Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

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Iscaran
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iscaran »

OK...quickly tried this by starting a new game with the textures folder renamed to something else

It seemed much better, responsive. BUT it crashed when hitting end turn button.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

The GUI interface slow down (aka "lagging") issues is getting extreme. Reached Turn 180 and the game is becoming barely playable.

Can it be that somehow the animations of all the planets, ships etc. are ALWAYS running (calculated) in the background even if they are not visible ON SCREEN ?

Because it appears that the more systems I discover (and the more ships I build etc.) the slower everything becomes - yet the game is NOT a real-time rendered game ? (I mean from my understanding only the actual screen content should be processed and when you switch the window, then the new window gets processed and the other one is closed down).
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Can't tell for sure, but at least some windows do freeze anims when opened. Not sure if all windows and all anims, but I can try to check.
Does it also happen when loading a savegame? I mean, is it as bad as after playing for many turns?

I'll try to disable the star animations in the system panel (I might also remove them from the Assets screen, where they're displayed in both the Colonies and Star Systems tabs).
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

It is there basically from the get go when loading save games. But it then gets worse quickly. I often restart the game now every turn to "speed" things up a little bit.

Early in the game the slow downs is far less and "grows" much slower.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

This is not related to the issue, but does it help if you disable star animations in the starmap (not the "3D" ones in the system panel, the twinkling ones in the starmap)? Zooming out all the way produces the same effect (disable twinkling). Just curious if it helps a bit with performance.

I'll disable the star animations in the Assets screen (Colonies and Star Systems) to see if it alleviates the problem, and post a patch. If it helps, will do the same in the system panel.


Is anyone else having this issue?
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iceman »

I loaded up your game in a Win7 machine, and I see some lagginess in handling the starmap, but not too significant - after all, it's a huge map, with lots of objects. I did notice that the Game Context Menu does start to get slow to pop-up and close, but that might also be due to the large amount of data, not sure - this was with the 20191206 release (with the XNA anims). I'll try it with the patch next.

In the Shipyards tab of the Assets screen, the system display on the right (planets and star) is not really doing anything there, I guess? If I remove it altogether, it might help a bit.
Opinions?

Maybe I should also decrease the size of maps (Small to Huge)?
It's probably not going to be popular, but what's the point in so large maps anyway? Really late contact, difficult balance, long processing, ...
And one of the beauties of Supremacy is that you can mod almost everything. So people can always play insane maps just by changing a couple of numbers.
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

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Maybe it would be sufficient to add a "pop up" informing people that huge maps "might" be a little slow.

But good you find the problem with Win7, too. The problem is EXPONENTIALLY worse in Win10 - I had Win7, when starting to play Supremacy and did NOT notice anything...but with Win10 it gets a pain when playing an empire in around the state mine is right now.
It's probably not going to be popular, but what's the point in so large maps anyway? Really late contact, difficult balance, long processing, ...
Turn processing is NOT an issue, if at all (on my machine). Its a few seconds now in 230 turns. But the general GUI-lag issue, "non"-functional buttons, scrolling in build list back to top does not work sometimes...are much larger issues at hand.

EDIT: I`ll make a list later in the reseach speed topic when "finished" the current game.

The problem is not balancing or late contact in the first place. It is more the AI, did not expand AT ALL... I mean 4 Systems in 230 turns ? Apart from that even in BOTF i ONLY played huge. Its much more fun when you really have that "empire" feel.

The balancing obviously also need to be size adjusted - we talked about that. But maybe its not only about research speed, perhaps also a general modifier for build cost would be appropriate when going from small to huge.

My next game will be small anyway- So I can directly observe the "difference".

As for galaxy size - one could make the players "choose" size (in X by Y Tiles) or so as an additional option apart from small, medium, large pre-defined choices ?
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 5:53 pm Maybe it would be sufficient to add a "pop up" informing people that huge maps "might" be a little slow.
Yeah, I guess.

Turn processing is NOT an issue, if at all (on my machine). Its a few seconds now in 230 turns. But the general GUI-lag issue, "non"-functional buttons, scrolling in build list back to top does not work sometimes...are much larger issues at hand.
The latter 2 (buttons, scrolling) do not exist in Win7, those are exclusive to Win10 - I tested them again just to be sure. When I get the time I'll start a Medium game just to check on GUI responsiveness just to check - the Win7 machine I tested on only had 4Gigs of RAM, I'd like to see if the GCM "slowness" is related to that. The GCM does start well, but then it starts to drag. The Assets screen might be a bit on the heavy side; hence the suggestion to get rid of the system display in the Shipyards tab, to make it a bit lighter.
The GUI in general doesn't seem much of an issue to me, I can drag, double-click, mouse/slidebar scroll, home/end the starmap just fine.

