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Home » news » forums » Space Empires V » Space Empires V General

UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Mon, 2008-03-31 09:06. Space Empires V General

I recently picked up this game after hearing about it from a friend. While the gameplay is interesting, I'm having a hard time getting used to the UI window lag; specifically with the Log, Construction, Colonies, and Planets windows. Colonies is so bad I don't even bother opening it anymore. The others are pretty much impossible to live without, so I just deal with the 10-20 seconds of waiting every time I open a window. I have a few questions regarding this:

Are there any UI mods out there that have managed to overcome this lag?

What's happening every time I open these windows that takes so ungodly long to open them? I'm assuming it's querying every planet in the game every time I open one of these windows, because I can't fathom how my 3Ghz dual core with 4Gb of RAM is having a hard time with them.

I'm playing in 1920x1200 on a widescreen; is performance any better in windowed mode?

If so, is there any way to set the resolution any higher than the game default in windowed mode?

Combat is also laggy, especially when carriers and fighters are involved; but I can live with that. I've even tried setting all graphics detail to low without any luck in this area.

Any help or answers is appreciated. Overall I really enjoy the depth this game provides; it's just a shame that the user interface is so sluggish.

‹ does anyone remember Ascendancy from the Logic factory? Problems with self created maps ›
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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Mon, 2008-03-31 09:09.

Since I can't seem to find an edit button; I'd just like to add the obligatory yes I've checked FAQs and searched the forums before posting, but I've come up dry. Maybe I'm just searching for the wrong keywords or something.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by capnq on Mon, 2008-03-31 09:30.

This game wasn't designed to take advantage of a dual core system. Try whatever the setting is that you use to force the program to only use one core. People have reported that helping in other threads.

-----
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Mon, 2008-03-31 10:23.

capnq wrote:
This game wasn't designed to take advantage of a dual core system. Try whatever the setting is that you use to force the program to only use one core. People have reported that helping in other threads.
CPU affinity? I'll play with that when I get home; I thought that single CPU games use only one CPU by default though.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Vince278 on Mon, 2008-03-31 18:17.

The CPUs seem to load balance by default. Perhaps the next version of the game can be multi-core optimized. Smiling

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Tue, 2008-04-01 08:17.

I tried switching CPU affinity to a single core last night, and it doesn't seem to help at all with the UI windows lagging. I'd swear it did help with turn processing speeds, and maybe even the lag in combat; but it may have just been a placebo effect because I was trying so hard to find something that did improve.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Vince278 on Tue, 2008-04-01 09:40.

Playing 1920x1200 widescreen might have something to do with it. I've never tried it that high but an increased resolution may slow some things down. I believe the game is optimized for 1064x768, which is where I'm usually at and it runs fine. Smiling

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Tue, 2008-04-01 09:53.

That's my next try. I can't play that resolution in full screen on a widescreen for obvious reasons (I guess I could, but it would look funny); so I'll try it windowed and break out my reading glasses so I can make out the words.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Gusset on Tue, 2008-04-01 15:18.

Natas Dog wrote:
That's my next try. I can't play that resolution in full screen on a widescreen for obvious reasons (I guess I could, but it would look funny); so I'll try it windowed and break out my reading glasses so I can make out the words.

The laptop with a 1920x1200 display that I've used on occasion for SEV was impractical in Windowed mode. It worked best when I just used a setting of 1024x768 or 1280x1024, or something in that range.

The game switches resolution pretty well, and minimizes just fine when I need it to.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Vince278 on Tue, 2008-04-01 19:24.

That's good to hear on a laptop. Smiling

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by apw2 on Wed, 2008-04-02 10:23.

I don't have much problem with open the screens up, the log sometimes goes slowly when there are say 3000 entries over two turns... other than that it works fine on my laptop.

By fine i mean it works smoothly until i end the turn. Then i wait 50-60 minutes (which is a complete joke) for 8 computer players to perform their turns.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Kilson on Wed, 2008-04-02 12:34.

Apw2 how large a map are you playing and what are the Max Ship and Unit limits. Is your AI set to Hard with High bonus ?

On my laptop I have 9AI and 4 Neutral in a large cluster map turns take about 4-5 sec right now and Im on turn 200.
It may be all the fights your AIs are getting in too . .

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Raapys on Wed, 2008-04-02 12:55.

Uh, 4-5seconds turn processing on turn 200 with 13 empires?

Even with a qx9650 at 3.6ghz I have at least 15seconds turn processing at turn 50'ish with 8 players. Feel free to share your secret.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by dan3260 on Wed, 2008-04-02 13:18.

EVer since I figured out how to change the font size, I have been playing in 1920x1200 and have experienced no problems, and no slow downs.
I tried 2560 x 1600 but the game throws up an unrecognised error.
Natas Dog, your CPU is certainly up to scratch, so perhaps its your graphics card?

If your graphics card is good enough, then if I were you, I would reformat my PC and reinstall windows, personally I do this quite often as windows does tend to get bloated with crap.
Defragging your drives can help too, I've had 1 or 2 games run slow before because they were fragmented across a drive.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Raapys on Wed, 2008-04-02 13:25.

