SLOW Performance Issues: post here to report

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Eolith
Posts: 138
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 2:45 pm
Location: Oh, about six or seven different universes at once.

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by Eolith »

Computer stats:

-System:
Windows XP Pro SP3

-Computer:
Intel Pentium III processor
731 MHz, 576 MB RAM

-BFW version: 1.4

I have had problems with loading saved games. For some reason, when loading a campaign I am currently building, it takes about 5-15 minutes to load a saved game. This was not a huge problem for quite a while, but now BFW closes itself every time I try to load a game. stderr.txt tells me that too much memory was used. I tried deleting all my other saves and all the add-ons except for mine, but the problem has continued. I never had it before.
stderr.txt
(591 Bytes) Downloaded 825 times
I have also had problems with Under the Burning Suns. Towards the end of the campaign, I often have problems with selecting and moving units. The AI's turn does not take longer than I have come to expect (1-3 minutes), but I often have a lag-time of 10-40 seconds between selecting a unit and being able to move it. And no, I did not give Kaleh either the camouflage or the charisma ability, because I looked at the coding and did not think them very useful.

This problem occurs in Northern Rebirth as well, but that did not surprise me considering that the map tended to be covered with units.

I know that there have been some improvements with the BFW 1.6 branch, and I also have versions 1.6.2 and 1.6.5. I do not use them much, however, since I was unsuccessful in upgrading my campaigns.
Completed Add-Ons (BfW 1.4): Dark Century (era); From Darkness to Light (campaign); Rise of Toraila (era); Forty Years Exile (campaign); (BfW 1.6.5) Improved Era (era)

In Process (BfW 1.6.5): Crystal of Sight (campaign)
AI
Developer
Posts: 2396
Joined: January 31st, 2008, 8:38 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by AI »

Is there anything you have installed on this computer lately? If this problem appeared recently, then something has decreased the amount of available memory. (either that, or you've done something outrageous in WML)
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Eolith
Posts: 138
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 2:45 pm
Location: Oh, about six or seven different universes at once.

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by Eolith »

Nothing has been installed since at least a week before the problem started (with my campaign, that is.) The one with UtBS has always been there through three operating systems and four reformats.

I may have made some major mistake in scenario coding without knowing it, but I have not found any. I think I will go back and try taking out the last few scenarios, then see if it works.

edit:
I just removed the last three scenarios, and I was able to load my saved game faster than ever before. Apparently I did make a mistake in the coding. Thanks for the suggestion!
Completed Add-Ons (BfW 1.4): Dark Century (era); From Darkness to Light (campaign); Rise of Toraila (era); Forty Years Exile (campaign); (BfW 1.6.5) Improved Era (era)

In Process (BfW 1.6.5): Crystal of Sight (campaign)
albero78
Posts: 1
Joined: February 22nd, 2010, 7:25 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by albero78 »

Hi all:
these are my specifics:
Asus PSQ5L
E6300
2gb ram
ATI radeon HD850 512mb
Windows XP

Battle for wesnoth is very very slow in loading save games and in enemy turns.

Caouls be so kind to give me some advices?
batoonike
Posts: 75
Joined: January 3rd, 2009, 8:14 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by batoonike »

Windows xp, Wesnoth Version 1.6.4+svn, English US language, Celeron (:)) 1.7Ghz sth, 512 500~mhz RAM, Geforce 5600 XT.

To produce a problem, you need a really high hp unit with berserker attack and a whole bunch of AI units around it, that can all attack it. All AI melee attackers have like 99,99% chance to die and there are some AI ranged attackers aswell. So the AI cant really do anything that wouldnt make its situation worse expect use the ranged attackers, who will, however, die on the next round if they get close to berserker. So the AI is basicly doomed and it takes rediculously long time for it to make a move. Im not talking about like 30 seconds of nothing happening, its closer to 15-20 minutes with like 25 AI units in range and 1 berserker unit.
I know its more like add-on problem, since the single high hp berserker unit + masses of AI units wont usually happen in standard games. For me it happened on the Colosseum map from the add-ons server. But it seems like the AI is calculating throught all the possible attack rounds against berserkers, and there are a lot of them. Instead in case it attacks unit with berserk attack, it could make some rough estimation of what will hapen most likely, based on the HP of each unit and attack and whether there is drain or no drain involved, so it doesnt have to go through all the rounds.

