Hiccup

[Nibelung44]

Hi guys,

Do you get hiccups in the game (RotS), even when the game is still in its youth? In the end game I can understand, because there is an extreme amount of computing in real time, but in the beginning (say 3 years from the start)?

What do I mean by hiccup? Every 3 seconds, there is a small freeze, or perhaps 1/4 of seconds...

I'm running a 750 systems game, and my computer is a recent quad core with new video card. I'm definitively not under the specs but much above them...

I guess the game is not multithreaded though, so my quad cores are of no use...


Just to be clear: I really like the game and I'm having fun, this is just detracting me a bit from full enjoyment...

[Shark7]

What type of specs do you have? IE I-7 Core 930, 12 GB RAM, Geforece GTS250, Win7 etc... I'm not familiar with the '750 system', so a list of specs would really help.

There are two things I can think of off hand that will cause those pauses...either not enough RAM or a video card issue. The processor shouldn't be over-taxed if it is a quad-core. The RAM will make a huge difference, but having an obsolete or cheap video card can cause just as many problems. My old system didn't have enough RAM and had a cheap video card...DW ran extremely slowly on it.

I've not had any issues with it since I upgraded.

[Aures]

I'm pretty sure he meant playing a game with 700 stars.

I also get a bit of a stutter, the game doesn't freeze but there is a noticeable gap between some time steps in the game. Try watching the path of a ship closely, you should notice the motion is not entirely smooth.

I don't think it is caused by having a underpowered system, there is a whole lot of spare capacity on my machine when the game is running (enough to run another memory and processor intensive game at the same time without the performance of either being impacted). Given that the largest galaxies only use 2 gigs memory, having much more than that won't make a huge difference. There might be some issue with it liking Intel more than AMD (or it might require a lot of L2 cache or something), I have never seen the game make decent use of my quad core.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Aures

I'm pretty sure he meant playing a game with 700 stars.

I also get a bit of a stutter, the game doesn't freeze but there is a noticeable gap between some time steps in the game. Try watching the path of a ship closely, you should notice the motion is not entirely smooth.

I don't think it is caused by having a underpowered system, there is a whole lot of spare capacity on my machine when the game is running (enough to run another memory and processor intensive game at the same time without the performance of either being impacted). Given that the largest galaxies only use 2 gigs memory, having much more than that won't make a huge difference. There might be some issue with it liking Intel more than AMD (or it might require a lot of L2 cache or something), I have never seen the game make decent use of my quad core.

Now I have seen the stuttered movement at certain zoon levels...I don't think there is a problem, as the game is running fine without problems opening menus etc. And that is playing on a machine with the specs I listed. So I am not inclined to think it a problem...just a something that is going to happen. My maps are always 1400 stars and 20 empires...I have not had the game freeze and become unplayable at any time with those game settings.

[Webbco]

Shark, do you have 12 GB RAM...?

[Nibelung44]

It is definitively playable, but I notice hiccups ... My game system is recent, I'm on my laptop right now,but from memory my game desktop has a 1024 MB RAM video card that cost me some significant bucks, plus 8 GB of memory, a quad core etc. So a rather good system...

I guess it is the way DW does it refreshes ... perhaps every x seconds there is a big calculation that is done that causes the problem, like a refresh on the AI high strategy plan or whatever... I'm surprised it does not bother people, but perhaps I'm too perfectionist [:'(]

[Erik Rutins]

You may just be seeing the refresh rather than a hiccup. When you are zoomed out, DW only refreshes the position of all the ships and such every few seconds to make performance manageable on slowed systems. Note that you can also turn on and off which ships are show in the zoomed out levels in the options.

If you zoom in, you will see the refresh rate increase until it's completely smooth when you are zoomed all the way in. If this is what you are seeing, it's not a hiccup or a performance issue with your system.

If you are seeing something else, then I would check to see if there are any background processes that could be interfering with the game.

Regards,

- Erik

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Webbco

Shark, do you have 12 GB RAM...?

Yes I do. I bought an over-powered rig for gaming so I wouldn't have to update for a while. I've been quite happy with it. [:)]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Nibelung44

It is definitively playable, but I notice hiccups ... My game system is recent, I'm on my laptop right now,but from memory my game desktop has a 1024 MB RAM video card that cost me some significant bucks, plus 8 GB of memory, a quad core etc. So a rather good system...

