[Medium Priority] Game starts to lag after 15 minutes of gameplay

[DaFuzz]

Hijya guys.

0.8.10.1

Very happy to hear that you guys fixed the collision thingy where my base ate my vehicles and crashed the game.
I'm going to test it very soon after I finished my mobile base with places for all 4 of my vehicles, so that should prove to work or fail.

However currently I'm experiencing a lot of lag when I switch between build vision and normal vision.
This happens to me after about 30 minutes of playing and building.
This lag cannot be resolved by switching off build vision, however returning to the main menu returns miracles



You can watch me build my mothership if you want, however about 1 minute before the end, you notice the game becomes unplayable.
Other things I noticed during the video was that the center of weight for my hauler was connected to the little base the jack was connected too.
Only after removing the jack, the centre of weight corrected itself.

What I also noticed was that the lag was worst when I was looking at that massive floor of batteries in build vision.
It tries to keep all the timers and solar panels up to date, which i can assume is a massive calculation.
It looks like the process for the timers takes some time to shut down when switching from build vision to normal vision, which can be accelerated by shutting down the GUI (main menu) and then return to the game again.

I hope it helps solve some performance issues.

[Goose]

Can you send me your save? I will try to reproduce it

[DaFuzz]

But of course my nomadic friend

www.transfernow.net/46fpo0m65mk2

Have fun

I've just continued building my base while my hauler was hovering over the landing pad I'm building.

Building.jpg

I was capable of building for about 25 minutes and then it slowed down to a crawl again, while I was removing floor panels.
So it happened after aprox. 36 minutes and once around 25 minutes, so it should happen before building for 40 minutes.

I'm getting a little bit jealous now, you guys are only playing games all day long for work :P

[Menzagitat]

...I'm getting a little bit jealous now, you guys are only playing games all day long for work :P

I am sure when they have to make a hot fix (like this Friday), they have a lot of stress. Maybe some of them have white hair already?
Also if they receive many messages, they have no time to code...

[Goose]

Thanks for save

I'm getting a little bit jealous now, you guys are only playing games all day long for work :P

There is a slight difference between Playing and Testing lol.

I am sure when they have to make a hot fix (like this Friday), they have a lot of stress. Maybe some of them have white hair already?
Also if they receive many messages, they have no time to code...

No white hair yet but I'm sure its coming soon

[DaFuzz]

There is a slight difference between Playing and Testing lol.

With the emphasis on "slight"
Now I'm confused if I'm playing planet nomads, or testing planet nomads

ps, found anything usefull?

[Goose]

ps, found anything usefull?

not yet but Martin will look at it today

[martinsustek]

This bug is very strange. I've managed to find a way how to trigger this laggy behabiour with one of our internal debug functions. But it works only in approx. 1/10 attempts .

I've found that most of the lag is caused by some weird interaction between solar cells and/or batteries and printers. Probably the power outage or source items shortage causes some slow routines to be executed. It has something to do with searching all connected containers for some item. I've managed to optimize that routines a little bit, but not enough. What is worse, the main reason why it is called so often and why does pausing the game resolve are still unknown for me. I must dive deeper into the code.

[DaFuzz]

I wish I could help you with the code, but unfortunately, I can;t (so I'm not going to pretend)
However, one of the things I suspect, and I had to check it in the video, is that the rain might cause this.
Yesterday I noticed that the lag primarily starts when the rain begins and funny enough, this is what happened in the video as well.

Hope that helps

[martinsustek]

I've probably found it. Maybe it was something else in your case but in my case it was solar panel . When fully discharged it's "internal battery" internal logic "disconnected" panel from the circuit. Split second later it got some little sunpower and re-connected itself again. Each of this (dis)connections triggered circuit recalculations, that triggered recalculations in printers, that had to scan for all it's connected containers for availability of source items. The overall effect of all of this was hundreds of milliseconds and dozens of megabytes wasted each frame.

We've changed that logic a little bit so it does not connect to the circuit until it has accumulated enough energy, so this oscillation should not happen in the next release of the game. I've also slightly optimized that "do I have enough resources" method in printers.

So now short lag could still happen but should not be chained together to cause big FPS drop.

[DaFuzz]

Fantastic news, so, guess my first hunch about the batteries was not that crazy
Looking forward to the new release and thanks, good work

[fura]

I think your hunch about the rain wasn't too off either. During heavy rain light conditions are, well, sub-optimal Maybe it wasn't enough light to keep the solar panel's "internal battery" charged, which lead to the oscillation described by Martin.
But that's just my 2 cents Maybe I'm seeing more connection here than what really is.

[DaFuzz]

So I guess I'm now the official torturer of planet nomads.
The lag I was complaining about after 35 minutes of gameplay is now rather constant and no longer solvable with the menu.

I thought it might be a good idea to take the hauler a way out of the way from the base to increase my framerate which is now at a staggering 15 fps if I'm lucky.
I hoped decreasing the screen resolution would solve it a bit, but I think I'm really kicking the game's ass with my build style.
The more I build, the slower the game becomes and I'm not done for long.

This video is from my hauler to my base, you can see the frame rate in the top left.



Here's the save game, you should notice the processing power immediately after startup

I hope your energy fix will solve this, any date when the fix will be released?

[Menzagitat]

So I guess I'm now the official torturer of planet nomads.
The lag...

Omg. That lag is bad. I guess you are both punisher and punished.
p.s. you have nice desktops in background

[DaFuzz]

Thanks, they change.

So, I managed to get rid of that lag big time by putting the hauler away where I left it, it did increase my frame rate to acceptable levels.
However, I found one that is nicely replicatable

When I open my hangar doors, My frame rate is fine.
However when I close them, my frame rate drops to eyeball scratching boredom.



This is rather odd considering I remove the electricity from the doors, so logically it should increase my frame rate.
Puzzled again, maybe I'm teasing the physics to much

[Goose]

any date when the fix will be released?

In this weeks update ;)

[Goose]

Thanks, they change.

So, I managed to get rid of that lag big time by putting the hauler away where I left it, it did increase my frame rate to acceptable levels.
However, I found one that is nicely replicatable

When I open my hangar doors, My frame rate is fine.
However when I close them, my frame rate drops to eyeball scratching boredom.



This is rather odd considering I remove the electricity from the doors, so logically it should increase my frame rate.
Puzzled again, maybe I'm teasing the physics to much

are the doors operational in that save you posted? Or not finished ?

[DaFuzz]

are the doors operational in that save you posted? Or not finished ?

The doors were nearly finished.
I was very proud about the point where both doors would close seamless and looked like a wall when closed.
I did this (but you already know that I guess) by placing small angled blocks in the middle, so they would form another full block once the doors would be closed.
I think that's where the lag is coming from, because the angled blocks were colliding slightly with each other (angled face on angled face)

I did remove the entire door and build a new one to check if I could solve this lag.
Unfortunately, that door won't close properly, so I guess it's back to the drawing board for me

Here's what I mean with not closing entirely (or not at all)



It's approximately the same setup as my old two doors, but this is just one door
I just tested the door by removing the winch cables and the door stayed open like that

[DaFuzz]

I need some help from Craneballs.
How can I test if the battery fix worked?
Can I continue about the lag in the door or should I start a new thread about that, because I rebuild it in the original state and have this lagging experience again.

[Goose]

New thread would be better... I'll PM you about that battery fix