You will probably need the Colosseum scenario to see savegame but in this sitation it took like 15-20 minutes for AI to start making moves. Once it got going, it got a bit faster, but still like 5-10 minutes between moves. After all attack possibilities were used, it was ok.

I did not watch any info from the manual or did anything, that stops the AI from thinking, while it was figuring out ways to get its units owned.

(The savegame might not be there in the future)
http://batoonike.indrek.org/Colosseum_Turn_114.gz
Thank you.
H-Hour
Posts: 222
Joined: April 14th, 2010, 12:27 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by H-Hour »

I'm getting extreme slow-down when playing multiplayer and on a call with Skype. This is worst when in the lobby, and the lobby becomes almost unusable for me. It can take several minutes to get into a game. The difficult part is clicking the Friends filter, usually when mousing over the checkbox the hover effect is really delayed (hover as in CSS:hover), and when I click on it it often freezes the screen for 15-30 seconds before activating. Getting off the call with Skype fixed it immediately.

If it's just the case that Skype calling / Wesnoth don't go well together, that's alright. I just need to know to find another program for voice comms. But I thought I'd report it because I didn't have the problems with 1.6.5.

If I've missed anything that I ought to add here, let me know:

Operating System: Windows XP
Wesnoth Version: 1.8.0
RAM: 2gb
CPU: 1.73Ghz (old! it's a Dell laptop from 2005)
network type: broadband

I did not compile myself, but downloaded the windows 1.8.0 exe shortly after release.

Thanks for a great game! Skype isn't vital to me, but I wanted to report it in case it would be useful.
Anarchid
Posts: 21
Joined: June 8th, 2007, 7:30 am

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by Anarchid »

More interestingly, the server seems somewhat swamped lately - got some consistent timeouts and disconnects despite being on a solid and fast connection; this also was the case for other players involved.

Perhaps, the lobby server is not really ready yet for 1.8 rng mechanism :\
wiloyee2
Posts: 3
Joined: April 11th, 2009, 7:30 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by wiloyee2 »

Anarchid wrote:More interestingly, the server seems somewhat swamped lately - got some consistent timeouts and disconnects despite being on a solid and fast connection; this also was the case for other players involved.

Perhaps, the lobby server is not really ready yet for 1.8 rng mechanism :\
I have had the same connection problems today.
wiloyee2
Posts: 3
Joined: April 11th, 2009, 7:30 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by wiloyee2 »

batoonike wrote:Windows xp, Wesnoth Version 1.6.4+svn, English US language, Celeron (:)) 1.7Ghz sth, 512 500~mhz RAM, Geforce 5600 XT.


To produce a problem, you need a really high hp unit with berserker attack and a whole bunch of AI units around it, that can all attack it. All AI melee attackers have like 99,99% chance to die and there are some AI ranged attackers aswell. So the AI cant really do anything that wouldnt make its situation worse expect use the ranged attackers, who will, however, die on the next round if they get close to berserker. So the AI is basicly doomed and it takes rediculously long time for it to make a move. Im not talking about like 30 seconds of nothing happening, its closer to 15-20 minutes with like 25 AI units in range and 1 berserker unit.

[trunk...]

You will probably need the Colosseum scenario to see savegame but in this sitation it took like 15-20 minutes for AI to start making moves. Once it got going, it got a bit faster, but still like 5-10 minutes between moves. After all attack possibilities were used, it was ok.

[trunk ...]

