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Any suggestions for speeding up turn processing?
OK, with the 1.25 patch and Balance Mod 1.03, I'm again trying to get 'into' SE5. So far, I'm actually beginning to like the early game phase now that I'm starting to get used to the um...interesting...interface choices. The combat is pretty cool and the colonizing is more balanced (I actually feel like I NEED Organics and Rads).
However what is killing the game for now is the extreme time it takes to process a turn. I'm only on about turn 18-20 and each turn can take a full one to two minutes just to process. I get the 'Processing Turn' indicator and the green bar starts moving. It stops and the red (combat I assume) bar crawls across the screen. Then, the green bar will move another inch an so and then the red bar crawls across the screen again. This can be repeated numerous times and REALLY drags the turn out. To make matters worse, you cant even alt-tab out and do something else while it processess! I have already turned retreats off but this has proven to be little help. This issue really makes the game feel like drudgery. In the early game, it can take 6-7 turns just to get ONE TECH that improves ONE AREA of your econ by perhaps 10%. That mean that you are going to be cycling a LOT of turns to get anywhere (not bad in and of itself...Civ4 has 600+ turns with no problems). But if even if the early turns are going to take MINUTES to process, then the game slows to a crawl and I spend an awful lot of time staring at an essentially blank screen watching those bars slowly crawl across the screen. So, the original question stands...what can I do (in game, not PC-wise) to speed up the processing? Are there any other settings that will help? My PC is not top of the line anymore, but its not obsolete by any means (I can run Civ4, M2TW, EU3 etc with no issues). So I'm concluding that it must be something in SE5 that I can turn off or tweak or shorten or SOMETHING. To me, this can be a real game-breaker. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Smaller galaxy and/or fewer AIs makes for fewer combats...
Still, a minute or two is hardly excessive... The best battles in SE4 can take three hours to process. I think the main problem is the fact that SE5 demands fullscreen attention depsite the complete lack of user input. Whenever turns are processing in SE4, I just alt-tab and bring up IRC or the forums. If you play SE5 in windowed mode, then you can do that, but the rez is somewhat pathetic. I've already asked Aaron to add higher rez windowed modes, but more encouragement can only help. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I may be wrong about this but I was having the same problem until I tried a new game (p1.25, BM 1.03) and in the "in game" "options menu" towards the bottom there were some options to turn off logs and minimize combat replay and other stuff. This helped a ton. I went from 5 to 8 minute turns at around turn 15 to less than a minute on turn 20.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
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If I'm going to be playing 60-100 turns, I really dont want to have to sit for up to 2-3 hours of time watching the turns process! To me, that is unacceptable in this day and age. For people playing once a day via PBW or something, this is obviously not an issue, but if you are trying to get some play time in one sitting its very time-wasting. And I havent even got to larger battles yet. This is just FG on FG type of stuff. I shudder to think what how long it would take with actual FLEET combat. Quote:
Does anyone know if futzing with any of these settings might help without unduly screwing up the game? Space Combat Maximum Time (Seconds) := 180 Space Combat Ends Only When Time Up Or No Enemies := FALSE Space Combat Minimum Time Between Warp Transits (ms) := 500 Space Combat Time Until Ship Can Warp Again (seconds) := 30 Space Combat Chance For Warp Transit Interpenetration Percent := 10 Space Combat Maximum Zoom Out Distance := 150.0 Space Combat Map Radius := 2500.0 Space Combat Crew Boarding Strength := 1.0 Space Combat Allow Retreat := FALSE |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Give what Tnargversion2 says a try. Oh, and turning off retreat will actually increase time processing, as it makes retreat-combats run for the maximum allowed time( as opposed to ending when reaching the retreat barrier ), so put it back on. You could also decrease the maximum combat time in the ( mod's ) settings.txt file, but that's bound to affect gameplay as well, if you set it too low.
Afraid that's about it. Suppose you could send a mail to Aaron complaining about long turn processing; chances are he'll look into it( again ) if it gets enough attention. Oh, remember to delete the DebugSettings.txt file in the Balance Mod's Data folder. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
If you start with more homeworlds, you don't have to wait nearly as long to get new tech levels in the early game.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
The turn time is very excessive. I have a oc'd athlon 3800+ running at 3ghz (watercooled) with a geforce 7800gtx and 1gb of ram which is like 100000x overkill for this game yet the turn can still take up to 60+? seconds.
