Really, really slow auto-saves?

[Ken_Oh]

I know that dev versions of Wesnoth aren't optomized and all, but I'm wondering if this is being talked about. One of my team for my campaign http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=162936 is really down on the whole thing because, as he says, it feels like he's back on Commodore 64.

What happens is right before the player turn, whenever there are a lot of units on the map (my campaign continually has you have 30+ units at a time) the game will freeze. I've had to wait for up to 2 minutes 30 seconds.

Sorry I can't talk more right now, but a friend has problems with this so I thought I'd at least put this on the table.

Thanks!

[Elvish_Pillager]

I haven't had this problem, using either the official Mac build of 1.1.5 or my own build of 1.1.5+SVN.

[Baufo]

I've had this problem too with the normal 1.1.5 but only with a maybe 5 secs or so gap if there are lots of units on the map. But as I can wait 5 secs the rare times it happens I was too lazy to download this high speed Windows build yet.

[Dragon Master]

I get a bit of slow down at the beginning, but it's not more then 30+ seconds at most, and I'm patient enough to wait.

[Sly]

I didn't notice a slow autosave (not significantly slower than before) but I noticed that averything in the game become slower and slower as long as I play without exiting Wesnoth, so there may be a memory leak
(on Windows with 1.1.5)

[alchemist]

I can confirm this is a big problem with windows builds... notice people who say they don't have it are on mac (or probably linux).

I've tried three different machines with a clean install of Wesnoth... each with Windows XP SP2 (patched to latest). The problematic slowdown seems to be specifically autosave, because it happens every 3 turns like clockwork after the 1st. This bad performance is further exacerbated if you are playing a scenario or map that is storing a lot of game state, whether it be high unit count or perhaps lots of unit manipulation (ala some of the scripted scenarios like Defense of The Marshall).

To emphasize the user pain this causes, before an autosave or manual save would take maybe as long as 10 or 20 seconds. Now, on the same exact hardware and operating environment, that same save can take a minute, two minutes, or more. I have been in multiplayer games where it takes 5 minutes for each person running Windows to lag through every 3rd turn after the 1st.

I believe it has been an issue since at least 1.1.4 (if not 1.1.3), or whenever the auto-saving was changed.

Finally, for what it's worth, there does seem to be some correlation between disk fragmentation and local system I/O. Between a desktop and a laptop the problem is noticeably worse on a laptop (which has much slower spindle speeds on the HDD). Between a filesystem that has heavy fragmentation vs. almost none there is also a noticeable delta. But these are just more icings of pain... the true agony of waiting and waiting and waiting during every damn third other turn persists.

Cheers if you read this far.

[Dragon Master]

Is it possible to make auto-saves optional?

[alchemist]

Not that I know of in official release... I am not quite savvy enough to compile my own local version of Windows, but maybe there is a compile flag to adjust the behavior?

[bignall]

That was the first thing I noticed when I started playing 1.1.5. The units move much more slowly, and therefore choppier. The AI often takes forever to decide what to do (this is especially evident in the Despair and Decay campaign, especially on The Fall of Elensafar, but I've noticed it on several campaigns and scenarios). Saves and loads take forever, etc.

[Na'enthos]

Hmm.. I have to chip in here. I definitely noticed how long it takes for Wesnoth (on Windows, regular 1.1.5) to save and load.. but then again it's been a while since I've played Wesnoth on a PC. Macs are better, anyhow.

[Dragon Master]

Macs are better, anyhow. :wink:

Let's not get into this. I'm not going to buy another computer just to make my game play 20 sec. faster thank you very much.

Alchemist: You said it would be possible to make auto-saves optional, what are some devs opinions on this? I personally find auto-saves to be useless, if I lose a don't restart 3 turns ago, I just load from when I last saved.

[Na'enthos]

Let's not get into this. I'm not going to buy another computer just to make my game play 20 sec. faster thank you very much.

Relax, I was just jokin' around.

[flava_clown]

Is it possible to make auto-saves optional?

that would help a lot. and a quicksave function instead, would be nice too. but i mean quick, without to save the unnecessary informations like statistics from older scenarios nor the animations/movement/resistence for every single unit. all these things weren't in save games from older versions.

the unit movement is mostly okay, if it's too slow you can activate the speed up option, but this looks like a joke from the 'benny hill show' (imho)

btw. if someone can/want donate a mac, then feel free to contact me, for the direction and the like...

Macs are better, anyhow.

that's a fact we have to accept ... but let's say that we talk about wesnoth and not about the better computer nor about the better os...

however the latest 3d shooter runs better on windows than the 2d wesnoth and that's what some people can't bear with... if you know what i mean!

[torangan]

Try out the new 1.1.6, there's optimization work going on for saves and some should have made the cut AFAIK.

[Ken_Oh]

I'll look to see what's in store for the newer versions. I think tonight I'll go ahead and test it on a Mac, just to see if it's not even slightly the same.

I also found this http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... ht=#161926 (I should really check the front page more often). Splroink mentioned exactly what I am talking about. It bottlenecks for a long time on either the auto-save or the regular save.

Anyway, thanks for all the replies.