Slitherine

quote:

Reply #37
taltamir

Member No.2,334,181
Karma0
March 30, 2010 3:29:32 PM
the game is cool, but the lag is unbearable. it is only using 30% of cpu but its fairly choppy... as is expected with hundreds of colonizes planets and thousands of civilian ships per side flying about doing stuff.

they desperately need multi-threaded support
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Reply #38
taltamir

Member No.2,334,181
Karma0
March 30, 2010 11:14:59 PM
alright, i just "finished" with a sandbox game (no victory conditions)...

i did really well, making me rule 60% of the galaxy with a human monarchy... there are about a dozen single planet (or under 5) empires who sprung from independent colonies (I am definitely disabling the option for them to do that next game)... I have never started a war with anyone, I end wars quickly... later i started ending wars with the subjugate result because otherwise they keep on declaring war on me.

as it stands, everyone hates me because "we envy your colossal might and strength" and "we covet your colonies"... as a result pissant 1 colony "empires" keep on declaring war on me... not terrible, i just squash them... Nobody will make a trade agreement with me because they hate me (because they are jelous)... as such my relationship constantly deteriorate.

thing is, i got into a war with one of the two remaining big empires. (each is 1/5th my size and power). Well... they paid off the one empire that had a trade agreement with me to impose sanctions... then several of the empires with 1-5 planets only declared war on me in the space of just a few minutes due to the other big empire paying them, until that moment they kept on pestering me to impose sanctions or go to war with that empire, but now that i am they all side with it... then as a result of that my alignment got shot deep into evil (yes, your empire is judged as good or evil)... when I got judged as evil all the other pissant 1-5 colony empires declared war on me... then all my colonies started rebelling (i have members of every single race and then some special ones that jumped in from another galaxy, etc). So they are all upset i am at war with their race AND upset I am at war at all AND upset that I am "evil" (because other people keep declaring war on me, because they are jealous according to the game)

... no its not over yet... so my planets are rebelling and not paying taxes, i am attacked from every side... still not a big deal, I am still more then twice as big then everyone else in the galaxy combined and my tech is much more advanced... but then "disaster, civil war broke out"... 60 of my colonies break off to form a new empire and are at war with me!

Result? for the first time I am at war with humans so now EVERY planet I have has its morale drop into the crapper because I am not only evil, humans are all upset i am at war with other humans. So almost all my other planets are rebelling.

Yea... might want to fix that.

My solution is:

1. Slaughter small empires ASAP to avoid being labeled evil (your alignment is entirely determined by how many people you are at war with)

2. Form trade agreements EARLY before everyone hates you for being successful.

3. Disable the option in game creation that allows independent populations to ascend into being empires...



Other interesting issues:

1. taking apart captures ships for tech yields practically no tech at all... just a tiny boost to one research field chosen at random... oddly enough, even ships you find which are LOWER tech then your current level.

2. With the exception of the occasional offer to buy it for ~1.5-2.5 million (is it millions already? million x million) in cash (no financing allowed, you must have the cash on hand) races absolutely refuse to sell their starting tech.. no matter how much and what i offer them... even if i give them an awesome deal...

3. For some reason, an estranged splinter colony with no tech when it suddenly ascends to empire status will always have their racial tech... but if you colonize it and they join your empire, you don't, and it can NOT steal it with spies (it will not show up as a valid option of tech to steal).

4. laaaaaaag... god the game needs to be multithreaded.

5. RAM... i tried to reload the game, it said "error, not enough memory" and shut down.. I have 4GB of ram.

6. SLoooow... saving and loading takes minutes.

7. make sure you disable nubulae showing up in star systems in the advanced graphic options, it causes the game to stutter when zooming it (stutter is an understatement)

8. ship designs (when automated) are refreshed randomly, there is an "update" button, which requires you to click to select the ship, click it, then click "ok" in a popup box, then select the next ship... it is extremely clumsy...

a. it should automatically update all ships whenever a new tech is acquired in any way shape or form (planetary discovery, research breakthrough, trading tech, etc).

b. there should be an update all button.

c. the popup asking you to click ok is total BS.

