Slow Performance and Memory Leak

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pms917
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 3:53 pm

Slow Performance and Memory Leak

Post by pms917 »

After loading a game, performance is slow but on the playable side of the playable/unplayable spectrum. The DistantWorlds.exe memory usage is 1.3G. Performance degrades as memory usage increases. Within 15 minutes, the memory usage is 1.6G and performance had moved into the unplayable realm. Memory leak?

Another issue is that right after I load the game, when I try to go above 1x speed, nothing in the gui updates. However, when I go back down to 1x, it begins to update again and the date jumps to indicate that the simulation was running even though the gui was not updated.

I also just had a crash after invading an enemy capital.

I have already applied all of the performance tweaks recommended in the forums (both game settings and driver updates). The CPU usage for the process is about 2 cores (50% of the 4 cores) on my machine.

(This is an excellent game series. I look forward to these performance issues getting resolved.)
Raap
Posts: 404
Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:46 pm

RE: Slow Performance and Memory Leak

Post by Raap »

Haven't noticed a memory leak myself. Obviously, the game will use more and more memory as it goes on since, at least up to a certain point, empires will just keep building more and more stuff. Though going from 1.3->1.6 in 15 minutes seems excessive, to say the least. That said, I haven't had it become unplayable despite playing a couple of fairly long games.

Could it be that specific save game that there's something wrong with? How much RAM do you have? I think the game uses a separate thread to run the GUI update stuff, and there's been some trouble with automated ships which also probably run on the other thread. It looks as if not all computer/software configurations run that second thread properly for some reason. What's your CPU and what is it clocked at?
Speeder
Posts: 79
Joined: Sat May 25, 2013 2:49 am

RE: Slow Performance and Memory Leak

Post by Speeder »

The game use threading, and sometimes it DOES behave strangely (I for example saw intelligence missions completed and science breakthourghs when the game is completely paused...)
pms917
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 3:53 pm

RE: Slow Performance and Memory Leak

Post by pms917 »

I started a new game with 1.9.0.4. The process was taking 1.2G. I saved the game, exited, restarted and loaded the game. The process then took only 0.85G.

The performance does get slower as the game goes on, which can be partially attributed to more game objects. However, within a 15-30 minute period after a clean start of the process and loading a game, the performance noticeably degrades to the point of being unplayable.

Hopefully, one of the developers notices this post and looks for a memory leak.
Florestan
Posts: 227
Joined: Sat Jun 05, 2010 7:39 pm
Location: Montpellier, France

RE: Slow Performance and Memory Leak

Post by Florestan »

ORIGINAL: Speeder

The game use threading, and sometimes it DOES behave strangely (I for example saw intelligence missions completed and science breakthourghs when the game is completely paused...)
Multithreading, you mean? Any program needs at least one execution thread.
It is not strange at all. It is called optimization. Instead of computing everything every 1/50 second, the game distributes its computing over a few seconds. This way you don't have to “+1” the position of your moving ship 200 times, and instead, you “+200” it once, saving CPU. Only what is on screen is computed continuously. So if you zoom somewhere else when in pause, the game updates what you look at, and it may trigger events that where not computed yet.
This is why events often happen by groups. It must be a very complex mechanism, to avoid missing objects interactions, to predict what will need to be computed before what and such.
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