Thank you.
I agree .. If the AI don't see a chance to hit he will take a very long time.
This can come when he don't see a chance to win or if you have a huge map and the AI can't see you. Bay the way - Wesnoth 1.8 is faster then the older versions.

If in a online game the server disconnects (Colosseum and the server loose his Hero), then a new server will be selected.
In our game a slow celeron was chosen as new host. This wasn't a good idea. So I think the host transfer should be improved.

bye
Bernd
User avatar
Death
Posts: 85
Joined: April 15th, 2008, 3:34 am

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by Death »

I have had the same connection problems.
ditto.



edit: never mind. 1.8.1 seems to be fine (better, even)
ShakeZula
Posts: 21
Joined: September 18th, 2010, 2:04 am

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by ShakeZula »

Sorry if this has already been reported, but I don't have the ability to read 10 pages just to not repost.

Sometimes after playing wesnoth for a while and most often whenever I install new add ons, wesnoth appears to freeze at the loading bar, the bar will move all the way across with no text at the bottom and stop at the end, staying there. Upon further investigation I discovered that it was not freezing, just taking an extremely long time, if I wait (it varies) about 15-20 minutes the text will start appearing and it will continue to load the cache and unit files very slowly. After stopping the process myself I find that when I restart wesnoth it has failed to load several add ons, while some remain in the game, only if I wait the entire time (sometimes up to a half hour) for it to load will all the add ons be available. This appears to be related to the add ons, but it happens all the same when I have no add ons installed, I have also reinstalled several times to make sure it wasn't a faulty installation, but have always packaged the user files in the game directory "/Program Files/Wesnoth". This also happens sometimes after I have been playing a campaign and quit to the title screen and try to join the multiplayer server and after clicking the cancel button on the add on server screen, apparently whenever the game has to load or reload a set of factions or era files. If I do nothing but start the game, join the MP lobby and then promptly quit the game after that, it never happens. Given that my computer sucks, this could be part of the problem, but still wouldn't expect it to load this slowly.

Note that sometimes it takes longer than others, but always an obscenely long time for a progress bar when it "freezes", and sometimes when starting the game the progress bar only goes halfway very quickly, stops and I get the title screen.

Unrelated: Turning lobby sounds off does not work for me

Windows 2000 Professional SP4
800Mhz Pentium III 256Mb RAM
Fast DSL Connection
Wesnoth exe installer Versions 1.8.4 and 1.8.5
user files located in install directory
HomerJ
Posts: 812
Joined: April 25th, 2008, 1:22 pm
Location: Hannover, Germany

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by HomerJ »

ShakeZula wrote: Windows 2000 Professional SP4
800Mhz Pentium III 256Mb RAM
Yap, that is probably the reason... I would be impressed however if it would run smoothly at all even without any addons.

Greetz
HomerJ
Six years without a signature!
vcap
Posts: 80
Joined: August 1st, 2010, 3:34 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by vcap »

HomerJ wrote:
ShakeZula wrote: Windows 2000 Professional SP4
800Mhz Pentium III 256Mb RAM
Yap, that is probably the reason... I would be impressed however if it would run smoothly at all even without any addons.
Imho, even with such a slow cpu[1] and so little memory[2], the game still should not have the sort of issues ShakeZula mentioned.

[1] not that slow, anyway, the pandora has less than that and wesnoth runs fine there, i am told.
[2] iirc, the pandora has 256Mb, and that's 256 total, not 256+swap. otoh the pandora build is compiled with a special lowmem flag, and i bet it incurs less overhead from its OS. EDIT5: now that i think about it, the special build option for the pandora is actually smallgui, not lowmen, right? (in any case, the numbers below suggest that it may not need lowmem).

EDIT: and i know for a fact the game runs fine with 256Mb and a 1.5Ghz cpu, on linux+lxde. So, that really leaves us with the slow cpu (unlikely), and the OS overhead (more likely), or something wrong in the game itself.

