Unit Movement Pause with Spinning Symbol

[DonCzirr]

Hey Guys,

Sorry - could not find this in searches - only some posts about flashing white with Vista.


What I'm seeing is: Halfway through a unit's movement, there is a pause with a circling blue symbol - then the movement resumes with the unit at the destination.




Anyone have the link for that issue?

Info:

I have the recent 2.02 patch
OS = Windows 8

Specifically running EF2 - Giants on the Vistula - but seems to happen with any scenario ...

[Warhorse]

Do you much running in the background? Is this happening in 2d and 3d, or one or the other?

[DonCzirr]

ORIGINAL: Warhorse

Do you much running in the background? Is this happening in 2d and 3d, or one or the other?

CPU and Disk I / O are low ... quite a few small background processes ... 40% on memory ...

It happens only in 2D Normal and Zoom Out


** Edit **

Interesting - I can prevent it from happening by cranking Axis animation speed up to 3/4 + - so it seems to be an issue with animation on slower speeds.

[berto]

The delays you describe are typically due to background processes stealing CPU cycles away from the game. They are intermittent (and infrequent), and go away with time. If I am impatient (usually am), and just want to get on with it, I will reboot the system, which will kill any background procs and restore normal operation.

Your issue might be one specific to your setup or graphics card. But multi-tasking is the likely cause.

[DonCzirr]

ORIGINAL: berto


The delays you describe are typically due to background processes stealing CPU cycles away from the game. They are intermittent (and infrequent), and go away with time. If I am impatient (usually am), and just want to get on with it, I will reboot the system, which will kill any background procs and restore normal operation.

Your issue might be one specific to your setup or graphics card. But multi-tasking is the likely cause.

Thanks for the input guys ....

Cranking the animation speed up seems to do the trick ....

I'm very much into the "total atmosphere" of the game so typically have not been using Fast AI etc - but at 3/4 speed it's not too bad...

Odd thing is, my CPU / Mem / Disk are not really stressed when the pause happened at the lower animation speeds .... go figure [&:]

[berto]

But you never know what behind-the-scenes process might be claiming priority operations or even exclusive (temporary) lock on any aspect of your system. In Windows, all processes are not created equal.

Anyway, whatever works.

[Warhorse]

Glad you got it sorted. I use 3/4 on mine, too slow for me at slower speeds, impatient! Sometimes AV might be doing the interrupts as well, but hey, you found a fix, run with it!!

[nabuok]

I had the same stuttering problem a few months ago and bought a new graphics card that did nothing to correct it. Since then I've just been living with it, but now I see playing with the animation speed sort of cures it. Thanks guys.

[berto]

I will still see this behavior occasionally, maybe once a month. It could be backgrounded anti-virus activity or disk optimization or web pages in the browser auto-refreshing or doing something or other (and hanging) or ... who knows what? In Windows 7, I often observe the disk activity light go on for no apparent reason. Or the system mysteriously slows down overall. But it almost always goes away spontaneously. Or if not, if I am impatient, a system reboot always cures the problem. (The reboot thereby killing any backgrounded process(es) stealing CPU cycles etc. away from the game.)

[berto]

If you're really adventurous, you might go into Windows Control Panel, (Advanced) System Properties. There are controls there that will give higher priority to programs, lower priority to background services. And so on.

There might also be tweaks you can try in your graphics driver software.

Only advised for players who experience the stuttering problem consistently, where it doesn't go away spontaneously (or a system reboot doesn't cure the problem).

But, yes, fiddling with the game Animation Speed settings might help also.

Whatever works.

[James Ward]

I see it a lot in larger scenarios. I have watched the AI move and it happens more often after the AI has moved it's units once and then is cycling back through them to move them again.

[berto]

Yes, in large scenarios, I suppose you might see the "wait" indicator while the A/I thinks.

[James Ward]

I have been getting the spinning wheel a lot in the larger scenarios with a lot of units. Sometimes it say Not Responding up where the scenario name is.

While it seems to happen more in scenarios with a large number of units I am not sure if it is caused by the large number of units. I was playing one yesterday and the first 2 turns went by without issue, maybe 10 minutes for the AI to do it's move. Turn 3 took more than an hour hour and a half for it do move with numerous Not Responding messages occurring. There were about the same number of units on the map, maybe there was 1 or 2 less due to units being eliminated I can say for certain, but there were no reinforcements or anything. The program would hang up for a period of time then the AI might move 1 units before it hung up again or it might move 20. I was watching the AI move and it seemed like it went through it's units once to move then when it started going back through its units again the hang ups started. I probably had 25 hang ups during the AI move.

I did not have any other program open except the OOB editor so unless it was something running hidden I am not sure if the hang ups can be blamed on an interruption by another program.

[berto]

ORIGINAL: James Ward

I have been getting the spinning wheel a lot in the larger scenarios with a lot of units. Sometimes it say Not Responding up where the scenario name is.