The problem is not balancing or late contact in the first place. It is more the AI, did not expand AT ALL... I mean 4 Systems in 230 turns ? Apart from that even in BOTF i ONLY played huge. Its much more fun when you really have that "empire" feel.
Yeah, the AI thing is really strange. Like I mentioned somewhere, in a game that I started with 20191206 they had 4-6 colonies by turn 40ish. I'll continue that game and see how it plays out.
The AI used to develop just fine, I watched it expand - so much so that I used what it did to tweak its behavior. Maybe I screwed something up with the Borg code...

My next game will be small anyway- So I can directly observe the "difference".
Cool. If you can then send me a savegame when somewhat advanced, so I can test GUI lagginess in Win7, that'd save me a lot of precious time :wink:

As for galaxy size - one could make the players "choose" size (in X by Y Tiles) or so as an additional option apart from small, medium, large pre-defined choices ?
Not sure if that'd be cost effective (as in, if the amount of people actually using it would be enough to justify the coding time), but as a low priority ToDo, sure.
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

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The latter 2 (buttons, scrolling) do not exist in Win7, those are exclusive to Win10 - I tested them again just to be sure.
Ah, I think I was not precise enough....I use typically mouse wheel to scroll. But btw. This was also solved (Mostly) by the changes you did to the XNA.

Lastly, as you mentioned "scroll" buttons in the build llist...I didnt even notice them until you mentioned them now....they are too tiny :-)-
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iceman »

I use the mouse wheel pressed and drag to move the map around, and roll to zoom in/out. The smallish delay I notice is what I'd like to test if it's map size related or not. (just trying to clarify what I meant)

Not sure if I noticed them myself... :lol: I was talking about the starmap. But yeah, now that you mention it, I think there are tiny triangles or something?
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

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Ah OK. I meant the scrolling in build menus. Not the star map.

For star map I scroll with arrow buttons...clicking my mouse wheel is something I dont like so much :-).

Yeah those tiny triangles one can hardly even "click" them properly, due to their size.
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iceman »

I apologize in advance if I'm stating the obvious, but you can click on the scroll bars and drag them up/down; in the starmap and in the build menu. Using the arrows in the starmap is.. ugh.

I'm not sure if those triangles can be increased in size.

I noticed that the "slowness" of the GUI in the starmap seems (much?) less noticeable when the galaxy grid is only showing sectors where the fog of war has not been lifted yet (in Win7, so it's probably related to redrawing the galaxy grid).
Not sure if there's any difference in that "slowness" if the selected sector does or does not have a star (and therefore there's an XNA animation being displayed).
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iceman »

Just tested your savegame in a Win7 machine with 8 Gigs (a different one) and the UI is really smooth, with absolutely no "lagging". So what I was experiencing was in fact the game trying to redraw the galaxy grid, with low RAM. I guess that eliminates any doubt that it could be related to anything other than being a Win10 1903 issue.

BTW, the game requires XNA 3.1, but do you also have 4.0 installed? Don't know if it'll make any difference, just curious. Might be worth it to check.
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

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I only installed the XNA version given in the link or by the installer...none else present in my system as fas as I now.
Is there a way to check the XNA version ?

Yes - I confirm the slugginess of the Galaxy map scrolling - especially when zoomed out and Fog of war lifted is NOT related to the "GUI" lagging issue.
GUI Lagging means that for example mouse clicking etc. is severly delayed.

Another thing which WAS a problem before you changed it in the last patches was the scrolling in the planetary build lists...and also due to some problems "clicking" the scroll bar and dragging it up/down did NOT work, too.
Now with the changes it works much better, though.

Also I noticed that for example the diplomacy bug with the Send button being greyed out practically vanished now.

Happened not a single time since the XNA-patch release. And also the Save game button being inactive etc. is mostly (not sure if completely) gone.

Btw. an idea for "scrapping" outposts:
I noticed that outpost do not have a "ship" Icon displayed in the lower "fleet" bar, from where you typically access the Scrap ship function.
Perhaps one would have to treat an outpost more like a "ship" but a ship which is immobile ?

I mean perhaps the scrapping doesnt work properly because its a different "item" class or something in the code ?
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Re: Problems with 64-bit Windows 10

Post by Iscaran »

Addendum:

As for the galaxy map scrolling/lagging issue....I noticed that the borders of the sectors are "flashing" all the time...just a thought could you try turning this "flashing" off to see if it speed up the lagging of the map ?
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