The green bar moves quickly but it's the red (combat) bar that slowly drags everything out. is there a way you could speed up AI combat during turn processing so it runs at like 400x or something? |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Ah well. Thanks for the suggestions guys. I tried them out but without much change. In fact, since I'm about 30 turns into the game now, the turns are getting even longer...
Does almost everyone have turn processing times like this? I can't see how this is even considered playable other than something like PBW. In an hour's worth of gaming I might get 15 turns done and its pretty ridiculous when almost HALF of that time is spent on 'processing' the turns. Its a damned shame too because for the first time since release I'm actually somewhat drawn to the gameplay. I still think the game feels pretty unpolished, but it is interesting and even somewhat addictive (ie, one...more...turn). But then I think how long I have to wait for that turn and I end up saving it and quitting. Perhaps I'm becoming A.D.D. in my old age, but more likely its recognizing that I have less gaming time than I'd like and the thought of spending half of it watching 'processing turn' doesnt thrill me. :p Does anyone know if this is even a priority issue at this point? Thanks again for the suggestions though. If anyone has any others, I'm willing to try 'em. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Update....
Actually, I guess I'm only on turn 23. I thought it was farther along... At any rate, turn 22 took over SEVEN minutes to process. Note that not one race (of the 6 in the game on a small map) has more than 9 ships/bases combined. Looking at the turn report, I was involved in 3 battles each involving only TWO COMBATANTS! And that takes SEVEN MINUTES? Sorry for the rant, but I cant even imagine that people consider this as a playable product. Seven minutes of downtime and a little over 2 minutes to complete my part of the turn. Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with that. Am I just totally missing something that is adding to the horrid processing time?? I was on the verge of recommending SE5 to my gaming group and trying to muster some multiplayer TCP/IP games (we play Civ4 every now and then). But I think I would be shot for recommending this game at this point. I cant believe its actually a retail release in 2006 with turn times like that. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Uncle_Joe said:
Does anyone know if this is even a priority issue at this point? If you take a look at the patch history files, you will see that each of the last two public patches have put efforts into speeding up turn processing. =0= You can't compare something like Civ 4 processing times to SE5. Civ 4 has no combat engine, just some die rolls. SE5 has to do a lot of work calculating combats. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
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I don't have to wait more then 3/6 seconds for a turn to process in galatic civilizations. I send a transport into enemy territory to start capturing his planet then it gets shot up a bit and gets its turn per move ratio cut in half (7) now I have to wait 60 seconds to 1:30'ish for every seven moves? thats insane. it seems like I've been spending more time watching the "processing turn" screen more then anything else. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
"I don't have to wait more then 3/6 seconds for a turn to process in galatic civilizations."
Are you seriously comparing SE5 to Galciv in terms of processing time? Galciv uses all its processor time while you play for fancypants graphics, and has very little to do at the end of turn. As Fyron said, its a couple die rolls per ship max. No strategy, no tactics, no manouevering, no weapon ranges. No pursuit and evade, or races to land a colony ship. No partial damage to ship abilities. No leaky shield/armor effects. No formulae based ability amounts. In my GGirc game, it takes 20 seconds of UI (load SE5, click the buttons and process the turn) and 10 seconds of scrollbars to process turn #12. We have 90 ships, 300 units, 25 planets among 5 empires in a medium-small sized map. The vast majority of the time is spent waiting for people to play and upload turns. I spend that time chatting on #spaceempires, and/or doing some combat simulations in-game, or getting a snack. Combat notes: I have turned off retreat in settings.txt, and reduced the combat radius. I have set "combat dosen't end until all enemy ships destroyed". Ships are typically 5-8 movement points. Computer notes: I'm running win98 with DX8, 750 megs of ram. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
That said, we've see a number of improvements to the movement phase of AI turn processing, but I do think further optimization needs to be tune in running the AI combats at a higher speed.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Seven minutes does sound completely unacceptable. With 5 AI players my turn processing takes about 10 seconds at turn 20 with no combats. I pushed forward a few turns until two of the AIs were involved in combats, and suddenly the processing time went up to 40 seconds at turn 24.
It's obvious that combat needs alot of optimization. Not sure how possible it actually is, though: to make it faster you most likely have to sacrifice some calculations, which in turn is going to affect the outcome of the battles. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Hmm, what kind of a rig are you getting only 40 second turns with? 40 seconds would be completely acceptable IMO assuming combat were being resolved, but 7 minutes is truly unplayable.
And no, it cant be compared to Civ or GalCiv per se, but IMO there is something wrong with the game design if its going to resolve combats in such detail that it takes more time to process the turn than it does to take the turn! |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
It's only a 3ghz P4 HT, so not much to brag about.
