Sukio Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 (edited) This is one of my most favorite games of 2013 and I don't even mind the occasional crashes and little bugs, but I can't cope with these impossible turn lengths. I get only slightly annoyed by it during the first 5 hours into a new game, but once the aliens come in larger numbers, it gets infuriating rather quickly. Let's take this example: in one of my saves, my base is under attack. It takes the aliens on average between 1.20 to 2 minutes to finish their turn. Maybe it's just me, but this is way too annoying for me to put up with that. Assumption: Each unit, hidden or not, moves tile by tile, thus each move is drawn out fully. If a unit takes about 3 seconds to finish its turn (regardless of whether the unit is hidden or not), it will take 20 aliens about a minute to finish their turn. Quick fix: If an alien or a civilian moves during its turn and its movement is hidden during the whole duration of the turn, then multiply the unit's movement speed by a large number. It basically just 'teleports' the unit to where it would be after having finished its turn by moving x amount of tiles, reducing the amount of time it takes the NPCs to finish their turn by a large portion. Final note: I realize I'm not entitled to anything, but if you guess could fix that, I'd throw a thousand thanks your way. I don't know how your code is laid out and stuff, but I would assume said solution would be rather easy to implement. I just don't want to be the guy who complains without offering something to resolve the problem. Edited January 14, 2014 by Sukio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead Dread Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 1.2-2mins... your processor is a lot faster than mine! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sukio Posted January 14, 2014 Author Share Posted January 14, 2014 That just leaves you with more time to stare angrily at the screen. It's totally a win for ya! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorlom Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 I can imagine "teleporting" hidden units would cause problems when the hidden unit moves out into Xenonauts view and stop being hidden I wonder if the engine can even handle things like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RuskiVolkov Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 That just leaves you with more time to stare angrily at the screen. It's totally a win for ya! What this guy said, a million times. Every single time it plays out like this for me: Hidden movement screen (10 seconds) Enemy pops up, throws grenade and shoots a burst, killing 6 people Hidden movement screen (now for 5 minutes) and I sit there. Trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. I try to think and save the mission but I realize it's all over and I make the all important the decision: Do I reload...or do I take the loss? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StellarRat Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 The turn processing time increased substantially in the last build. I think it has to do with the improved AI more than anything else. Better AI almost always requires more CPU cycles. It's a fair trade off right now. If the times were to double again I might start to get a bit angry and I have a pretty fast machine, quad core, 8 gigs ram, SSD drive. The good news is that the more aliens you kill the faster the turns process. That's called incentive... LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Msvknight Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 How do you think the Aliens feel when YOU take more than 1 minute Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead Dread Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 (edited) If you have a moment to spare you can read how I massively reduced my enemy move time. It's been rather hot down here at the moment, like 40+ degrees celsius. My living room has been a much cooler 34... no air con im afraid. Anyway I had a rather strange beeping noise from my comp on and off the last few days. Eventually found out it was the BIOS temperature warning letting me know that the CPU had gone over 90... opps. So I ran open hardware monitor and found that my cpu was at 63 when idling! and ANY load put it up over 70 degrees and triggering reduced cycles. In fact my 3.3GHz processor was runing at just 1.1GHz and still topping 90 degrees. So I got a new cooling system (Noctua NH-C12P SE14) and WOW what a difference! Alien turns much faster now and the cpu only reaches 46 in a 34 degree room when playing the game :-) In fact when idling its only a few degrees above room temp. [EDIT] Oh yeah I added to a post in the bug forum about mini lock ups and glitches during enemy turn... um... that kinda... maybe... could have been a fault on my end Edited January 15, 2014 by Dead Dread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Can everyone post how long the average alien turn takes on a Light Scout mission in V20 Stable HF, or V21 Experimental 1 please? It works fairly fast on my PC, certainly no 5 minute alien turns for me. My work processor is an i5-2500, so it's about five years old now...but I guess it's hardly slow either. Sukio - are you playing on V20 or V21? If you're getting that in V21 then it's even more concerning, because the number of aliens has been reduced by about 30% and you're correct in surmising that the number of units on a map increases turn time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I have a rather modest cpu (i3) and still get nice and quick ai turns (maybe 30s) even on terror maps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StellarRat Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I'm having no issues with light scout maps. The ones that have slowed way down are Terror Maps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sentelin Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 It doesn't take more than 30s-1 min (light scout missions) and up to 2 min (any other mission),on my old laptop with AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-Core (2.1 ghz )... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sukio Posted January 16, 2014 Author Share Posted January 16, 2014 Can everyone post how long the average alien turn takes on a Light Scout mission in V20 Stable HF, or V21 Experimental 1 please? It works fairly fast on my PC, certainly no 5 minute alien turns for me. My work processor is an i5-2500, so it's about five years old now...but I guess it's hardly slow either.Sukio - are you playing on V20 or V21? If you're getting that in V21 then it's even more concerning, because the number of aliens has been reduced by about 30% and you're correct in surmising that the number of units on a map increases turn time. Hey Chris! I've been moving from Desura to Steam and the launcher says V20 Hotfix (08/01/2014). Average wait time on light scout missions: 15-30 seconds. It really just gets crazy when there's a ton of aliens on the map. I'm not working with the fastest PC, but overall performance besides the turn duration has been superb. Core 2 Quad 2.83GHz ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series (dedicated memory: 505 MB, shared memory: 1536 MB) 4 GB DDR3 RAM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiago_oldman Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 It is not simply the number of aliens. It must be some part of the AI procedure on some condition that gets too slow. I had moments where the hidden movement seemed to have freezed computer... taking like 4 minutes. Then on next turn without any alien being killed, suddenly the alien turn then passes in 8 seconds. Then other turn.. back to 4 minutes. Most of time it seems to happend when the aliens loose sight of my troops. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sukio Posted January 16, 2014 Author Share Posted January 16, 2014 It is not simply the number of aliens. It must be some part of the AI procedure on some condition that gets too slow. I had moments where the hidden movement seemed to have freezed computer... taking like 4 minutes. Then on next turn without any alien being killed, suddenly the alien turn then passes in 8 seconds. Then other turn.. back to 4 minutes.Most of time it seems to happend when the aliens loose sight of my troops. Oh, yeah, noticed that one, too. Doesn't happen all too often, but it really looks like your PC just froze. I couldn't even access the task manager to check whether Xenonauts.exe is inactive or something. Before I was about to restart my PC, the game just continued to work like nothing ever happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skitso Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 I had a landing ship with androns and harridans (less than 10 enemies combined) and AI turn took about 50-60 secs. It's by far the longest I've had yet.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 OK. We'll bear it in mind then. It's quite possible that the size of the map increases the number of calculations a unit has to perform each turn too, so more units and bigger maps increases the time exponentially. The HM "freeze" sounds like quite a serious problem though. Are there specific situations (with regards to alien types and mission type) in which it happens, or does it happen mostly at random? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrashMan Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 I have experience the game "freezing" and hte FPS dropping to 1. I even have it all recorded. Will supply the video a bit later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiago_oldman Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 (edited) I am pretty sure is AI related. When i have a lot of aliens in combat view range from my troops never happens. Happens only when most aliens are outside view and my troops outside their view as well. As soon as I send a scout that spot the pack of aliens. it stops. And its is something that does not cause any memory usage spike Edited January 16, 2014 by tiago_oldman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 TrashMan, if you post it here as well as in the AI fix thread GJ has going, that'll maximise the chances of it getting our attention Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_beorning Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Chris, maybe it will be useful to just add a "guessometer"? Nothing complex. Something like string "calculating: 753 of 32768 done". Such measure will give several benefits: - easy to tell real hang-up ("already a minute digits do not change") from ethernal cycle ("done 1300 from 500, still growing") from just-too-much calculation - user is not so annoyed by waiting when he have info "it is nearly done" or "it will be several minutes, I have enough time to make some tea" - wise positioning of counter inside code can give you additional information on which part of code works too slow (like "too long on sevens - it's alien targetting algorythm!") Of course, this output in final release can be eliminated or replaced with progress bar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPyro Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 I'll see if I still have the save that demonstrated this quite well; I had a terror mission where you could get the alien turn to run quickly or slowly depending on whether you advanced carefully or ran screaming from the Chinook like maniacs (and therefore getting into LOS of aliens). It wouldn't surprise me if the AI code went into more complex branches when there were no targets in LOS; if you can see enemies your options are pretty clear (shoot them or get into cover); if not then there are all kinds of actions you could take. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrashMan Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 (edited) TrashMan, if you post it here as well as in the AI fix thread GJ has going, that'll maximise the chances of it getting our attention Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYv0TG5zrqE&feature=youtu.be NOTE: I have been cutting the video for recording purposes, but the slowdown should be obious in a few places. Also the video doesn't show the FPS, so someone can probably make a better video or present a save. Edited January 16, 2014 by TrashMan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 I'm not gonna watch 30 minutes of video footage to see the slowdown - do you have any rough timestamps for when it occurs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrashMan Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 3:20 ... you can see the smoke freezing it's animation near the end of the alien turn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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