Slowdowns on Gigantic Galaxy

i've seen somewhat the same things, very late into the game.
I wish that when the game was processing that we had an indication, maybe the hourglass on the cursor. But that little button area between find and turn buttons might be a nice place to put an indicator. I've noticed when playing to try and break the game, the more cheats i try the slower the game does become.

rich

I'm also playing gigantic on a p4 1.8 w/512 ram. The only slowdown I have problems with is convoys. they move sluggishly, compared to single ships (manual moves).

there was discussion last month why ships just dont jump. It has to do with using blockades and pathfinding. By not viewing AI and your auto-move ships, the game does go faster.

Ted-

Let me clear up my "jump" statement.

I realize that the computer just can't go from point A to point B without going throuhg the individual "squares."

What I've been noticing is that the computer seems to be taking the same amount of time moving my ships as if I were watching them, which I am not. When I see AI ships move off screen (mini-map) they zip across the map. Right now in my game my ships are moving VERY SLOWLY wether I watch them or not. I would think that if I am not viewing my ships, they should be able to move just as rapidly as the AI ships.


as for the rest of my original post-

I'm still not sure why I (900mhz with 512mb) need to wait so long for an "event screen" or "starbase upgrade screen" to be cleared from the screen after selecting an action. If there is no way to get rid of this delay, then it would be very helpful to have some kind of processing icon.

I would also suggest there be a warning included with the minimum recommended system about gigantic map sizes. I believe the min. rec. system is a 600mhz. For me with a 900mhz the game has all but become unplayable in the late stages of the game on a gigantic map.

I have also notice that this does not necessarily relate to the amount of ships on screen. I have been reducing the number of ships, mine and AI's, but turns are still taking a lot of time. I'm assuming that the number of starbases, people, and upgrades also greatly effect performace.

Sorry if I am way off base here, don't know too much about programming. And I do love the game! I'll just have to use my faster machine to run the larger galaxies I guess if this slowdown can't be fixed.

Scott

Do you think the slowdown is partially caused by the debugger?
As for a faster machine, that's what I did in '96, upgraded my 486/33 to 486/100 just to play gigantic galaxy in os/2 galciv.

In my current game (24*24 galaxy, near end game (still), hundreds of ships, 400+ planets), I am seeing almost 2 hours a turn. It seems to take at least 45 minutes now to complete the "next turn" phase, at least 45 minutes for the autopilot phase, and the rest is wy making decisions. While debugging can cause some degredation, I think Cari said most of the debugging stuff had been removed. I think this may be a GREAT BIG RED FLAG for these extra large galaxies.

I have a similar rig to Scott and face the same issues. I have reported them previously. The issue here is not what Jack seems to have - that is really unplayable - but slow down in particular places which Scott describes very well. This seems more to do with code bottlenecks than processing demand as the overall slow down is proportional to she size of the galaxy on my machine and I can live with this.

I would not suggest that this means scrapping huge 24x24 Galaxies, i can play them perfectly well - even now. The focus has to be on the specific slow-down points and some better info on the Turn button telling us what's going on.

Lucky Jack i haven't had the problem you are seeing. I have a p4 1.6g 512ddr for the computer i'm playing on.

i've noticed a couple of things, if you use the cheats, you thrash the game something fierce and it slows way down.

also when i watch all my autopilot ships, and the alien ships, when the alien ships finish it only seems 2 seconds to the we built a... screen comes on. Yes the turn itself is pretty long now that i'm watching everything, so if we don't watch everything we do need a better "i'm working on it" button. I still think changing the cursor might make the best sense, (love those 3d cursors form stardocks cursor xp package)

What cheats are you talking about? I thought there weren't supposed to be any.

On my system on 24x24 I get about 3 seconds wait per turn. So if you have a saved game that has that kind of terrible performance, you should send it in. It could be something is messed up in that game.

Of course, if you have it set to watch everything per turn then yea, it's going to take awhile. Though I'm not sure how this is an issues since at that point the player has made that choice.

I think that he ments bugs.

Brad-

What are the specs of your machine?

My main problem is not the amount of time that it takes after clicking the turn button, but the time you have to wait after having one of the following happen-

*invading a planet and clicking ok
*an event screen pops up and clicking ok
*upgrading a starbase and clicking ok

After clicking the ok button on any of these events, there is a pause of about 30 seconds or more. There is no indicator, such as a cursor change, that the computer is processing the information. Also, it is hard for me to understand why the pause takes place at these times. I am more than willing to accept a very long pause after I click the "turn" button. However the pauses that happen above "feel" wrong and are annoying.