Perhaps it would be possible to make SE one of the games that could take advantage of dual CPUs, but I guess that's a long shot given we only got one programmer. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
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This is what makes me think I have a different setting or something than others. I cant imagine anyone actually playing this game with the wait times I'm seeing. Have you adjusted anything with combat in your Settings? |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
It's basically the original Settings.txt file that follows with the Balance Mod.
I've made two changes. I've disabled combat replays, although that particular change hasn't made much of a difference, and just for fun I turned the "Main System Display Icon Move Speed Points Per Second Very High" setting up to 50000, but that didn't( unsurprisingly ) have any effect either. I'm sort of wondering if modders could make a difference by making all ships move twice as fast( in combat only) and fire at double the rate: but this would only help if AI combat is limited to 8x time rate like human combats, which I'm unsure of. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
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see link http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...g?t=1170793296 |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I like big epic games with 15 empires.The game is unplayable with these torrid turn times unless you have tiny games.I hope more work is done to speed the game.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Well, combat does take a while. 2 minutes on my PC.
I suspect that the processing time is mostly independent of the number of ships involved. Which seems to imply that it processes at a fixed timerate. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I did some tests with a stopwatch, and it does indeed look as if AI combats are limited to 8x speed just like the player's combats.
A combat that took 8 seconds for the AI to finish took 9'ish seconds at 8x when I loaded the previous turn and played that AI empire myself. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I sent arron and email reguarding this issue. from my perspective, it doesn't appear the game is ultilising all of my cpu's cycles considering I still get 80/100+ fps during "processing turn" if se:v was using all of the avalable cpu cycles then my fps would take a serious hit.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Playing on a small, with only about 10 empires and it takes me a little while too. This is def something I would love to see get fixed. 2-3 minutes for a turn to get processed is way to much. I can live with it, but it will definitly drive me away from the game after too long.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
It would help if battles could go faster than 8x. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Why not 10x, 12x and 16x? |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Or even 40x hehehe One thing thats funny is I was blockading this enemy world, and I told my fleets to move close to the planet but not in weapons range then went to 8x and my ships were moving around once they got to the point and looked like a school of fish swimming around in the same spot .
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
One thing I just was thought of...When the demo was first released, there was a bit of a problem with PCs that had dual core processors. IIRC, there was recommendation (and instructions) to disable one core while playing the demo.
Could that be something that could help with this? If so, if anyone could repeat those quick instructions it would be a big help. Thanks! |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I don't really understand why strategic combat is limited to the same speed as tactical. The whole point of stratagic combat is to get the combat over with as quickly as possible, for combats that are massively in favour of one side or another and therefore aren't worth watching/controling. As it is, you might as well pick tactical every time.
On the subject of turn times, let's not get too hung up on combat. The turn processing speed is still far to slow even without combats, at least on lower spec systems. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Think of it this way;
At least when there are hundreds of ships fighting in a late game battle, it won't take much longer to process. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
At an average of 3 minutes per turn (being generous)and say about 100 turns to get to having hundreds of ships fighting in a late game battle, I will have wasted over 4&1/2 gaming hours watching the turns process...umm, no thanks. I cant see that as being tolerable.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
It is only wasted time if you sit there in your chair staring intently at the progress bar.
Visit the IRC channel... Check the forum... Take a bathroom break... Read some webcomics... Check your email... |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Too bad that the game won't continue to process the turn with the game minimized. I hear it will run in the background in windowed mode, but windowed mode sucks.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I asked Aaron about adding higher rez windowed modes.
He liked the idea, but it couldn't hurt to remind him a few times. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Strangely, not being able to have a turn process with the game minimized (like SE:IV allows) is the single most annoying thing to me that I'd like to see changed. Yea, there are bugs and yea the UI needs lots of work, but not being able to browse these forums or do other things while turns process is unbearable to me. The fact is that it is inevitable that games will get big enough to require several minutes or more to process turns, even if the game engine is optimized. SEV calculates a lot more stuff than SEIV, so no matter how you cut it or how fast your computer is, turn processing will take time as the game progresses. Ironically, there are more things to like as turn number increases because of increased research, production, expansion, etc.; but waiting for turns to complete actually makes it less fun as turn number increases.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I agree, if SEV could run while minimized, it would be very good. I have a musical keyboard beside my desk and while the turns process, I practise playing the piano.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I'd rather see minimizing then the windowed thing
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Id MUCH rather see the turn processing sped up to something reasonable than either windowing or minimzizing. Although either of the latter would be FAR better than what we have now.
