waehuun
Civilian
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2013 4:54 pm

Performance issues

Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:14 pm

Hi! I just recently bought WW1 gold and I regret that my first post regarding such an excellent game is in the technical problem section …

Anyways, performance slightly improved after installing the latest patch (downloaded version was 1.0.8.p, I installed q) but some issues remain so I read some of the threads here and tried out several things, but had little success.

Basically, I have two problems, one of which is annoying, the other is very annoying.
• First problem is low FPS – 5 FPS (unpatched) was unplayable, 10 FPS (patched) is better and barely playable, yet that’s probably not all my system should be able to manage.
• Second problem is lag-freezes that occur at regular points in game and get longer and longer as the game continues (this is independent of save-exit-restart and only occurs in strictly turn-based mode). In my current game as CP, in the second turn (August 1914) I get a 1–2 minutes lag:
– After the "Initializing Scenario Screen", when I already see the game map but AI is still disabled. Note that this is not AI thinking as I have another 5–10 seconds freeze after enabling AI.
– After "Enact all movements" has finished and all battles have been resolved.

During these freezes I cannot move the mouse.

I wonder if any of you has encountered similar problems or if there are known issues with my specification.

My system specifications:
OS: Win7 64Bit
CPU: AMD A8-3870K, 4×3Ghz
GPU: Ati Radeon 6550D (integrated in CPU)
RAM: 8GB

What I have tried from other threads:
• Single core mode (Sometimes I get the impression that this slightly improves FPS but otherwise no effect.)
• Give AI full time/not full time, all behaviours/not all behaviours (I can see no effect on performance)
• Run as Administrator (no effect on performance)
• WinXP compability mode, disable virtual effects (game does not start)
• Disable UAC, antivirus (no effect)

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calvinus
Posts: 4681
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:52 pm
Location: Italy
Contact: Website

Thu Aug 01, 2013 7:16 am

waehuun wrote:• First problem is low FPS – 5 FPS (unpatched) was unplayable, 10 FPS (patched) is better and barely playable, yet that’s probably not all my system should be able to manage.


10 FPS after patched is indeed too low. In my old PC (before crashed) I got 25-28 FPS.
Do you see some improvement if you load smaller scenarios?

waehuun wrote:• Second problem is lag-freezes that occur at regular points in game and get longer and longer as the game continues (this is independent of save-exit-restart and only occurs in strictly turn-based mode). In my current game as CP, in the second turn (August 1914) I get a 1–2 minutes lag:
– After the "Initializing Scenario Screen", when I already see the game map but AI is still disabled. Note that this is not AI thinking as I have another 5–10 seconds freeze after enabling AI.
– After "Enact all movements" has finished and all battles have been resolved.


These lags are normal, it's the AI thinking time or the map update procedure. But I guess the lag time is working longer on your PC than normal.

waehuun wrote:What I have tried from other threads:
• Single core mode (Sometimes I get the impression that this slightly improves FPS but otherwise no effect.)
• Give AI full time/not full time, all behaviours/not all behaviours (I can see no effect on performance)
• Run as Administrator (no effect on performance)
• WinXP compability mode, disable virtual effects (game does not start)
• Disable UAC, antivirus (no effect)


First, be sure the Antivirus is really disabled, or at least that WW1.exe is set as a trusted application.
Then, try disabling musics and setting the map is entirely loaded at start (ww1 configuration tool).

Hope it helps... :(
Visit my other games at : http://www.calvinusgames.com

waehuun
Civilian
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2013 4:54 pm

Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:50 am

Thank you for your reply, calvinus! :thumbsup:

I bet that out of what you have said, to me the map update procedure seems to be the most likely cause for my lag problems. But I will test that in a multiplayer hot-seat game (where there should be no AI) in the next days. What happens during that map update process?

I will also test whether smaller scenarios or lower screen resolutions improve FPS, or whether the game runs better on my laptop.

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calvinus
Posts: 4681
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:52 pm
Location: Italy
Contact: Website

Fri Aug 02, 2013 10:59 am

Mmmhh... the map update is performed only during some steps. For example after AI has finished "thinking", or just after the battles resolution, or after the end turn/phase procedure, or after you have modified the game/fow parameters in options window...

So this procedure is not performed regularly during play time if none of the above listed operations are done. That's to say if you scroll the map and schedule orders, the game should run quite smoothly. The only lags during such activity should be determined by the loading process of map areas when scrolling the map (unless you loaded the whole map at start, and in any case map areas -after loaded- remain in VRAM, so no further lags for map scroll to same areas) and updating the map for some action's effects (but normally limited to the concerned areas).
Visit my other games at : http://www.calvinusgames.com

waehuun
Civilian
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2013 4:54 pm

Tue Aug 06, 2013 3:13 pm

I believe I have found out what causes the map update lags:

I have checked my savegames and found out that some (those affected) were 20MB whereas all other savegames were 2MB. Now, what is different in the 20MB savegames? They are just like the others except that they include a terribly large amount of VisibilityBonusAI modifiers. This is what it looks like:

Code: Select all

[FOG OF WAR]
BeginFogOfWar
   VisibilityBonusAI={0;1;0;FOWB_Event}
   VisibilityBonusAI={0;2;0;FOWB_Event}
   ...

There are about 500000 (yes, that half a million) of those lines. They are all identical except the second number in the paranthesis, which goes from 0 to 2631 (or 2912, skipping some) and then starts from 0 (or sometimes 237) again in the next line.

No wonder the map update process takes forever … :bonk:
I have deleted those lines and the game loaded smooth, I’ll check whether that lag returns or not …

Regarding FPS:
Yes, the small scenarios yield better framerates. I got 20 FPS on my desktop in the Serbia scenario.
Also, my a few years older notebook [Intel Core i5-430M, 2x 2.26GHz • RAM: 4GB • ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650, 1GB] runs WW1 gold at ~50 FPS.

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