SLOW Performance Issues: post here to report

[In_My_CrossHairs]

I'm currently trying to run Wesnoth on my old laptop.
The System Specs
1: 690mhz Processor with Inspiron 3800
2: 64mb RAM
3: OS is Win2000 Professional Pack upgraded to 5.0
4: Pentium 3

Also, is Wesnoth CPU intensive or a RAM intensive game? What I mean is, certain TBS's and RTS's are either RAM or CPU intensive (meaning almost exclusively needs or runs of of).
Thanks!

[ilor]

I'd say you're out of luck due to RAM. Wesnoth needs well over a hundred MB of ram for itself.

In general more cpu will give you smoother scrolling and generally a more snappy experience and more ram won't give you anything if you have enough and will kill performance if you dont. I *think* your cpu should be enough.

[AI]

Pop in a 256 MB stick of ram and it should run as smooth as it will get with that CPU. (which should be reasonable, though possibly a bit choppy)

The main problem will probably be to find pre-DDR memory that'll fit in your laptop.

[Corp28]

Halfway through the Under the Burning Suns campaign, the game began to freeze for about 20 seconds every time I move a unit.

I'm having the same problem as nagopaleen on Under the Burning Suns (though the lag after moving units is shorter, only ~5 seconds)

Have you taken 'charisma' or 'camouflage' AMLA with Kaleh befor the performance detoriated?

I also chose the camouflage and charisma upgrades (camo was in the second scenario iirc)

actually, I'm not positive about when exactly the problem started - it could well have appeared along with Kaleh's camouflage.

The lag wasn't initially present for me as well, but I am not sure exactly when it started (it was sometime around the 3rd scenario)

I'm running xubuntu 8.10
pentium4 2.8 GHz
512 MB RAM

[AI]

Which version are you using? These issues should have been fixed in 1.5.6.

[Corp28]

Oh, ok. I'm still on 1.4.5 (Installed it using synaptic package manager just the other day so I figured it would be the latest version)
heh, sry, guess I should have checked that first
Thanks for the fast reply

[Cernunnos]

Hi,

Wesnoth, 1.4 (ubuntu realease with the add/remove applications panel (1.4.0?))
on a P3 800MHz,
256Mo of Ram, but i'm not sure for this last one...
and Xubuntu hardy as an OS,

Slow when running another application, like a music player.
OK or not so slow when not running any other application.

[ilor]

Cernunnos: i'd say it's a RAM capacity bottleneck

[Cernunnos]

@ ilor: not complaining, just wanted to give you stats so you may be able to see what works and what doesn't, not complaining, great development (and dev team) in my humble opinion

[solsword]

System is Ubuntu 8.04,
2.0 GB RAM,
AMD Athlon 64-bit Dual Core 4400+ processor,
2.33 GB of swap

I was using Wesnoth from the Ubuntu repos (1.4.4) until today, when I decided that I wanted to try the Legend of Wesmere campaign. I downloaded 1.5.7 source tarball, untarred it, and built it using "scons all" and then installed it with "scons install", after getting the prerequisites from the Ubuntu repos.

I'm experiencing issues that seem similar to those reported by users of v1.3.3 and lower in this thread: the game is laggy, especially when a unit is selected. It also sometimes lags a bit when I scroll around the map, and unit moving animations are almost never displayed (the unit just jumps to it's destination, perhaps after moving one square) (yes, I have them turned on). Attack animations and damage are likewise rarely seen, but they occasionally happen. Things get worse during enemy turns: the turns will start laggy but by the last enemy turn all I'm getting is usually sound. The sound works fine, though, and i can even use shift to make it the sounds happen faster or slower, as they should. Animation is just gone. Then it gets around to my turn. I'll hear the turn start drum sound, and then about 5-10 seconds later, the game will update to new unit positions. The day/night image also doesn't update until this happens.

I experienced none of these issues with the repo build of 1.4.4, so I suspect I'm just missing some compile flags. I've tried making using ./configure, make, make install instead of scons, but that wasn't any help (unsurpisingly). Does anyone know what compile flags were used for the Ubuntu (or Debian) repo builds? (Also, how exactly should I apply them. e.g. if flags are "-O2" do I CFLAGS="-O2"; ./configure; make; make install, or ./configure; make CFLAGS=-O2; make install?)

Of course, the dev branch does come with warnings about potential performance problems, so it may be that I'm running into those. If that's the case, I'd be happy to try working on them, if anyone has tips on where they might be or how to profile wesnoth.

[loonycyborg]

2.0 GB RAM,
AMD Athlon 64-bit Dual Core 4400+ processor,
2.33 GB of swap

I'm experiencing issues that seem similar to those reported by users of v1.3.3 and lower in this thread: the game is laggy, especially when a unit is selected. It also sometimes lags a bit when I scroll around the map, and unit moving animations are almost never displayed (the unit just jumps to it's destination, perhaps after moving one square) (yes, I have them turned on). Attack animations and damage are likewise rarely seen, but they occasionally happen. Things get worse during enemy turns: the turns will start laggy but by the last enemy turn all I'm getting is usually sound. The sound works fine, though, and i can even use shift to make it the sounds happen faster or slower, as they should. Animation is just gone. Then it gets around to my turn. I'll hear the turn start drum sound, and then about 5-10 seconds later, the game will update to new unit positions. The day/night image also doesn't update until this happens.