While it seems to happen more in scenarios with a large number of units I am not sure if it is caused by the large number of units. I was playing one yesterday and the first 2 turns went by without issue, maybe 10 minutes for the AI to do it's move. Turn 3 took more than an hour hour and a half for it do move with numerous Not Responding messages occurring. There were about the same number of units on the map, maybe there was 1 or 2 less due to units being eliminated I can say for certain, but there were no reinforcements or anything. The program would hang up for a period of time then the AI might move 1 units before it hung up again or it might move 20. I was watching the AI move and it seemed like it went through it's units once to move then when it started going back through its units again the hang ups started. I probably had 25 hang ups during the AI move.

I did not have any other program open except the OOB editor so unless it was something running hidden I am not sure if the hang ups can be blamed on an interruption by another program.

But again, in a the multi-tasking Windows OS, you can never be sure that there is not some background system process stealing CPU cycles away from your, supposed, one and only one running program. These background processes might include: anti-virus scans, programs checking for updates, disk optimizations, disk indexing (if so, you might want to turn that off), network activity of some sort. Could be anything.

The fact that you went through turns 1-2 without problem, then a slowdown began on turn 3, it suggests to me that something in the background might have kicked in.

I don't rule out the A/I routines slowing down, however. You might try toggling off A/I > Prohibit A/I Backtracking. See if that makes a difference.

In which scenario(s) are you seeing this? (Also, which game version. 2.02?) I could try running that scenario here in automated A/I test mode. If the test takes more than a day to play out, I'll know that a sluggish A/I might be the culprit. Maybe.

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: berto

ORIGINAL: James Ward

I have been getting the spinning wheel a lot in the larger scenarios with a lot of units. Sometimes it say Not Responding up where the scenario name is.

While it seems to happen more in scenarios with a large number of units I am not sure if it is caused by the large number of units. I was playing one yesterday and the first 2 turns went by without issue, maybe 10 minutes for the AI to do it's move. Turn 3 took more than an hour hour and a half for it do move with numerous Not Responding messages occurring. There were about the same number of units on the map, maybe there was 1 or 2 less due to units being eliminated I can say for certain, but there were no reinforcements or anything. The program would hang up for a period of time then the AI might move 1 units before it hung up again or it might move 20. I was watching the AI move and it seemed like it went through it's units once to move then when it started going back through its units again the hang ups started. I probably had 25 hang ups during the AI move.

I did not have any other program open except the OOB editor so unless it was something running hidden I am not sure if the hang ups can be blamed on an interruption by another program.

But again, in a the multi-tasking Windows OS, you can never be sure that there is not some background system process stealing CPU cycles away from your, supposed, one and only one running program. These background processes might include: anti-virus scans, programs checking for updates, disk optimizations, disk indexing (if so, you might want to turn that off), network activity of some sort. Could be anything.

The fact that you went through turns 1-2 without problem, then a slowdown began on turn 3, it suggests to me that something in the background might have kicked in.

I don't rule out the A/I routines slowing down, however. You might try toggling off A/I > Prohibit A/I Backtracking. See if that makes a difference.

In which scenario(s) are you seeing this? (Also, which game version. 2.02?) I could try running that scenario here in automated A/I test mode. If the test takes more than a day to play out, I'll know that a sluggish A/I might be the culprit. Maybe.

It's a scenario I made, v2.02. Lots of units, maybe 1600 Russians and ~ 500 Germans active so far. The German AI turn runs pretty smooth so far but more German units will be arriving soon. I would guess at the end there will be close to 2,500-3,000 Russian units and 1,000-1,500 German (including trucks, HQ and leaders). It might just be at the limit of the program.
I ran a few turns today. Well 2 turns as the AI took ~2 hours to run a turn. I have the AI on no backtracking, max aggressiveness and am running in 2D mode. It certainly could be a background program running but I can't really check, if I go anywhere else while the turn is running the program locks up.
I did try and play the Aachen scenario in WF and the first turn, German AI took a real long time and I had a lot of No response episodes in that one too. It could be my machine. I'm using a plain old laptop with nothing special but since the program was originally designed when Pentium II's were new I don't see a lack of processor HP being the whole issue.

[berto]

Oh, it's not a bad guess to infer that your huge scenarios are pushing the game engine beyond its practical limits.

How much is your system RAM?

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: berto


Oh, it's not a bad guess to infer that your huge scenarios are pushing the game engine beyond its practical limits.

How much is your system RAM?

Either 4 or 8 GB, I don't remember. I don't ever remember see the spinning disk or the Not responding message on any scenario under a 10 size though. I suppose the number of units has a lot to do with it. I'll have to tone down my desire for more units

[Crossroads]

There are at times hard limits despite of the HW in use. I am a huge Total War Rome (of the 2004 fame) fan, and even if computer performance has developed in leaps and bounds since then, the old engine does not do multithreading. Total War battle map system can manage literally thousands of individual soldiers graphics in a field of battle, but one can not just alter the Unit Size from Large to Huge, details from Medium to High, etc, without penalties in FPS, despite the fact computers run so many more times faster than when the game came out.

In fact, an old single core CPU with a higher GHz runs it better than a modern 4 core CPU, as the engine will never use but one core. Also, with memory there are hard limits that often are smaller than memory installed in out computers. I recall Total War Rome maxes out at some 1,5GB of memory regardless of one's RAM.

If you want to share your design I can give it a spin on my quite modern desktop to see how it runs. If so, just send me a PM!