Re: [Rails-devel] An ongoing rails issue

[Chris S. <chr...@gm...>]

Are other people experiencing the same problem?

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Chris

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On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:50 AM, Mike Bourke <com...@ip...>wrote:

> 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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