Any suggestions for speeding up turn processing?

Fyron · #1 February 5th, 2007, 10:36 PM

If you start with more homeworlds, you don't have to wait nearly as long to get new tech levels in the early game.

xierxior · #2 February 6th, 2007, 02:15 AM

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?

Uncle_Joe · #3 February 6th, 2007, 02:15 AM

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.

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.

Uncle_Joe · #4 February 6th, 2007, 02:39 AM

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.

Fyron · #5 February 6th, 2007, 02:41 AM

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.

xierxior · #6 February 6th, 2007, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
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.

it still takes a 3ghz computer 60 seconds to process the turn which is unacceptable for any turn based game, I can't imagine how horrible it must be trying to play this game on a 700mhz computer.
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.

Suicide Junkie · #7 February 6th, 2007, 12:26 PM

"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.

Captain Kwok · #8 February 6th, 2007, 12:38 PM

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.

Raapys · #9 February 6th, 2007, 01:13 PM

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.