This is a little dissapointing...

from Sins Forums

so I've had this game almost since it came out, I'd blamed my old computer for it running slow wen the fleets had gotten big but now that i've read some of these threads about performance and have my own experience with my freshly built computer. This is something more of a cry to the developers to please thread this game, I'm not sure of the language they used to write it but its low memory usage is impressive, however having everything on a few (I've been studying the performance and think there may be 3? just a guess)

Regardless of that, anyone know of anything to help speed it up? i was playing with the gameplay constants and nothing i did to the "VisibilityDistanceData" seemed to have much effect, I have the "Real Combat" mod and "10000 units" mods on and i know this is  probably pouring acid on the wound. regardless, is there a way to heavily reduce the "sight" distance of the game? i mean, when i'm staring straight down on the 2D image of a few planets i really don't need my computer working as hard as it is rendering things that aren't in my view, and when i am close up I really don't need to see full detail images of planets on the other side of the current solar system? anyone figured something like that out?I never updated with entrenchment or diplomacy, did those help at all?? and I tried dedicating a core to it but windows seems to have done that all on its own

I feel like if I was plying fallout on one monitor and sins on the other fallout would still be blazing fast while sins would still be crawling and glitching with nothing happening


my computer specs are

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Processor: Athlon 2 X4 OC 3.6ghz

Ram: 16Gb 1600mhz 9-9-9-24 Lat

motherboard: asus M5A99X EVO

my cpu never gets over 95 degrees F and the motherboard sits at about 88 while i'm playing

technical
2,855 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Look for the TSOP mod for the original game. Diplomacy got a lot of improvements in memory usage but the devs never back ported the changes. So Diplomacy will help as well.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Well, it will be best to modify your mod "10000" unit to "1000 capital ship"... collision detection is something enough heavy in sins... a game with 8 player, having each 10000 unit who meet in a gravity wheel for a huge fight mean a very huge amount of collission detection to calculate... now, imagine that these 8x10000 unit are carrier... and that each carrier have two fighter squad... you need to add 8x2x10000 unit for the collission detection... total of 240000 unit !!!...

Same if all the unit are not visible on screen, not in the same gravity wheel but elsewhere in the galaxy, the game need to track them, calculate their trajectory, their stat, etc... huge work for the CPU...

The FPS drop when CPU is over used... the reason is directx... with directx, the way is "texture cached in ram" to CPU, CPU to GPU... when i play on linux, the game use opengl... with opengl, the way is "texture cached in graphic memory" to GPU, if GPU cannot make some work ( miss some hardware accelerated function ) the game fallback to CPU for process and send the processed data to the GPU... so, directx is perfect for low end card with not a lot of memory... in so case, the opengl fallback to CPU will add a huge latency... but if you have a top graphic card, with 1gb dedicated ram or more, opengl will be faster...

A other reason why i play on linux... in the BIOS of my motherboard, i have a option called "discrete MTRR allocation"... when enabled, it greatly improve the graphic performance of the computer when you have more that 4gb ram... problem is that it work on OS like Linux, Unix, Solaris, MAC, etc... but not on Windows... i have plenty of BIOS option on my computer who allow to improve my system but 95% of them are "not supported by Microsoft Windows OS"...

GPU was never a problem... you can have million poly on screen render in real time without problem... by example, 6.25 million poly with a nv9600gs256mb graphic card : http://www.love-from-russia.be/g4_swarm-6.25_million_poly.avi ... have push over 20 million poly on a nv8800ultra768mb ... so, "reduce the sight distance" will solve nothing...

Main memory can be a problem... game crash when it reach 2gb... on windows OS... on Linux, without modify the sins .exe, i can reach 3.9 to 4 gb before it crash... with modify the sins .exe ( setting the flag large address aware ), it crash around 11.5gb ram used... if you remain on Windows, sure that the TSOP mod help a lot... but not in the case of diplomacy since a huge chunk of the TSOP optimization was included in Diplomacy patch...

About CPU, i have two xeon quad core at 2.66ghz... when playing on windows OS ( xp pro x64 ), one of my core is used at 100%... when playing on linux, the game used 6% of the total power ( application jump from one core to the other for balance the "heating" )... when related to a single core, the game use only 48% of the core, and i am playing with the biggest mod who exist, 10 different race and pirates, all setting on very high, everything enable, random huge multistar map ( modified version with 10 star, 2 pirates base by star and 520 planet )...

Point is that "sins of a solar empire" was made for windows OS but it run better on other OS... officially, Stardock don't support other OS but it change nothing to the fact... a lot of the limit and lag are not due to the wonderfull iron engine but to the underlaying microsoft OS... well, need to say that the standart "wine" on linux don't improve a lot the game but a self compiled version optimized for your own hardware do it... if microsoft windows was distributed in a source form and compiled by the user for his own hardware, the OS will run better and will be smaller using less... improving the game performance at a similar level that with Linux...

