Periodic Slowdowns every 10 seconds

[venator260]

After installing alpha 12, I experience slowdowns about every 10 seconds lasting about 2 seconds from the beginning of the game. This has been the case with every civilization and map that I have tried, even when I select no opponents and turn every graphics option possible off.

Specs of my Machine:

Windows 7 x64

Intel Core i3 2350 @ 2.30 Ghz

6GB RAM

Intel HD integrated graphics

I was wondering if there is any work around for this. Also, I know that there is a way to provide information about what is causing the slowdown, however, I don't remember how to get that information. I will provided that if needed.

[Lion.Kanzen]

http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15796

[venator260]

I know about that thread. This is a problem that just started for me with this release, I did not have this issue with alphas 10 and 11 on this same machine. Previously, I only experienced slowdowns later in the game. The aforementioned issue occours at the very beginning of a game, even on a small map with no water and no AIs.

[Yves]

Could you check the profiler output please?

There are two kinds of profiling information available. One is for average performance of certain components of the game and the other is to measure performance in specific frames.

I guess the first won't be sufficient in this case but we can check it anyway.

1. Average performance

Start a game an hit shift+f11. It will save a profiling log and show you where it was saved.

Please post it here.

2. Detailed performance per frame

That's a bit harder to explain.

1. Switch to windowed mode by hitting alt+enter or start the game in windowed mode by adding the following line to local.cfg

   windowed = "true"

   
   

2. Now start a game and then press F11 which should enable the profiler.
   
3. Open profiler2.html in a web browser (I think it doesn't work with chrome, but IE or Firefox should be fine)
   

I'm not sure if profiler2.html is included in the alpha 12 download but if not you can get it here (you also need the other two files):

http://trac.wildfire...tools/profiler2

There will be an assertion failure when profiler2.html tries to get data from the game (hit continue). That's a known problem which will hopefully be fixed in the next alpha.

You should get something like this:

On top you see a lot of frames (each vertical bar is one). There should be some bars which are much higher (the lag spikes). You can click in the upper bar to get a detailed view below. Click higher to get less frames in the lower part and therefore a better overview of the single frame that takes longer.

With this view you should be able to quickly identify the coloured region that causes the lag. Something like "gui" or "sim update".

Not sure if that was compreshensible .

[historic_bruno]

^ This would be great on a Trac wiki page Maybe you could expand http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EngineProfiling and make it more "friendly".

[venator260]

I've grabbed the average performance file, and it's attached to this post.

For the profiler2.html, I see that there's .js files included with this. I'm guessing that these need to be in a specific location on my computer to work; where should i put them? Thanks!

profile.txt

Edited December 22, 2012 by venator260

[Yves]

For the profiler2.html, I see that there's .js files included with this. I'm guessing that these need to be in a specific location on my computer to work; where should i put them? Thanks!

I think it should work everywhere as long as the .js files are in the same directory as profiler2.html.

[iap]

I think I have a related case, one every several seconds the game stuck for half a second. But it started only after changing the config file to allow all the new display effects.

[venator260]

I can't seem to get the profiler2.html to display anything.

What I did notice when I press F11 and watch the numbers is that the "render" line's number increases quite a bit when a slowdown occurs. I'm not sure if this is useful or not.

[Yves]

A vague guess is that it's related to the soundmanager problem I'm currently debugging.

The IdleTask() function is called below (as part of) the render function and I suspect that it sometimes has to wait a bit long until the data/mutex it tries to access gets unblocked from the soundmanager.

Give me a few hours until I have some more facts about that. You can try disabling sound in the game's configuration but that won't completely disable everything related to sound and I'm quite sure it won't solve the problem.

[Yves]

I'm not sure if what I described above can be your problem. I've only seen it in an earlier version of my current development-code but it should theoretically also be possible that it causes problems in alpha 12. Maybe your problem doesn't happen for me because I have a stronger processor.

If your willing to help finding the problem you need to get the newest development version.

It would be ideal if you could compile the game from source, but getting the newest prebuilt version would still be better than nothing.

Here are the instructions for building:

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions

You need this part if you only want to get the newest prebuilt version:

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#Acquiringthecode

Do you think you can do that?

[venator260]

I'm not sure if what I described above can be your problem. I've only seen it in an earlier version of my current development-code but it should theoretically also be possible that it causes problems in alpha 12. Maybe your problem doesn't happen for me because I have a stronger processor.

If your willing to help finding the problem you need to get the newest development version.

It would be ideal if you could compile the game from source, but getting the newest prebuilt version would still be better than nothing.

Here are the instructions for building:

http://trac.wildfire...ildInstructions

You need this part if you only want to get the newest prebuilt version:

http://trac.wildfire...cquiringthecode

Do you think you can do that?

I'll give it a shot over the next few days and report back here with my results. Makes me wish that this computer had Linux on it... compiling stuff is so much easier.

[plumo]

@Yves

I've also noticed these hiccups in performance, but my processor should be more than capable... It is only a year old (I5-2xxxk: have to check)