I guess it is the way DW does it refreshes ... perhaps every x seconds there is a big calculation that is done that causes the problem, like a refresh on the AI high strategy plan or whatever... I'm surprised it does not bother people, but perhaps I'm too perfectionist [:'(]

Your system should be more than sufficient. I'd look at that video card though...you can go to http://www.tomshardware.com and look up your specific card for benchmark testing. That will tell you more than I ever could.

[Pipewrench]

this might be related as I can reproduce this on the screen,

off pause..slow speed
select any ship that needs to be upgraded to a new design
on the main selection panel at the bottom
hover the cursor over the retro-fit box and the yellow description will blink above the panel
the blinking seems to follow the hiccup of the ship movement making it stutter.

adding: the redesign of the screen in my humble opinion is absolutely fantastic with quick visuals that speed the game up. Visual clues at the bottom are easy on the eyes and make this great game even better.

p.s. nice storyline so-far

maybe I am seeing things? lol

[WoodMan]

I think its what Erik said, when you are zoomed out so that ships show as symbols rather than sprites it depends on how many ships there are as to how fast that screen updates, its like a radar with the ships moving in blips rather than smoothly.  Don't worry, your ships aren't moving slower, its just a method of maintaining playability and purely a display thing.

[Pipewrench]

you could be correct woodman but try this if you have time,

time on zoom in fully
center on a ship and move your cursor to the messages ( your idea,thanks) and watch the pulse of the arrow with the very slight staggered movement of the ship.

[Shark7]

Also you will note that at any zoom level, if you hit 'L' to lock on to a ship, it will follow it smoothely.

[Nibelung44]

I'm unsure about what Erik is saying, but I can tell you that:

Even in pause mode, full zoomed in, when I scroll the map, I get hiccups, one every second, that lasts a very short amount of time. And the sim is paused !!! Perhaps it is related to my Seven64 bits system?

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: Nibelung44

I'm unsure about what Erik is saying, but I can tell you that:

Even in pause mode, full zoomed in, when I scroll the map, I get hiccups, one every second, that lasts a very short amount of time. And the sim is paused !!! Perhaps it is related to my Seven64 bits system?

I run the game on a Win7 64bit system so it isn't directly related to that. My own game runs find and smooth.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

ORIGINAL: Nibelung44

I'm unsure about what Erik is saying, but I can tell you that:

Even in pause mode, full zoomed in, when I scroll the map, I get hiccups, one every second, that lasts a very short amount of time. And the sim is paused !!! Perhaps it is related to my Seven64 bits system?

I run the game on a Win7 64bit system so it isn't directly related to that. My own game runs find and smooth.

Same here.

[Aures]

To clarify my stutters (hiccups etc) are when the game is not paused (so not an interface issue) and when the view is zoomed in so ships appear as the icon used for the ship design and not "blips". My apologies for not realising earlier that people could think I was talking about the lowered refresh rate for ship icons you get when zoomed out, that motion can indeed be made completely smooth by selecting a ship and locking the view and does not suffer from any kind of stutter.

My issue occurs at higher zoom levels and does not dissapear at the highest zooms, it is completely consistent with the individual time "ticks" that drive the simulation occuring at a rate that varies slightly so the illusion of smooth motion is broken somewhat. It does not affect gameplay at all but is obviously noticeable. In fact when I first showed this game to my brother he commented on it after less than 30 seconds and this was on his computer so it is not something restricted to my platform (btw my system rates 7.3, 7.5, 7.6, 7.6, 6.7 on windows experience index so it is not due to an underpowered system. I can give exact hardware specs if needed). I'm not sure whether the individual time ticks should be expected to occur at evenly spaced intervals even on the highest end systems so it is probably a complete non issue apart from the immersion ruining aspect of it.

Btw according to what I have been told about how DW handles memory and my own observations of memory usage it does not matter whether you have 6 gigs of memory or 128 (unless you have lots of other processes hogging memory, so we can talk about free memory rather than total memory) as the game is limited to about 2 gigs even for the largest galaxies with lots of ships etc. The type and speed (and clock latency etc) of memory should be much more relevant than the total amount on your system.

[alexalexuk]

Nibelung44 - what is your system specs exactly?

cpu / mem / disk ?

free disk space?

what res you playing on?


tips:

have to defrag'd recently?
got an antivirus program installed? - which one?

[Nibelung44]

Hi,

Update... I mitigated the problem by forcing the game to run on only one core. Must be a kind of deadlock or something between threads... I got a clue it was not my graphic card when I noticed that even paused I got hiccups in the rotation of the pink selection circle around objects.

[Aures]

Ah ok, completely different to what I am talking about then. Glad to hear you found a way around it.