Oh, about this problem, could it be that you're simply running Windows Vista? I'm running Vista myself and I had 15-20 FPS in-game both with my Radeon 3870X2 and my 9800GX2. It's related, apparantly, to poor support for DirectX8 in Vista. I've tried all sorts of drivers and approaches to fix it, but doesn't look like there's much to do. I think Aaron himself will have to do something to fix this. I did notice one fix he's implemented, called "DirectX10 Fix 1 := TRUE" in the settings.txt file, but all that did was fix some flashes I was previously having, didn't do anything for the performance.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Wed, 2008-04-02 13:34.

The turn processing and stuff works fine for me. I tried it in windowed mode last night for grins, but the UI lag is still there when opening any window besides research, intel, and empire. Also, turn processing is pretty fast; generally a minute or two for the 15 other empires in my large spiral galaxy. My only issue is with the UI windows, which tend to lag quite a bit when opened. Well, that and combat; but I kind of expect lag when a couple hundred fighters engage at 32x speed.

The only other complaint I have with the UI windows is their lack of functionality above and beyond viewing. It would be great if there was a "Select All" button for planet construction orders, not to mention a button for Emergency Build, On Hold, etc. on the main construction window; so I didn't have to go in and select each and every planet I want to change, click add to all, then change the queue orders. Having those little spreadsheets of condensed info there and yet having no ability to macromanage from them seems an odd oversight.

^^^^I'm using a GEForce 7950GT; I can't see how opening the planets or construction window would be taxing it in the least. Especially considering I can run most FPS games at 1920x1200 with all the bells and whistles turned on and rarely dip below 25 FPS; except for Crysis, that game slays my video card.

Edit #2: I'm doubting it's got anything to do with fragmentation. I'm running dual SATA drives using RAID, load times are the least of my issues. I've also got 4GB of RAM running Vista 64 Home Basic. Maybe it's some DX Compatibility issue, or a 64>32 bit incompatibility, but this will be the first program I've run into that has given me any problems with 32 bit emulation. And I've been playing all kinds of old 32 bit games on this rig with no issues, and even some DOS ones like X-Com: Apocalypse without so much as a hiccup on DOSBox. As far as stability and backwards compatibility goes, I've been extremely impressed with MS this time around with Vista 64.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Captain Kwok on Wed, 2008-04-02 13:36.

The only thing I've found that helps with Vista and SE5 is the "don't smooth font edges" option in windows. I have terrible lags when loading the ship list window, and slightly less than terrible loading the colony list window.

--

If you have multiple queues you want to place on hold or emergency build etc, you can achieve this through the construction queues list. Select your add to multiple queues option and go into queue settings and pick hold or emergency build... this will apply it to all the queues you had selected.


Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Wed, 2008-04-02 13:50.

I'll take a look at the font smoothing Kwok; though I'm pretty sure it's unchecked. I've got all the UI changes in Vista turned off, and my desktop looks the same as my XP desktop did; which is the same as my Win2K desktop. Basic blue background with all the 'ooh shiny' effects off.

I'm still stuck in my old habits where every scrap of ram and CPU time used was a big deal on PCs; so I've never turned on any of the bloat that the last couple OS revisions introduced. I'd kill steam in my taskbar too if only the game would run without out it :argh: Valve :argh:.

Edit: Oh, on the subject of emergency/hold orders. I know I can click the ones I want and then hit add to all. The problem comes in when the number of planets I want to modify becomes significantly larger than the number of planets I want to leave alone. For example; last night a bunch of my treatied allies wanted to clear their treaties of all options, which included some 30-40% trade agreements (This is using your balance mod btw, and what's up with my allies deciding they want to lose out on an extra 40% income a turn anyway?). I figured what the hell, since I was a major superpower and therefore I don't need any allies.

The thing I forgot to take into account was that I'd researched next to no planetary tech up to this point, and my trade income was easily twice my actual income. So, I went bankrupt in no time, had to dump some research in planetary techs, and had to go through and put 40-50 planets on hold to allow my facility upgrades to finish building. It was at this point that I realized a select all button would likely save me from getting carpal tunnel considering I have only about a quarter of the galaxy under my belt and here I am with a ton of planets that need orders all at once.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by SmokWawelski on Wed, 2008-04-02 14:57.

I second the "All" functions - those seem so intuitive for that screen, after you go there 50 times, that it is almost hard to believe they are not there. And to stay on topic, my PC also struggles with opening windows, but the worst delay happens when I change the view from one star system to another - audio stops, PC waits 5-10 seconds and then shows the target system...

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Raapys on Wed, 2008-04-02 19:23.

Thanks Kwok, disabling Smooth Font Edges gave me like 300% more FPS, so now I'm at 80'ish. Still a way off the 200FPS on my old computer with XP, but at least it's far more playable now.

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Vince278 on Wed, 2008-04-02 19:56.

200fps! I don't think I ever got above 60. I think I'll check into that. Smiling

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Re: UI Lag, any possible ways to alleviate it?

Submitted by Natas Dog on Thu, 2008-04-03 08:45.

You have to turn VSync off to exceed the refresh rate of the monitor in order to get more than 60 I believe.

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