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kaashar
kaashar
Join Date 03/2008
+1

Multiplayer Slowdown in Latest Beta

September 29, 2008 7:08:20 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I and my friends have noticed a problem that was mostly gone in the previous beta that's returned in the current.

We play multiple AIs cooperatively pretty often.  The problem happens near midgame when the entire game slows down drastically to the point of being almost unplayable.  I check the CPU load via the in-game meter and nobody is over 50%.  

I'm always the host (using the traditional port forward method) and watch my own CPU usage through a sidebar applet and again, never above 50% usage.

I can even experience it locally during a replay once the game gets to the same point, but again I'm not seeing the CPU usage top out, nor is the hard drive thrashing around indicative of memory issues (granted I've got 2GB).

A zip file of all recent gameplays (some may not have it but to be honest I don't have the patience to watch all the replays to see if they do or not...as a side suggestion add a seek bar to replays PLEASE).  They can be found at:

http://bonerax.com/SINS/mprecords.zip

We'll be happy to help in any way possible to help zero in on the problem.

 

 

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kaashar
Nypyren
Join Date 04/2008
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Reply #1 September 29, 2008 11:07:19 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I was having an issue that sounds like this pre-beta (in 1.04 and 1.05)

My friends and I play large 4v4 or 5v5 games against AI.  About 2 hours into these games (when fleet sizes are starting to get drastically larger), the game will begin a repeated pattern of the following:  {10 seconds of complete freeze, 15 seconds of gameplay, 10 seconds of freeze, 15 seconds of gameplay, etc}.

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kaashar
Mazuo
Join Date 07/2007
+17
Reply #2 September 30, 2008 1:46:51 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Remember that if you're on dual-core CPUs that SINS doesn't use the second core during actual gameplay as far as I'm aware.

Thus hitting 50% on any reporting software is most likely indicative that you are in fact tapping out on processing power when large fleets are involved.

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kaashar
kaashar
Join Date 03/2008
+1
Reply #3 September 30, 2008 9:32:17 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Each core is displayed seperatly in the software I use.

 

In fact, during heavy operations one core does occasionaly peak a little higher, but the gameplay stays slow for hours with the CPU load on both cores being light.  I'm watching it from a second monitor, so I can easily monitor what's going on.

If you want to see it for yourself, just load up the resource monitor and watch the history of both cores when this event happens.

 

Or, if somebody who never experiences this issue wants to fire up one of those recordings and replay it themselves they can see if it's true for them as well. 

 

Hence posting this on the beta forum.

 

 

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kaashar
Mazuo
Join Date 07/2007
+17
Reply #4 September 30, 2008 10:37:20 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I don't know if you're doing something in the background then, but I remember rather clearly the last time I was able to play SINS that one core is running hard and the other is relatively idle.

I believe it's been stated before that both cores are only used on startup to load textures and other stuff into memory.

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kaashar
Cataclysm2000
Join Date 06/2008
+4
Reply #5 October 9, 2008 11:41:01 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Mazuo,
reply 4
I don't know if you're doing something in the background then, but I remember rather clearly the last time I was able to play SINS that one core is running hard and the other is relatively idle.

I believe it's been stated before that both cores are only used on startup to load textures and other stuff into memory.

Why on earth would they do that though? Wouldn't using two cores mean you can run the game better with 10 players and mexed fleets (Something entirely possible)? I'll have to check my CPU usage next time I play.

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kaashar
Mazuo
Join Date 07/2007
+17
Reply #6 October 10, 2008 3:52:51 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Mainly I think they'd do that because it's hard to properly code a game to distribute the various calculations and processes over multiple processors.

I'm sure if it was easy, we'd just flip a switch or write a page of code and then dual-core and quad-core CPUs would prove to be very close to two to four times as fast/powerful than a single processor.

Keep in mind, I mainly have memories of some of Monk's posts, etc. for believing this.  Because either I suck or the SINS forum search function sucks, I can't find any of the threads where I've seen him state this or devs confirm it however.

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kaashar
Hack78
Join Date 04/2008
+50
Reply #7 October 10, 2008 4:43:09 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

To use more then one core at a time requires you to be able to write multi-threaded apps. This is not trivial. Everything has to be syncronised. Also, you can't just share data between threads.  You have to do thread-safe opperations. e.g you can't get thread A to do something directly to thread B. Thread A has to "ask" thread B to do it for thread A.

The other thing is that some things cannot be done in parallel - only in series. As such, you need a faster core, not multiple to do it quicker.

At the end of the day though, dual/quad IS better as the other core(s) can do completely different, non-Sins related work, allowing the core Sins is running on to run uninterrupted...

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kaashar
Blair Fraser
Join Date 10/2006
+292 moderator
Reply #8 October 22, 2008 7:18:26 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Can you send me a save game of when it is happening? (In this particular case, the save game is more useful than the replay).

My email is bfraser@ironcladgames.com.

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kaashar
PurplePaladin
Join Date 02/2008
+35
Reply #9 October 22, 2008 12:44:53 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Yes, we noticed the exact same thing:  Since beta 3, we experience really terrible game slow-down, even constanct freezing, near the last 3rd of the game, that never happened before.  We play on a Lan, and online, but this happened on Lan play, two different games now (2 human vs 2 computer, and small map).

 

 

 

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