EDIT2: I gathered some data on the 256Mb/1.5Ghz system with "pidstat -h -druw -p $wesnoth_pid 15 > wesnoth.log", and they broadly match what i expected. This is with wesnoth 1.8.4 as shipped by Arch Linux (no special compilation option). I played through scenario1 of HttT starting from the titlescreen (already loaded, so not taking the initial load into account) up to scenario2 turn1 side1, in fullscreen 1400x1050/16bpp.

VSZ (memory allocated) peeked at 206624k, and RSS (memory effectively taking physical RAM) at 172136k. %CPU never got over 40, except once in the 15-30s range where it was 60 (that would be either opening the campaigns menu, loading the campaign, or both), and more often than not it would be under 30. That number is misleading though, since it doesn't include the cpu usage for the X server which is going to be significant with all those redraws, but probably not more than 20% (i would have noticed otherwise since, if the system had sustained 50+ total for more than a couple of minutes it would have started the noisy fans). So, not more than 50% cpu on 1.5Ghz => should be able to run fine on a 800Mhz cpu.

EDIT3: otoh, cpu usage over an interval of 15sec is not going to mean much in term of interactive performance. Most of the time the numbers will be showing the game waiting for me to make my move.

EDIT4: Starting from the third line (or the 9th depending how you count them), you can actually see me reading the story :lol2:
Attachments
wesnoth.log
results of: pidstat -h -druw -p $wesnoth_pid 15 ; playing through HttT scenario1 / wesnoth 1.8.4
(56.36 KiB) Downloaded 712 times
tatog
Posts: 2
Joined: October 23rd, 2010, 1:09 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by tatog »

ShakeZula wrote:Sorry if this has already been reported, but I don't have the ability to read 10 pages just to not repost.

Sometimes after playing wesnoth for a while and most often whenever I install new add ons, wesnoth appears to freeze at the loading bar, the bar will move all the way across with no text at the bottom and stop at the end, staying there. Upon further investigation I discovered that it was not freezing, just taking an extremely long time, if I wait (it varies) about 15-20 minutes the text will start appearing and it will continue to load the cache and unit files very slowly. After stopping the process myself I find that when I restart wesnoth it has failed to load several add ons, while some remain in the game, only if I wait the entire time (sometimes up to a half hour) for it to load will all the add ons be available. This appears to be related to the add ons, but it happens all the same when I have no add ons installed, I have also reinstalled several times to make sure it wasn't a faulty installation, but have always packaged the user files in the game directory "/Program Files/Wesnoth". This also happens sometimes after I have been playing a campaign and quit to the title screen and try to join the multiplayer server and after clicking the cancel button on the add on server screen, apparently whenever the game has to load or reload a set of factions or era files. If I do nothing but start the game, join the MP lobby and then promptly quit the game after that, it never happens. Given that my computer sucks, this could be part of the problem, but still wouldn't expect it to load this slowly.

Note that sometimes it takes longer than others, but always an obscenely long time for a progress bar when it "freezes", and sometimes when starting the game the progress bar only goes halfway very quickly, stops and I get the title screen.

Unrelated: Turning lobby sounds off does not work for me

Windows 2000 Professional SP4
800Mhz Pentium III 256Mb RAM
Fast DSL Connection
Wesnoth exe installer Versions 1.8.4 and 1.8.5
user files located in install directory
Same problem than you
It's not windows, i have exactly the same issues using ubuntu

Ubuntu 10.10
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz | 2Gb RAM
Fast DSL Connection
wesnoth 1.8.5

the problem started after installing addons (i have all :P )
tatog
Posts: 2
Joined: October 23rd, 2010, 1:09 pm

Re: SLOW Performance Issues: post here to Help

Post by tatog »

i just find the problem: 2467 cache files
when i open cache folder takes more than 5 minutes to load
same 5 minutes that takes to load a game

Problem solved after deleting all cache files and addons!
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