Any suggestions for speeding up turn processing?

[Fyron]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

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.

[Uncle_Joe]

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!

[Raapys]

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.

[Uncle_Joe]

It's only a 3ghz P4 HT, so not much to brag about.

Hmm, thats what I've got too. I have 1gb of RAM if that makes a difference. Graphics card shouldnt matter at all for this type of calculation since it isnt actually displaying the battles (I've got an ATI9600 if for some arcane reason it DOES matter).

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?

[Raapys]

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.

[xierxior]

Raapys said:
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.

actually, not its not its a 3ghz athlon 3800+ venice running at 3ghz on water without thermal thorttling which IS something to brag about.
see link http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...g?t=1170793296