Your hardware is somewhat better than mine, nonetheless the game isn't nearly so laggy for me even with debug builds(-O0). Considering that scons, just like ./configure;make passes -O2 by default this is definitely not flags problem.

[solsword]

Update-- I just built 1.4.7 on the same machine, and tried the first mission of "The South Guard" campaign: no lag issues there. I tried the same mission on 1.5.7, and experienced mild lag issues (not as bad as the first two missions of "Legend of Wesmere", which have more units). I played for a couple of turns in both versions, enough to investigate the fort and recruit one initial wave of peasants plus two waves of pikemen and bowmen. 1.4.7 showed no noticeable lag; 1.5.7 started lagging more after the first wave of pikemen/bowmen and even more after the second. If this is an issue with pathfinding performance, are path[find|utils].[c|h]pp the only relevant files or are there other places to look?

Thanks for the quick response, btw.

Another update-- I tried taking out the new defense subcosts for pathfinding, that didn't help anything. While doing so, I noticed an important detail: After recruiting three waves of units in the first scenario of "The South Guard" I was experiencing the same lag problems, and I noticed that when I move the mouse pointer from one hex to another, it sometimes takes a while (up to 10ish seconds) for the highlight to move to the new hex. This happens without having any unit selected, so it seems to me that the problem is probably in something that runs all the time. I'm going to try profiling the code next... Adding -pg to CFLAGS and LDFLAGS should do the trick, right? That's what I'm going to try, but any tips are appreciated.

[solsword]

So... I've found part of the problem, and it was completely on my end of things. As it turns out, not only am I running Ubuntu Hardy, I'm also running Compiz as my window manager. And, surprise-surprise, that causes some issues.

Ultimately, I think that I was running at 1024x696 (I maximized the window). This clearly isn't optimal. Setting things to 640x480 helps significantly, making the first level of "The South Guard" quite playable, with only intermittent lag and then only for 0.5-2 seconds.

Unfortunately, the first level of "Legend of Wesmere" still lags a bit, even at 640x480. It's much better, but still annoying, and sometimes combat animations will be dropped. If I switch window managers to Metacity it works fine at 640x480, just like 1.4.7 at 1024x696 on Compiz (I suppose I haven't experimented with the "Legend of Wesmere" level with those settings, but I played through all of the default single-player campaigns with 1.4.4 from the Ubuntu repos without experiencing any lag, using Compiz and 1024x696, and I'm sure some of those scenarios have just as many units/just as large maps).

Basically, I can make the game playable by switching window managers to something that isn't Compiz (which is fair, Compiz is pretty intense), but it seems as if 1.5.7 performs significantly worse than 1.4.7 under Compiz, and especially if your resolution is funky.

I'm going to look at the graphics changelogs next

[5dPZ]

I am using a wireless router.

When I run Wesnoth from my desktop which is hooked up with router using cable, it runs absolutely ok.

But if I run it by my laptops (both of them), it is really slow. By slow, it means my turn proceeds ok, but my game stuck in the player ahead of me. For example, if I am side 3, I will play normally, chat normally in my turn. But in side 4's turn, side 1's turn or side 2's turn, my game will stuck. I can chat but no 1 can hear me, I can't see other ppl's chat, too. I will need to wait for about 5 minute, then suddenly the game runs smoothly again, with all ppl's play and chat popping up. Then it's my turn again, the cycle repeats (that means I always stuck at other ppl's turn for 5 min each round). In other people's view, they waiting at my turn, and I am not making any moves for that time period. The game timer won't start counting down until I see my turn (not they see my turn).

Please tell me is it my router's problem, or is there some sort of setting I need to change.

Btw, my laptops are running WinXP, and I can download at 200kb/s and I can play other online game such as World of Warcraft with no lagging problem.

Thanks.

[puller]

I am using a wireless router.

When I run Wesnoth from my desktop which is hooked up with router using cable, it runs absolutely ok.

But if I run it by my laptops (both of them), it is really slow. By slow, it means my turn proceeds ok, but my game stuck in the player ahead of me. For example, if I am side 3, I will play normally, chat normally in my turn. But in side 4's turn, side 1's turn or side 2's turn, my game will stuck. I can chat but no 1 can hear me, I can't see other ppl's chat, too. I will need to wait for about 5 minute, then suddenly the game runs smoothly again, with all ppl's play and chat popping up. Then it's my turn again, the cycle repeats (that means I always stuck at other ppl's turn for 5 min each round). In other people's view, they waiting at my turn, and I am not making any moves for that time period. The game timer won't start counting down until I see my turn (not they see my turn).

Please tell me is it my router's problem, or is there some sort of setting I need to change.

Btw, my laptops are running WinXP, and I can download at 200kb/s and I can play other online game such as World of Warcraft with no lagging problem.

Thanks.

I am having the same problem.

Ubuntu 8.10
Dell 5120 Notebook
1GB Ram
Core2Duo T5450
Connected to the network through my wireless router.
Wesnoth 1.4.5.

I cannot end a match in multiplayer.
I start playing and everything goes ok for the first 15 minutes.

Then I stop seeing game updates and messages. Some times, after many minutes, I get control back, other times I have to quit the game.
If I quit, I see the list of game in the "game lobby" after 20-30 seconds, not immediately as it happens normally.

I think it is a sort of connection problem to the game server.

When everything was frozen, I checked my incoming/outgoing traffic statistics, and I was exchanging only a few Bytes. So I made a connection test, but it performed well, both in upload and download. Simply the game was not sending traffic or asking for it.

Thanks.