Units stop acting after prolonged games

wuschelteddy

9 years ago
Views 29,296
updated 8 years ago
Completed - Resolved

Hello,

the title says it all. I build a map with the sole purpose to constant fight enemy AI's in prolonged games. After about 45min into the game, when it gets really crowded, the imps just stop working most of the time. Also noticeable is that the units only occasionally attack each other and basically just stareoff mpst of the time.

(I have this every time and basically also on every 4 player map)

Cheers!

Game Version:

Steam Public

Platform:

Windows

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Satisfaction mark by wuschelteddy 9 years ago

Thanks a lot! A lot of ppl put a lot of effort into this and I am thrilled to see the outcome soon. The amount of interaction with anyone from Support/Technical is awesome!

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Replies 44

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Галиев Рустем

9 years ago

When is the next patch?

Reply Link

Jan - Eric Merzel

9 years ago
Completed - Resolved

Stefan Furcht Programmer

Hello guys,
i invested quite some time into this over the entire weekend and to be short.
TLDR:
It is fixed for next patch but might cause a bit more lag.

Long story:
First I was not able to reproduce the reported behaviour, but then I deep profiled the game which does utterly slow things down as I would use a rig below minimum requirements and by this suddenly the reported behaviour reproduced.
Based on Wuschelteddys save game I was able to look deeper into the problem.
So far we did everything to prevent AI from impacting rendering speed at all.
In a situation where there is not enough CPU capacitiy left for rendering, AI was slowed down and needed to wait in a queue.
As units were not allowed to get any runtime which would slow rendering the reaction times got way longer.
However in extreme situations the game was brought so far to the limits that the queue was emptied so slowly, that units even gave up for the moment and attempted later by queing again at the end of the queue so that some never succeed to actually get their query answered.
These were the units not moving at all which some of you got.
We fixed now that this odd situation can happen and dropped the idea to let AI never impact rendering speed.
Instead we apply a tradeoff now which assures none of both is starved, so that AI still acts reliable even when rendering would need the entire CPU.
With these changes I was able to fix all issues I got on Wuschelteddys save game while deep profiling the game.
However this is only possible by giving some runtime from the rendering to AI which might cause lower FPS on lower end systems.
But if you meet the minimum requirements this shouldn't be much, I guess in case of Wuschelteddy it will cost less than 3 FPS which and rigs which are strong enough to handle rendering and AI wont be impacted by the changes.
The changes made should allow way more units without AI issues (I guess around double) to the cost of some FPS on mid to lower end rigs.
War for the Overworld is a complex and demanding game and large 4 player map battles require decent hardware to run fluidly.
So if you are on the lower end of the requirements it is better to play smaller maps which are not focused around mass battle, it is also good idea to keep that in mind when designing bigger maps.
Otherwise AI shouldn't die anymore way before rendering gets slow with next patch, so that the reported issues should be all fixed.
Also the "warmup" time on large maps with many units should be way shorter and not feel that long anymore.

Cheers

Noah Hunteil Holweck

I went on to the next level. It happened sooner. I had rallied all minions in 1 big room for a assult on me.

After defeating the enemy. I slapped the flag off and every single 1 of my minions stood there with thought bubbles for money, food etc. All or most of my imps were still performing their tasks I think... But the minions couldn't move.

So I called a rally flag and they started to follow it. I dismissed it and they went back to normal tasks like nothing went wrong ever.

Next time I was assulted. It repeated. But they never recovered in the same means and they still won't recover. :-(

Weirdly enough, I went back and loaded the save game I reported on last night. It started up...did it's warmup thing and it repeated the issue quite quickly...

dexmorph

Same issues here. The units are reacting very slow. In longer and bigger games they even freeze completely sometimes (they then start revolting after some time, but still don't move). No other laggs are occuring, zooming/scrolling and the animations are working fine .

Saving the game and loading it again fixes this for a little while. So maybe some kind of overflow in the AI?

First occurance: Kenos-Mission

Built: v1.3.1f5

System:

Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela, 64 Bit

Phenom II X2 550 (2x 3,1 GHz), while playing @ ~85-90% workload

12 GB RAM

Radeon HD 5670

no SSD

i merged the topics with similar issues.

We have tried replicating it yesterday. We found that the units often react very slowly (even more if unhappy/Angry) in a prolonged game with a lot going on. it may have taken around 10 seconds for units to decide what to do. so far as i can see it this is a performance/lag issue.

It may be a lot worse weaker PCs.

I guess especially maps with a lot of hero dungeons or gigantic 4player maps are prone to this.

umx

I also experienced this on campaign level 10 (The Kenos). I don't know what exactly triggered it, but 'Rally all minions' flag was active and I used possession on one of the minions around the flag. When I left the possession mode (after few minutes), all units were standing still. They resumed their normal activity after relocating the rally flag few times.

Btw... when I say units / minions not moving at all. They stand there in resting position, breathing. Not frozen, but like they lost the will or thought process to move on. lol.

It does seem like after the game warmsup after loading up the save game, the games seem to work better again, enough to finish the level on my first go post. May take 2 loads for this current level.

BTW, I have both game saves if you want them. But I'm pretty sure it'll warmup just fine and repeat my results like it did with Wushelt's files... If you want to replicate, try the levels I explained and play for an hour mainly defending and moving out slowly with defenses etc. (slowly conquering) And I'm thinking you'll get the same effect over time.

PS: idk if this makes anymore sense to this... I usaully play my games on 50% speed. So even though my game reads 50minutes... it's a lot longer right? Is this the same with you Wushelt? b/c if so, then 45-50mins is an underestimate lol.