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  1. #1

    Is anyone else experiencing a lot of lag?

    Most of the lag happens when loading in walls or huge groups of trees it seems. The lag is so bad down south that the game is practically unplayable.

    I'm curious to see if others are experiencing this. I have tried so many different things on my end to fix this and it has gotten a tiny bit better but is still so bad it makes me not want to play at all.

    I play games that require 10 times the specs and get no lag what so ever.

  2. #2
    Yes, lags are common in some zones. I also experience this. One point might be that I am far away from the game server, I live in Europe/Germany.

    As far as I know (but I could be wrong, please anybody correct me then) the number of shadow building pieces has also a huge influence on the lags. I get massive lags when I approach the zone where e.g. Valorinak Republic is located. Of course, huge tribes with tons of building pieces also reduce the performance.

    I am unsure about the number of trees. If one tree is cut down, you will then have (Aspen trees) 3 or more logs at the same place. I assume that the number of logs in a zone also reduce performance, especially when the logs are short ones.

    I play with resolution 1366 x 768, with no shadows and low graphic settings. This way the game is playable for me, but I still have lags.

  3. #3
    Please post a few exact locations that I can use as a reference.

    Are you getting actual lag (delayed response in commands like dragging inventory items around) or is your frame rate low and everything is choppy?

    Are you getting lag while crossing a zone (so while things are loading) or in general (for example, just standing at a location after a while to make sure that everything has loaded)?

    Thanks!

  4. #4
    Please see the locations in the screenshots and the duration of the freezes from the file names. Sometimes it appears at the border from one zone to the other, sometimes in the middle of a zone. I then have in most cases a complete "freeze", neither trees nor water do move. An exception is Valorinak Republic in zone 861, when I pass this tribe I have stuttering moves.

    from zone 979 to 980
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_28_51 zone 980 to 979 1-2 sec freeze.png 
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Size:	1,018.5 KB 
ID:	751

    heading towards Founders Isle
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_12_13 within zone 979 10 sec freeze.png 
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Size:	1.12 MB 
ID:	752

    from zone 901 to 861
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_40_22 zone 901 to 861 7-8 sec freeze.png 
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Size:	1.10 MB 
ID:	753

    this one is close to Washo Abbey and Valorinak Republic
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_44_19 within zone 861 10 sec freeze - WA.png 
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Size:	1.17 MB 
ID:	754

    between Washo Abbey towards VR
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_46_41 within zone 861 4 sec freeze - VR.png 
Views:	132 
Size:	1.14 MB 
ID:	755

    along the road of VR, stuttering
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Screenshot_2020721_10_48_19 zone 861 stutter run in VR.png 
Views:	139 
Size:	1.17 MB 
ID:	756

  5. #5
    Ok. Those are all border crossings. There are actually four real zones in a zone so anywhere near 512 x or 512 z is also a border between zones.

    I'll keep trying to optimize loading at those crossings but a few seconds while objects are loading isn't too bad considering the thousands of objects that are loaded at those points.

    Thanks!

  6. #6
    Ahhh, thank you very much for this information, this makes it much better understandable I had not known that there are also mid-zone-borders. I however also thought that the freezes were due to the number of objects, that is why I've never asked about it.


    EDIT: This leads me to more questions for the loading of objects:

    1) I assume that a tree is counted as one object. When trees are felled and the stump is removed, but lets say 25 short logs (from douglas firs) are left (24 from autostacking after chopping and one where the stump was), is this then a count of 25 objects to be loaded?

    2) And if I place 20 short logs in a cart, is this then counted as 1 object for the loading (the cart) or as 21 objects (one cart with 20 short logs)? Or do the 20 short logs count only when I open the cart?

    3) Do shadow building pieces count as more objects than completed building pieces?

    Thank you very much!
    Last edited by Wyry; 07-21-2020 at 11:35 PM.

  7. #7
    Answers:

    1) Yes, that's all correct.

    2) Only the cart is a loaded object. The items inside the cart load as icon items if you open the cart, but they are not loading intensive like objects in the world. So, in this case only the cart affects loading and rendering times.

    3) Yes. 'Ghost' buildings have the building plus the scaffolding frame. In addition, they render slower because they are partially transparent and do not block the rendering of any object behind them. Tribes with a lot of unfinished 'ghost' buildings cause the biggest problem for both loading and frame rate.

    Because of this I started to set things up so that only tribe members could see the ghost buildings for their own tribes, but there are a few complications. (For example, when a tribe is abandoned, all the ghost buildings should then be removed, because nobody would be able to see them. Removing so many objects at once though can cause a major lag spike, so I'll need to find a better way to deal with this situation).

  8. #8
    Thank you very much for all those confirmations and informations. It helps a lot so that I can give advice to newcomers.

    When you make the ghost building parts invisible for non-tribe members, this also has an impact to keep in mind: When new players start building their first parts and have problems, I have several times visited them and given hints about how to move and place the parts. I would be unable to do so when the ghost parts are invisible for me.

    What would the impact be if tribe members can see them transparent but non-tribe members can see them maybe non-transparent but simply in e.g. light blue colour so they can distinguish between built parts and ghost parts? Would that help in reducing the lags?

    Maybe this could be tested on testserver when all the other planned updates are done? We lived so many years with the lags caused by the ghost parts that for now the knowledge about the reason helps, too. Thank you very much!

  9. #9
    Xsyon Citizen
    Join Date
    Jul 2013
    Location
    Right by the Mist
    Posts
    141
    Ran into something yesterday that might be the cause of some of the lag spikes, I was moving a cart back to my place in 904 along the road in 620 and 621, Kurak would never make the cross country as the crow flies run from Hell Hole so I took the long way.

    On that road in 620-621 I can see animals quite far off, biggest looked like a bluetip, as I got to about 100 meters from that animal a plateback suddenly appeared on the right side of the road, now that bear was about the same distance from me as the deer, a second or so after it spawned I got hit with a lag spike and mini freeze.

    As for the VR, yeah my 1660 Ti was dropping frames like crazy as I ran by there.

  10. #10
    Having ghost parts render some solid color for non tribe mates would likely improve frame rate a bit, but it wouldn't affect loading lag. Once a few more updates are patched out we can test frame rates and loading without ghost parts entirely first to see how much of a difference it makes.

    About the animal that suddenly appeared, that's probably not the cause of lag but a symptom. If objects were still loading while the packet for the creature to load was sent from the server, it would get queued behind a bunch of objects loading and appear later than it should.

    Any situation with so many building parts to load is difficult to improve. When you first enter the game, 9 zones (quarter zones really) load. All the time you wait to first enter the game is the time it's taking to load those zones.

    When you cross a zone boundary, 3 zones are removed and 3 load. If you cross two boundaries at once, 6 zones can be loading at once. Unlike when you first enter the game, the screen must render while objects load up. Rendering frames is slowed by the loading and loading is slowed by the rendering.

    The slowest part of loading occurs when loading textures and object types that haven't been loaded yet. Areas will a greater variety of building parts will load slower than areas with just a few building part types.

    I have a few ideas for improving this situation in the future including:

    - Allowing players to join some building parts into larger parts, such as larger walls.

    - Creating new parts based on parts that players currently create from basic pieces. For example: some players create steps from walls. I could create actual stair parts that would look the same (or a bit better) and use less building parts to achieve the same effect.

    - Hiding ghost parts as mentioned.

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