9. The music is rather annoying, but i got used to it.

10. you cannot use the "advanced trade" menu to make trade agreements, as a result you cannot ever improve your relationship with other empires once you start dominating (because they are jealous).

11. if someone offers you a trade, you must accept immediately if you are interested, you cannot go into advanced trade and then accept (because they will suddenly not like it)

12. be careful not to accidently choose to leave ruins unexplored, they will be forever unexploreable.

13. it should really have a more serious notification when enemy spies manage to cause a revolution changing your system of government, I didn't even notice for a while that i was turned into fuedalism from way of ancients. (there was actually no harmful effects of switching back because way of ancients is so superior to feudalism).



All that being said, the game is pretty awesome. It definitely lacks polish, but it probably the best implementation of the 4x janre in space right now.



Just an FYI, my machine is an intel C2Q 9400 with 4GB of ram and an nvidia GTX260 in cast anyone wonders.



EDIT: I found a solution of sorts...

1. get lucky and find "way of the ancients"... it is really really good.

2. kill lots of pirates. Every pirate base you destroy gives you a good amount of positive reputation. Morale improves across the empire and other empires ask you for trade agreements etc.

quote:

ORIGINAL: fabio80mi

Nasty.. a thread i hope the devs will look closely.
From my experience (from mostly smaller games) i found out that is very hard to make friend with someone that hates you.... bribes and gift seems not to work for me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Journier
Most especially Multithreading.
a game this large can only go so far without multithreading.

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Journier

yea, I have to agree with some of those points.

Most especially Multithreading.

a game this large can only go so far without multithreading.

Funny thing is another game that is similar in style in some ways is Hearts of Iron 3 (HOI 3).
HOI 3 had all automation capable for all area's just like distant worlds. But HOI 3 added so much stuff like that, that without multithreading the game ran so terribly slow compared to HOI 2 that those of us used to playing HOI 2 thought it was unbearable.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Journier
Most especially Multithreading.
a game this large can only go so far without multithreading.

Sorry to contradict you, but Distant Worlds does multi-thread actually and is multi-core aware. It does not use the other cores for everything though, so sometimes you will see just one core being actively used.

Based on what the poster there described, I think he may have some other performance issues going on as DW can run pretty smoothly on much less hardware than a modern system has.

quote:

ORIGINAL: fflaguna

Problem is HoI3 was released a full 6-8 months before it SHOULD have been... that was the WORST release product I have EVER played, bar none. I will NOT be buying a Paradox game at release ever again. The game is still buggy, and even though patch 1.4 is around the corner, the devs are still holding back in general for their expansion pack...

quote:


Paradox must either run on a shoestring budget where they have trouble gathering capital, or else they are run by idiots that think releasing a crappy product and patching later is preferable to fixing first and releasing a reliable product later... just look at Blizzard. Do you expect to find ANY bugs in their upcoming releases?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Journier

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Journier
Most especially Multithreading.
a game this large can only go so far without multithreading.

Sorry to contradict you, but Distant Worlds does multi-thread actually and is multi-core aware. It does not use the other cores for everything though, so sometimes you will see just one core being actively used.

Based on what the poster there described, I think he may have some other performance issues going on as DW can run pretty smoothly on much less hardware than a modern system has.

Ive only seen your game touch 30-35% of core useage on my quad core cpu. I knew of your game being multicore aware but....

image of core use in largest game with 19 AI's all old etc etc


Also, To FFLAGUNA-

The story I heard with Paradox and HOI 3 coming out the way it did is this.

They began the game trying to make it all multithreading capable etc, however they ran into so many problems with integration from I assume a group of programmers that have been at Paradox for a long time IE Johan, and never really got alot of practice for multithreading before begining on HOI 3. Well 6+ months into the project they scrapped the whole thing and said forget it and it became what HOI 3 is today. This is the story I heard from someone that was supposedly in the know. But thats a entirely different game

quote:

ORIGINAL: Janster

Hearts of Iron is an extremly complicated game made with no a fraction of the resources that went into Mass Effect 2, its a lot to demand that these games are to be 100% from the start. This game seems to suffer from exactly the same problems, and will require extensive patching before a good idea can turn into a playable one.

