[RELEASED] alternativ Galaxy Generator

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 22, 2012, 5:09:30 PM

davea wrote:
That is curious. Even without any directory "modding" the mods button should still be available. Are you sure that the version number, in the lower left hand corner of the "new game" screen, is 1.0.19? If not, please upgrade and retry. The mods button was permanently greyed out in previous versions.

This is what it says.

davea

Newcomer

davea

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 22, 2012, 5:21:41 PM

Yes, it clearly says 1.0.9, which is before modding was activated. Please upgrade/purchase the game.

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 22, 2012, 6:22:24 PM

davea wrote:
Yes, it clearly says 1.0.9, which is before modding was activated. Please upgrade/purchase the game.

Ah, updated and it works now, thanks!

However, I have a few problems:

* a lot of stutter (low framerate?), even tho it's not using much resources

* influence areas are not circles any more

* zoom increments are messed up. lvl 1 and 2 are very close but lvl 3 is really far out

* "star system randomize amount %" has no description in the galaxy advanced options

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 22, 2012, 9:17:40 PM

After turning on Fraps and waiting, the FPS went from 16 to 60 after a minute. The FPS goes after every turn and then lags a while.

Lowering systems-per-constallation decreases the time it lags after each turn.

This is weird because it's not even using 20% of each core on my Core2Quad, and the game is only using about 1GB RAM. It seems the GPU is used most but that makes no sense if it only lags while the AI is doing it's moves...

How can I make the game use more RAM to see if that's the issue?

davea

Newcomer

davea

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 22, 2012, 10:35:43 PM

Make it use more RAM? I don't understand. Can you confirm you are using 1.0.19 now, as opposed to some other older version?

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 3:26:57 AM

davea wrote:
Make it use more RAM? I don't understand. Can you confirm you are using 1.0.19 now, as opposed to some other older version?

NVM about the RAM, was confusing it with an earlier post.

And something really needs to be done about the influence "circles"

http://imgur.com/2ZaK4

and the zoom

http://imgur.com/RDQQY

But the biggest issue is still the massive lag i get on new turns that range from 30 seconds on 32 systems per constellation and goes up to minutes on anything larger (8 arms, multiplier doesnt matter).

And the it crashes when generating with 256 systems per constellation.

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 4:26:38 AM

After getting to 40 turns the lag increases significantly and it stays like that for a VERY long while...

Madrox

Newcomer

Madrox

Newcomer

300g2g pts

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 6:37:25 AM

Awesome mod!

there is any way to blend this mod into the EndlessDream mod?

Dagobert

Newcomer

Dagobert

Newcomer

4 000g2g pts

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 1:48:56 PM

a litle bit about how any galaxy generator works.

As soon as you press new game it goes to the galaxy generator and generates it.

The mod generates a file.

After that my mod does nothing.

so i can´t do anything about the lag.

Same goes for the zoom levels.

Maybe this is a problem because the original has a with of 111 parsec and my is alot wider.

Could try to squeeze the galaxy. But it can only be done to a certain percentage.

the crash could happen because of to much memory being used.

2. Search in the file (game install dir)\EndlessSpace_data\output_log.txt for modding and copy the complete error message.

for blending this mod i don´t know what endlessDream changes.

But i can say if a mod doesn´t include a Plugins folder than you can safely copy it from this mod.

Localisations are also an easy task but you can also skip them.

the problem is when two mods change things in the galaxy generator.

Then you should use a diff tool to find changes.

only change GalaxyShapes.xml if you want to add/change an existing shapes. It's a different format

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 3:18:28 PM

Yeah, you're probably right. The zoom and influence circles are fixed when i chose "large" spiral. However large "disk" messes up the zoom and makes circles wobbly.

The lag is still there for a few seconds when a new turn starts. It doesnt make sense because it's not using any CPU, RAM or even GPU resources at all

Does anyone else have the same issues I have with the lag on anything higher than 32 systems per constellation?

I'll edit my post with the output_log in a few minutes.

EDIT: Hmm apparently the crash has been fixed when I reinstalled and updated.

davea

Newcomer

davea

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 3:39:36 PM

The lag at the start of the turn is due to all of the AI turn processing. Are you sure you don't see it using any more CPU?

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 6:22:31 PM

It is, but not even 50% and only one a single core; http://i.imgur.com/tspc1.png?1 The massive drop is when the FPS goes back to normal.

And it doesnt really make sense if it's only the AI because I'm using the same number of enemies every time, and there is a HUGE difference in the length the lag is present after turns when you increase the systems per constellation.

