[BETA] Lag when opening city screen

[Aristos]

I am not completely sure that this can be labelled as a BUG, but I prefer to report it to give you the chance to optimize it.

An annoying lag has appeared with 1.0.3.124 when opening the city screen. It is noticeable as compared to the same savegame pre-beta. I can even count the mini steps of the screen when it opens (opens in three steps, each some 300-400 millisecs).

Not game breaking, but annoying as hell... and was not there pre-beta.

 

[dshirk]

I am not completely sure that this can be labelled as a BUG, but I prefer to report it to give you the chance to optimize it.

An annoying lag has appeared with 1.0.3.124 when opening the city screen. It is noticeable as compared to the same savegame pre-beta. I can even count the mini steps of the screen when it opens (opens in three steps, each some 300-400 millisecs).

Not game breaking, but annoying as hell... and was not there pre-beta.

Could you attach the save? I would love to work from the same save to reproduce what you're looking at. Thanks!

 

[Aristos]

Served, Sir.

This is a game started with 1.0.3.70, followed up under 1.0.3.80, normal "mini-lag" when opening city screen before beta, after beta lag is not that "mini" anymore.

I hope it helps.

 

[Soil]

I've noticed this too when opening city screens. It feels like the system is struggling a lot more. I additionally get heavy stuttering/frame drops similar to that experienced in the city screen while AI turns are being processed making them last quite a bit longer.

 

[bc1]

My experience is this lag has been present since the beginning of BNW

 

[Aristos]

My experience is this lag has been present since the beginning of BNW

Not at the level I see it now, at least in my experience.

They have the last word though. Mr. Shirk?

 

[bc1]

Just to clarify, I get the lag only when founding a new city (and only with BNW). The reason why I did not notice much of a difference with the beta may be that I play on a higher end desktop (I remember playing a bit on a Lenovo T430 laptop last summer, it was a horrendous experience due to that and mostly due to extreme lag switching from one unit to the next, even with animations off & quick everything).

 

[Soil]

Aristos, can you have a look at this video that I made in an attempt to capture my version of your issue? It shows London (pre-patch) being very smooth when opening and then Kyoto (beta patch) having a very noticable hiccup/freeze. Is this similar to what you're experiencing? This happens with every city and any game. City lag video.

Also, I get huge stutter/freezes during turn processing too. There was some stutter pre-patch (as it is a rather cpu intensive process) but not as severe as seen in the beta patch. Animations/scrolling and other things become extremely choppy: Turn lag.

If you don't experience this then I suppose I'll make another thread for that, unless we can assume this to be a general optimisation thread.

 

[dshirk]

Aristos, can you have a look at this video that I made in an attempt to capture my version of your issue? It shows London (pre-patch) being very smooth when opening and then Kyoto (beta patch) having a very noticable hiccup/freeze. Is this similar to what you're experiencing? This happens with every city and any game. City lag video.

Also, I get huge stutter/freezes during turn processing too. There was some stutter pre-patch (as it is a rather cpu intensive process) but not as severe as seen in the beta patch. Animations/scrolling and other things become extremely choppy: Turn lag.

If you don't experience this then I suppose I'll make another thread for that, unless we can assume this to be a general optimisation thread.

Can I ask for the specs on your system, and the save the the "turn stutter" video is from? Thanks much!

 

[Soil]

My specs are:

Intel i5 750
8GB DDR3 Corsair
ATi HD 5850
Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm
Windows 7 64-bit Pro

I'm the same guy in the other thread who complained about longer turn times here and here. I'm a bit worried that I'm the only one seemingly lagging despite my hardware being not all that bad. I can play the game usually with everything set to max/high at 1920x1200.

EDIT: Oops, did you edit your post? I didn't see the save part! I've attached them now.

A small note: The turn lag isn't specific to any save file though, it happens in all my games.

 

[Aristos]

Aristos, can you have a look at this video that I made in an attempt to capture my version of your issue? It shows London (pre-patch) being very smooth when opening and then Kyoto (beta patch) having a very noticable hiccup/freeze. Is this similar to what you're experiencing? This happens with every city and any game. City lag video.

Yes, exactly that. Your video shows it for a young city, when the city is full of everything (buildings, and mainly specialists), and you have the citizens tab open, then you can clearly count the three steps in which opening the city screen is split...

From your specs, I can conclude that it is indeed some type of optimization problem regarding that screen, because my specs are way lower than yours (Q6700 stock freq, GTX 560Ti, 8 G RAM DDR2 800), yet that oldie plays 1.0.3.80 as smooth as ever... ... and we are seeing the same effect.

Mr. Shirk? Found something?

 

[dshirk]

We think we've found the problem. We'll take a look with the next build.

 

[Soil]

It seems both issues mentioned have been fixed in the recent beta update for me! I loaded the same game I used to record the 'city lag' video and it no longer stutters. Hopefully the OP can say the same.

Turn times have also been restored to how they were pre-patch. I did the same test as mentioned here and here and getting to turn 10 takes the same amount of time as pre-patch again. It's still odd how few people have actually reported this at all about turn times/city lag.

Thank you for your hard work!

 

[Aristos]

Yes, it's clearly better. I can still "feel" the three steps when opening the city screen, but they are almost immediate, and that may also be one of: 1) confirmation bias, or 2) my oldie Q6700. So I would consider the issue at least at par with pre-beta now.

 

[bc1]

Still, it used to not do that prior to bnw release, and it does so even without bnw enabled (e.g. vanilla)