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I guess the one 'good' thing out of this is that I have been so jonesing for space conquest fix that I'm actually going back and playing Sword of the Stars which I bought and never really got into. It doesnt have too terribly much depth IMO, but at least its playable... |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Just play in windowed mode until more fixes arrive... it isn't that big of a deal to not be in fullscreen, is it? Personally, I try to make every game I play run in windowed mode (including games like civ4).
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
For SE5, it is, because you get stuck into a rather small window. That also makes the GUI worse, as it takes up more screen space.
Oh, and some people have performance issues (mouse speed, FPS, etc) with windowed mode. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I used to get FPS issues with windowed mode, but it got fixed a long time ago. Guess more people need to send in reports with their computer specs...
The resolution is a worthwhile sacrifice for being able to use your computer during turn processing, no? |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Running in Windowed Mode now. I cant scroll the map in all directions (likely because of the size of the window). But I can at least use the keyboard to do that.
I suppose this is better than nothing at this point, but I believe that the turn processing REALLY has to be sped up considerably before I would consider this game as 'finished'. Hopefully this becomes a priority soon. Thanks for the suggestion. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I don't use windowed mode. My screen has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, and when I run SEV in window mode, part of the view is cut off. So window mode is not an option for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
I bought this game a long time ago when it first came out .... i had a average computer ... i think it had a intel 3ghz processor 1gig of ram and and a radeon 9800 (256mb) pro graphics card. it was a good gaming computer a few years ago and i thought it shoulda easily played this game ... but i was wrong ... i like to play really large galaxies with max players (no neutrals) and highest settings and in the later stages of the game it took several minutes to process turns ... by the time it got too like turn 50+ i was finding things to do while my turn processed ... hehe. make food ... grab a drink .. see whats on tv ... go build a house ... then come back an play my next turn ... after a while this just seemed stupid .. so i gave up an decided to come back after some patches.
well i bought a game a few months ago called Oblivion and my computer that was pretty decent a few years ago couldnt even start it hehe. so i figured it was time for an upgrade ... so i went an got a nice gaming rig to play the latest games on max settings. my new rig is AMD athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual Core 2 gigs RAM 250GB hard Drive 650 watt BFG PSU with Dual Rails for SLI and a Radeon X1950pro (512) graphics card got this system for about $1000 at best buy. bought the tower,dual-core,and XP then tossed in a PSU an card. I am waiting for the DX10 cards to come out then i am gunna get a couple of the best midrange Cards an run them in SLI ... might get 8800GTX tho cause that card is pretty amazing with its Unified Architecture and kills all the other cards on stress tests. anyways to get to the point .. i can play oblivion and any other of the most advanced graphic type games on max setting with HDR enabled on my 19" widescreen hp LCD HD flat screen at 1440x990 resolution . So since i got a nice new rig that should most definatly be able to play this game an quickly process anything it can dish out .. im gunna give SEV another shot. I just installed it an upgraded to the latest patch. lets see if i have the same problems as before. I'm gunna make a game on max settings with biggest galaxy and max players (no neutrals) and after about 10-30 turns when the galaxy starts filling im gunna start timing my turns and post the results ... if it starts taking too long ill start adjusting the settings a bit to see if that helps. we should all post our process times and size and settings of their games maybe we can find a way to optimize the turn process through settings or hardware config. ohh ya ... btw this is my first post .. greetings everyone. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
and also state your computer specs for reference
plz and thanks in advance ;-) |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
A "long time ago"?
SE5 only just came out! I thought you were talking about SE4 at first. If turn processing times are annoying, I reccommend sticking with SE4 for a while. It has been polished up over the years and has very challenging AIs in the appropriate mods. And, of course, the turn will process lickety-split on your fancy new box. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
just a heads up - it runs minimized now!
(at least, it does from the command prompt, TBH I've not yet tried it normaly, but I'm guessing it works fine.) |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
With the next patch it should run minimized all the time.
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Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Has anyone else noticed that after about 5 or 6 turns the game really grinds to a crawl. I have found that if I quit and close out of the game and then restart I am back to acceptable turn processing times. 5 or 6 turns later I am back to agonizingly slow turn processing.
I thought that this might by my virus software which has been doing some weird things as of lately, so I tried the same thing on my Mac with Bootcamp. Same results, when it slows down, I just quit and close out and then restart. Works pretty good. Even into the higher turns. |
Re: Any suggestions for speeding up turn processin
Memory leaks seems to be the current theory.
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