Paradox has a dedicated track record of fixing their games, and getting it right eventually, Hoi 3 just got patch 1,4 which finally gets things right I believe.

quote:

ORIGINAL: BigJ62

Your machine appears to be balancing the load across all four cores and in particular not greater than 25% of total according to your screenshot.

quote:

Original: taltamir
I did discover another issue... a large part of rebelling planets is taxation... they will have something like

"+1 something"

"+2 we have some development"

"-6 <race> are upset we are at war with their race"

"-18 to 60 due to taxes being too high"

turns out the taxation AI will randomly set planets to max tax levels of 50% (or just below it at 48 or 49... although sometimes even 30 or 40 can be too high, especially on a planet with 0 development)... its not like those planets actually can make any money since they have no development, at all! Worse, it lets it go into the "rebellion" status where they pay 0 taxes

quote:

Original: taltamir
Well, My last save was 10pm... the game crashed at 2:30am... so i lost 4.5 hours of play there... I will migrate the install from my 2 platter 640GB WD Caviar blue to my intel SSD G2 80GB with trim... hopefully that will improve load and save times.

i actually looked up the planet amounts of the other empires and my own...

mine was 208... went all the way up to 350 before game crashed.

AI was: ~60, ~30, 5, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. went down some before the game crashed... i destroyed a bunch of pirated but every time a new pirate faction spawned immediately...

quote:

I agree, this is an AAR and suggestion post in one. I like the way your game went, but I can see it was frustrating. I have a similar problem now in which many races start to get jealous on me. However, my power difference is not as big as yours with the other empires. Indeed a good suggestion to improve relations early on in the game. I also have some performance issues. But playing on a "smaller" map (not 500 stars and 5000 planets/moons) helps . I've read somewhere that this game plays better on lower end pcs than on new pcs. But it is quite processor intensive. So make sure you have suffiencent mhz.

I am certain playing on a smaller map would help... but then the game wouldn't be as epic as i want it to be :) the reason I like this game over others is how epic i can make it.

As for how my game went, i found a solution:

1. get lucky and find way of ancients or path of darkness (helps a lot!)

2. kill a bunch of pirates (destroy their base, easy as pie later on) and you will go from evil to a saint... now your citizens are gaining moral instead of losing it, and the hate due to jelously is mitigated by you being good... so the other empires will form trade agreements with you.

It is rather ridiculous that 1 planet empires are declaring war on 200+ planet empires because they are jealous of their overwhelming power. they should be licking my boots and asking for hand outs and protection... I tried offering protectorates to a few of them who were at war with the other 2 big bads... and they refused because they hate me too much.

EDIT: I recalled the last bit of info from the "lost" post... it was that I noticed that if the game inches to the 3 to 3.5GB used (I only have 4GB remember), and then i load a game, it will crash with an out of memory error. I need to first exit to main menu then load the game... i assume that to save loading time it keeps assets that it already needs to load... but that could cause it to run out of memory, better do a purge and full reload OR check how much free ram there and then decide whether to do concurrent load or purge and load.

As for the claim by them that something is wrong with my machine... nope, everything is spiffy.. i am playing on max sized map but the game says the requirements for that are 2GB of ram, and 1GB for smaller...

Also, of course it has multithreading, the fact that i peg 30% on my quad core means it has to have it... what I meant is have BETTER multi threading... pegging one core at 100% (25% of my quad core) and then a tiny smidgen spread across the three remaining cores is very weak multi threading, especially for a super CPU intensive game such as this...

On a quad core it manages to get 120% the utilization of a single core... Full utilization is possible, but understandably difficult... but this game practically requires it for its higher end gameplay options.

quote:

taltamir-

I believe that the rebellion issue you see due to taxes is actually enemy covert ops causing rebellion and not the taxAI randomly screwing with the rate, however, I am not 100% certain of this, it is something I have gleened from reading around about the issue.

quote:

ORIGINAL: licker

Eh?

If the spies 'bribed' your AI to not notice...

Otherwise what would the point of that operation be?

Again, assuming that spies are the cause of drastically inflated tax rates.