Another thing I have noticed late in my current game-

*The Acrean went to war with me and there was no warning screen.
*I control almost the entire galaxy with influence and yet planets are not defecting. I didn't think about this too much until I saved one time in the middle of my turn. The next time I played and loaded up the saved game, the first screen to pop up was that a planet defected to my side. As I continue to play still no other planets are defecting! Thinking back, I do believe this is not the first time this has happened in my game.

Scott

I think the long pause are all your auto-pilot ships moving. Perhaps a message stating that would help.

Ted-

I don't think this is the case. Right now in the game, I do not have many or any ships on autopilot. Most of my ships are in orbit or next to an enemy planet. I just invaded a system and had to wait upwards of 30 secs for the screen to clear.

Scott

I am having slowdown on manual moving ships, convoys so bad stopped using them. I have 119 in orbit, 30 guarding starbases, 121 on auto and 46 manual moves (used star orbit on ship list). I re-booted machine and still have problem. (:(

i'm really down to no more than 2 seconds between finish my turn and back to me. This particular game i'm playing evil (unlike me) i'll play the next game on monday after the new beta comes out

Lucky Jack Cheats = bugs, , Like trading for an entire a.i. That seems that really slows the game down.

The worst delay I have had in the current build is about a minute on 24 * 24 and even that much is rare. I have P4 1.7 Mhz with 256 RAM and only play the largest galaxy size. The minute delay did happen when both I and the remaining 3 AIs have tons of ships in movement including a large fleet under my control during a war late game. Most of the time I have 2-5 seconds wait even during autosave turns.

could my 191 planets cause my slowdown ? Also, I've been conquering planets and hit spacebar within a second. The planet view screen does not appear until 10 seconds after the music stops. I think ships are moving in the backround after my successful invasion and the planet view.

i think so too! i've taken a planet and as i finish the planet screen, I see ships hae been moving in that sector. Pretty amazing mult-threading

Why is it so slow at the end of a game on a gigantic galaxy? I think in my case a lot of it was subjective. When I got right down to measuring just what was taking how much, I found to my dismay that what I thought was taking 45 minutes was only taking 10-15 minutes, with the rest being time I was taking with my own responses to what the game was presenting to me. But even that is much.

I think there has to be a threashhold of some sort involved because the performance was quite acceptable until the number of ships and panets in my game reached a threshhold, then the time for the autopilot and next turn phases started increasing exponentially. The games I sent to Cari (Brad, I can resend them to you if you desire) for the problem with the system planet list not being displayed, By the time I reallized how long the autopilot and next turn phases were taking I had over 400 ships (240 on autopilot) and over 380 planets (I eventually had over 430).

One thing I did (pretty much by accident, really) was to set my spending rate to 0%. That time the "next turn" phase took almost no time at all (just a couple of seconds for the AI turns). (NOTE: I did NOT have any system paging IO to speak of.)

Another thing I noticed, mostly due to the slowdowns I was seeing, The display of the star base upgrade wil often remain after the "accept" button is clocked until the autopilot phase detects another ship reaching its destination. It may be that redrawing the screen at that point would add too much overhead, but there is no indication that the button push is actually being acted upon. Sometimes it shows as greyed out, sometime not. This, and similar situations, has been what prompted me to suggest putting a "busy" indicator (like the clock over the "turn" button during "next turn" processing) on the "turn" key when the autopilot phase is busy and not soliciting input from the player.

I ment "put a clock on the "find" button when the autopilot phase ..... " I swear my proofreading is getting worse and worse.

Has anyone noticed how long it takes to load a gigantic galaxy game, near end. It took my machine nearly 5 mins from 95% to gametime. And I cant swap to IE while game loads in backround.

Ted,

I got the same startup delay you did. Again I think there is a threashhold in number of ships and number of planets where this starts to become noticable. I noticed this when I had over 400 ships and over 380 planets, and I have a 1G processor. I also have my system monitor on watching for paging I/O, but there was very little of that, so I am certain my 128Mb RAM is sufficient. Anyone noticing this behavior may wish to count your ships and planets to use towards building some kind of trigger point table for this problem. If you post your counts here I will keep the table.