Re: [Rails-devel] An ongoing rails issue

[Erik V. <eri...@xs...>]

Mike,

I'm afraid this is the price you have to pay for having Rails think for you,
rather than doing the thinking yourself.
This refers to finding valid tile and token lays and routes, and calculating
revenue.  I don't believe logging is part of the issue.
AFAIK you can switch off all or part of this thinking, and perhaps more
fine-grained settings are needed.

In the past I have seen a lot of discussion about whether or not route
finding speed can be improved, so I don't expect many quick wins here.
For any improvements you'll be dependent on Stefan, and perhaps others, but
in any case I cannot help you: this subject is not in my skill set.

Erik

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Bourke [mailto:com...@ip...]
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 10:51 AM
> To: Development list for Rails: an 18xx game
> Subject: [Rails-devel] An ongoing rails issue
> 
> This is not a bug per se, but it's something that needs to be mentioned,
and
> even improved or resolved before rails can be offered as fully functional
to
> the public.
> 
> Rails 1.7.x becomes deadly slow towards the end of a game. In today's
game,
> I clicked on "no token" for the second-last turn in the last op round and
had
> to wait more than five minutes (closer to eight) before the game
progressed
> to calculating the revenue for that particular company. 1835 is especially
bad
> in this respect because of the potential for a company to have multiple
> diesels, and is almost unplayable as a result.
> 
> Note that this problem occurs with ALL actions in an op round. A company
> starts its turn. Click on a hex on the map to indicate where you want to
lay a
> tile, wait five-to-ten minutes. The available tiles are offered, click on
one,
> wait 5-10 minutes. The tile is then laid, click on it to rotate it until
correct
> facing is achieved - wait another 5-10 minutes before the first rotation
takes
> effect. Click on "lay tile", wait another 5-10 minutes before the game
> progresses to tokens. Click on a tile to lay a token, wait for 5-10
minutes
> before the option to lay a token in that space is displayed. Click on the
lay
> token button, or on the no token button, wait another 5-10 minutes before
> revenue calculations start. Wait up to an hour for revenue calculations to
be
> complete (or wait at least 5-10 minutes for a value that's close if not
equal to
> the final revenue valuation to be
> achieved) and click Set Revenue, wait 5-10 minutes before being given the
> option of how to distribute that revenue. Click one of the buttons and
wait
> another 5-10 minutes for the option to buy trains (if applicable). And so
on.
> Clicking on "game" on the game status window menu produces another wait
> of 5-10 minutes before the menu is displayed. Clicking save game produces
a
> wait of 5-20 minutes before the save game window appears. Clicking save
> does nothing for another 5-10 minutes.
> 
> All this appears to be due to the game consuming 100% available CPU and
> wanting more.
> 
> It's understandable that as brown tiles becomes available and the variety
and
> length of possible routes increases, it takes longer to determine the
> optimum route. Nevertheless, this all seems excessive, and should have no
> impact on actions like "save game".
> 
> I have found that the problem can be reduced (not eliminated) temporarily
> by saving the game, closing rails, and then reopening it, so it appears in
part
> to be a problem with the size of the log file (which is always smaller
after
> doing so than it was), but this is not the whole issue by any means.
> 
> My system is relatively slow by modern standards - only 2.65GHz -
> exacerbating the problem. In combination with the "loading a saved game"
> improvement mentioned a moment ago, I suspect that this is the reason no
> players have noticed / complained about the problem in past testing.
> 
> To assess the true scale of the issue, would it be possible to include an
option
> to turn logging off in the game setup panel for 1.7.6? I can understand
why
> logging in general is both desirable and comprehensive while the game is
still
> in a beta-testing mode, but I think this needs further investigation.
> SOMETHING is happening repeatedly in all those CPU cycles that bogs the
> whole game down to a slow crawl.
> 
> I also have some thoughts on an alternative top-level process for handling
> revenue calculations but they *might* not yield any improvement (might
> even be worse) and have a wishlist for functionality enhancements, but
they
> are unimportant in comparison to this issue.
> 
> Mike Bourke
> Campaign Mastery http://www.campaignmastery.com Co-author, Assassin's
> Amulet http://www.legaciescampaignsetting.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
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