And then it hit a massive wall when i got to 44 turns and it went from 30 second lag to over 10 minutes before i gave up and just quit the game.

davea

Newcomer

davea

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 6:59:57 PM

prassel wrote:
there is a HUGE difference in the length the lag is present after turns when you increase the systems per constellation.

I don't understand again. I guess you are saying you have two different games, where the only difference is the number of systems per constellation. Then in each game, you play 40 turns, and measure the "lag", and it is different. Is that at all correct?

What are the specific settings of each game, and what is the difference in settings? And when you mention "10 minute lag", what do you mean by lag? Do you mean the end of turn delay? Do you mean how long at the beginning of the turn, when the game response is choppy? If you have a save game which shows a 10 minute end of turn delay, please zip and attach to a post.

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 8:11:24 PM

davea wrote:
I don't understand again. I guess you are saying you have two different games, where the only difference is the number of systems per constellation. Then in each game, you play 40 turns, and measure the "lag", and it is different. Is that at all correct?

Yes. But its also noticable difference on the first turn between "large" (16 per constellation) and "massive" (128?). Large gives only a few seconds lag from turn one, and increases to almost 30 seconds after 50+ turns.

Massive gives 30+ seconds lag from turn 1.

davea wrote:
When you mention "10 minute lag", what do you mean by lag? Do you mean the end of turn delay? Do you mean how long at the beginning of the turn, when the game response is choppy?

Low framerate (FPS) when a new turn begins.

davea wrote:
What are the specific settings of each game, and what is the difference in settings?

The only difference is Galaxy Size. "large" and under gives almost zero lag for about 100 turns.

http://i.imgur.com/68WrL.png

http://i.imgur.com/YTyr1.png

davea wrote:
And If you have a save game which shows a 10 minute end of turn delay, please zip and attach to a post.

Unfourtunately I reinstalled the game and didn't save that game.

I'll try to see if I can repeat it.

EDIT: I generated a galaxy with the settings in the image above (massive, 2 disk, multiplier 1, 8 arms). It was lagging from the start so I let it sit for over 5 minutes before I saved on turn 1 and then went back to the main menu.

I turned the graphics settings to "fastest" and loaded the game. I got the same error as yesterday when I tried to generate a galaxy with the same settings.

output_log: http://www.mediafire.com/?rt54x0w6z1lauc9

error message: http://i.imgur.com/CXCfP.jpg

I restarted the game and loaded the game fine, but it's still lagging (10 FPS all the time).

Here's the save: http://www.mediafire.com/?tm3udh8e2b6bbg6

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 23, 2012, 11:06:42 PM

It seems to be a multi-threading issue.

All 4 cores affinity set. The red arrow shows when the lag stops in-game:

http://i.imgur.com/tspc1.png?2

2 middle cores (marked in red) affinity set. The huge drop is when lag stops:

http://i.imgur.com/D1ExX.jpg?1

davea

Newcomer

davea

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 24, 2012, 12:29:53 AM

I'm not sure which variables you are changing. AFAIK after reading many threads of complaining about it, ES only uses a single core. I "claim" that the performance is directly proportional to the number of systems in the whole galaxy. It is probably worse than linear (ie doubling the number of systems more than doubles the turn processing time). The original galaxy generator had a horrible runtime for large numbers of systems, which tells us that the rest of the game algorithms might not have been designed for large numbers of systems either.

The OP has done interesting work to speed up the galaxy generator for large systems, but perhaps what you have demonstrated is that the rest of the game algorithms have a similar problem. Unfortunately the source code for these algorithms is not available like the galaxy generator source, so it may not be possible for modders to solve.

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 24, 2012, 12:50:01 AM

Just changing this one to anything lower makes the lag period shorter.

It certainly seems like it is only single-threaded and not optimized. Maybe it's a good idea to forward this to the devs?

Dagobert

Newcomer

Dagobert

Newcomer

4 000g2g pts

12 years ago

Sep 24, 2012, 7:41:34 AM

Too many heap sections is a known memory problem.

The current version of ES and Unity uses an older Version of Mono which has problems with it´s GC.

This will change when Unity4 comes out.

For the Galaxy.

Massive Generates 256 StarSystems per arm.

2 Ring Disk has double the amount of arms.

Resulting in ~4096 starsystems.

prassel

Newcomer

prassel

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 24, 2012, 2:37:50 PM

Is there a date for Unity4?

And what about the obvious cpu threads issue?

EDIT: I found this thread so I'll give it a read.

EDIT 2: Didnt find anything about multi-threading in there

tanstaafl

Newcomer

tanstaafl

Newcomer

12 years ago

Sep 24, 2012, 2:51:03 PM

Unity 4 is supposed to support Linux (natively) as a platform. Since ES uses Mono is there any chance ES will run under Linux some day (without using Wine etc.)?