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

i have 1 gig of GDDR 5 and it seems there is another 4gb of ram dedicated to graphics by my motherboard I beleive my card also has a separate physics processor but apparently sins of a solar empire is under "Not Recommended" in compatibility with game (I didn't think of checking that before)

I've been thinking about getting a second boot with linux, would ubuntu be sufficient? I know a few people that enjoy it, or would you suggest another linux os?

i have win 7 64 bit enterprise and the game doesn't seem to get over 800mbs even with the mutli star 10 player map i made. the "Real combat" mod I have gives carriers 4 squadrons instead of 2 but the AI doesn't seem to use them as much as I do


I was talking to another programmer at work about how they may be calculating battles through "painting" the ships and calculating the vectors between them? it was just a speculation but is that what you mean by collision detection? I've heard of that before but i've never even looked at programming a game he's used openGL for a 3D modeling app I suppose i could talk to him about it a bit more

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting RedneckN04, reply 3
I've been thinking about getting a second boot with linux, would ubuntu be sufficient? I know a few people that enjoy it, or would you suggest another linux os?
End of RedneckN04's quote

Linux are like women... choose yourself your poison... myself, i have win xp pro x64, open solaris and kubuntu... it just happen that i like "debian" based linux version with KDE desktop...

Multiboot is the way to go... each OS have some problem and some advantage... multiboot simply allow your to have more choice... by example, in the case of "sins of a solar empire", it play well on Linux ( online too ) but for update, "impulse" don't work on Linux... old Stardock central was working...

Quoting RedneckN04, reply 3
i have win 7 64 bit enterprise and the game doesn't seem to get over 800mbs even with the mutli star 10 player map i made. the "Real combat" mod I have gives carriers 4 squadrons instead of 2 but the AI doesn't seem to use them as much as I do
End of RedneckN04's quote

Well, i use the 7DS mod and at the start, the game use already something like 1.3gb ... after a few hours of play, it is already over the 3gb... memory use increase with time... more thing are build in a huge galaxy with a lot of player...

Quoting RedneckN04, reply 3
I was talking to another programmer at work about how they may be calculating battles through "painting" the ships and calculating the vectors between them? it was just a speculation but is that what you mean by collision detection? I've heard of that before but i've never even looked at programming a game he's used openGL for a 3D modeling app I suppose i could talk to him about it a bit more
End of RedneckN04's quote

Take a look at my video in the previous post... the swarm effect is due to collision detection... all starbase wish to go at the same place but there is not enough room... so, they move around trying...

Collision detection ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection ) is about a ship changing his trajectory due to a obstacle like a planet, a other ship, a orbital structure, etc... it is a subpart of pathfinding ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinding )... in the case of sins, it is a little more complex since Z axis can be used for movement... and with sins, you have a bunch of other moving object who don't each the process of calculate a path... imagine a labyrinth where the wall are always moving...

A lot of 3D modeling application use opengl for the working/preview stage... opengl is release by the graphic card designer... so, if your graphic card have new features, they will work with opengl... with directx, you need to way a new version of it... In linux world, you don't have directx but wine translate directx call in opengl call... on Linux, only ATI or Nvidia are a good choice for 3d accelerated graphic... with windows, more brand are supported...

If you have really interest about game development, the place to be is http://devmaster.net/ ... same if you don't wish make your own game, it is a interesting place for educational purpose... after reading tutorial on AI, pathfinding, 3D world, etc... i have learn to respect more the work made by devs for sins of solar empire... like i have wrote numerous time, the iron engine is a pretty strong one... and it was created by a very small team with a more small budget in a very short time...

 

 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Thoumsin, reply 4
Collision detection ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection ) is about a ship changing his trajectory due to a obstacle like a planet, a other ship, a orbital structure, etc...
End of Thoumsin's quote

I wonder how much (if any) the game would be hurt if collision detection for everything other than planets was removed and all units were allowed to basically glide around (through) each other without hitting each other and stopping?

I think this would help the game. Not only would it remove a good amount of CPU load (according to your logic), it would also remove a lot of the annoying behavior of ships to tend to stick on other ships and units and just stop.

One possible explanation for this might be that ships in 3d are easily capable of avoiding each other individually, so ships that would have "collided" under the current engine have simply moved over or under each other.

It might look a bit unusual if you were to zoom in EXTREMELY (unusually) close to the ships, and to pay attention to the Z-axis and notice that ships were actually moving through each other instead of just past each other, but I really don't think that's a problem at all.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I ram ships to throw off their phase jumps.  No!

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

But how else am I going to lose my caps if they aren't getting hung up on extractors or turrets????