Units stop acting after prolonged games

wuschelteddy

9 years ago
Views 28,536
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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Noah Hunteil Holweck

9 years ago

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. :-(

Reply Link

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

Jan - Eric Merzel

9 years ago
Completed - Resolved

Галиев Рустем

When is the next patch?

Awesome! Thank you so much guys! Love the game! Telling all my friends about it.

Not sure if this is related. But I did notice recently that during this whole glitch... some units never took damage from minions... or did very slowly... only way I could kill them off is with lots and lots and lots of lightning... and others I couldn't reach.

schraer3

hi guys,

i am playing lately quite a lot with my friends and i do have the same issues.

after some time or amount of minions, a lot of minions keep stuck on walls or just stand around doing nothing, till finally they revolt. sometimes it helps to lift them up and set them into a new room, so they start moving again (but it will not last long, till other minions keep stuck or stop reacting).

its quite annoying, because you lose all your high tier minions by rebellion and get an army of half reacting level 1 minions....

dexmorph

@Schraer3 this has already been fixed, just wait for the next patch.

@v0id thx for the effort and fast fix :) i think the new behavior is way better than the old. If your PC is to weak for a game, you normally expect a lagging game and not non-moving units. If the units not move and the rest works smoothly everyone thinks it's a bug and starts complaining and/or votes the game down.

Sonny Bos

this is not fixed, yesterday i played the map called "fort mira" and at some point my minions were starving because the workers keep playing hard to get with piglets, i controlled most of the map didnt kill any inhibiters yet output_log.rar

also at some point minions will not be able to find a path to their lair due to it being to far away, this was mainly with thieves and juggernaughts, maybe in this case if their lair is really to far off they just go to the nearest lair with free spots and create a new one

Hello Sonny Bos.

When we say its fixed its fixed internally, AFAIK the public version didnt get an update for a while as we are working hard on 1.4. It should be ready soon :)