence without keys?

It will function fine in trial mode.  I'm happy to give you a key anyway, if it helps.

Please do speak to Chris as you mentioned.

I did, he's the one who pointed out the command line switches, etc

[blackied]

I'll try out the old engine later this arvo and see how I go.

Sorry again for hijacking your thread somewhat Bud, hopefully this can solve the issues for both of us.