[Answered] I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

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Eboreg
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Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:35 pm

[Answered] I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by Eboreg »

94% CPU usage...

and that's not the worst I've seen...

Yeah... this game needs to be optimized a bit.

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thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

Surface Book 2 with an i7-8750, GTX 1050, 16Gb RAM. This system is always thermally challenged and runs about 2.7Ghz at best. Not a high end rig. I ran the scenario as close to what I saw as your options.

Note just about 50%...task manager is 57 and Intel shows 48. So something is going on with your setup. Hard to know since you didn't including your setup.

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thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

Also note that by the time you have air missions cranking and some combat in process, you are up close to 3000 active units. Even with all the optimization, that's still a big scenario.
Eboreg
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by Eboreg »

I have a Dell XPS 8500 with an Intel Core i7-3770 CPU, a GTX 1050 Ti, and 16 Gb of RAM. I'm also running Windows 7.
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

Is it using all cores? Mine uses all four in Salvo. And it uses them pretty evenly and consistently. Make sure you don't have anything restricting it. Also might want to kill a few of those Firefox sessions.
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

I just ran it three times to the same Zulu time. I also did a reboot and made sure Outlook and Chrome weren't running. All three times ran around 36% on average with one core spiking to 50% while some ran as low as 25%. My CPU speed average 3.3, but thermal throttling lowered it to 2.8 the last couple minutes of the runs.

Its odd. I made a mistake and my cpu is 8650 built specially for the Book 2. So its actually significantly lower in benchmarking than the 3770. So something on your system is causing Command to bog down or there a setting somewhere different in our options.
Eboreg
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by Eboreg »

It is using all cores but quitting out of Firefox did significantly lower the amount of strain.
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

SO what did it come down to?
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

Just ran Salvo 5:1 on my laptop; i7-9750, 1660 ti, 32 Gb RAM. Never got above 30% overall CPU usage and averaged 22% and all six cores used fairly evenly.

While it seems obvious, there is an upper limit to what any PC can handle. You're not the first person to come along and complain about optimization and not even consider it might be their configuration, loading up numerous browser sessions, or trying to run a massive scenario at hyperspeed. I still think its odd that my Book is able to run it with no issues while a better PC configured on paper struggles. There is something going on with your configuration.
Eboreg
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by Eboreg »

I should probably mention that this is actually a modified version of Salvo where the "US Counterattack" event has LUA script action added that automatically declares the Chinese hostile. This has the (somewhat) unintended effect of putting a lot of cruise missiles in the air when a lot of ballistic missiles and interceptors are already in the air thus making the strain on the computer that much heavier.
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

So, as the devs always request, put the scenario in here and I'll benchmark it again. You might want to consider optimizing your bug reporting process a little.

1) post a save or the scenario
2) state your specs
3) mention any other programs running in the background

That sure would people trying to help out. This probably should have been in the tech support section. That way it looks less like an unqualified rant and more like a question on what could be wrong.
Eboreg
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by Eboreg »

Fair enough, here's a save from where it all goes south.
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HaughtKarl
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by HaughtKarl »

I loaded your save and when the warheads are about 3/4 the way to their target the game slows dramatically; units will move for a few seconds and then appear stopped for several seconds. During the 'stop' periods I can still move the map around and zoom in and out normally. Once the majority of the warheads impact their target or are shot down, the game returns to normal with no intermittent pausing.

Win 10
32GB RAM
i7-8700K at stock speed
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

I ran it until 30 minutes Zulu after the OP's screenshot. It spiked a few times between 30% and 80% while the ballistic missiles were airborne. And the time was effectively 2:1, compared to 5:1 called for. As soon as they started impacting it went back to normal. One sure way to see the calculations impacting Command is the pulse time on the diagnostics bar. btw, never saw it steady at high usages. It was swinging back and forth with it staying for a second or so.

As to the slow down, this was explained numerous times by the devs that ballistic missiles like DF-XXs require significant calcs to process very quickly. And then any intercepting missiles also hit the calcs hard. When you have 100 or so all in the air at the same time in a 3000 unit scenario, you can expect it to slow down.

Again, this was on my Book.
thewood1
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RE: I'm beginning to understand why this game can crash sometimes...

Post by thewood1 »

Ran the save a few more times. There are 76 I/MRBM fired just as the save starts. If you let it play through, thats 380 eventual RVs that begin reentry. Its at the reentry point that the heavy calcs start and begin the heavy compute period. If you delete RVs as they begin reentry, the CPU usage stays at 30-35%. That matches what I have seen in scenarios with large numbers of guided RVs.

I think in a smaller scenario, it wouldn't be as bad. But there is a lot going on that scenario.
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