Do the "Performance-Jam"!!!

dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2013 in NS2 General Discussion
If you open the "Technical support" thread where people complaing about performance issues you see always see the same "solutions" from the same people like:

- Did you disable ambient occlusion?
- Diy you set everything to minimum?
- Did you do this?
- Did you do that?

That give people the feeling its an personal problem and everything runs fine with the right settings.

I know performance is on top prio since, hmm, around 1,5 years? Dont know.
But.
The game feels horrible from mid to endgame and its NOT a personal problem of some individuums.
EVRYBODY has this problems, no matter what CPU or GPU you have.
You can overclock your CPU to 5ghz and can use gtx titan and still cant hold constant >60 fps the whole game.

I think this is the Nr1 reason why Playercount going down constantly and not the missing of some "skillmovement" or whatever.

All i want is:
- Do something like the mod-jam to raise the performance ("perfomance-jam")
- Do this BEFORE you release the super fast skulks from Balance-test
- Stop telling the people they had an personal PC-issue
- Make the profiler user-friendly if you want help from the community

And Ironhorse, sorry for "trolling" you with that on the server, but its frustrating to have an nearly unplayble game from mid-endgame in crowded areas and reading always the same "solutions".
The game is released 7 month ago and still feels like beta performance wise.
Its time to solve this, DO it. Yes you can. I mean, you made 3 mods with new features and stuff within 1 week.

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Comments

  • IronsoulIronsoul Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
    Don't forget this game's heavy usage of lua results in large latencies in doing stuff, which means the game needs to run at a higher rate than most games would. I.E. Unreal Tournament 3 can run at 35fps and feel fine while ns2 needs to be above 60 or even 80 to feel responsive.
  • FuleFule Join Date: 2009-06-04 Member: 67683Members
    Agree, and I've quit "playing" this game until it's fixed. If it's ever gonna be.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    edited May 2013
    dePARA wrote: »
    That give people the feeling its an personal problem and everything runs fine with the right settings.
    Because in my experience in those forums, ~80% of all the issues are on the user's end.
    This isn't to say "Oh you have poor performance, that's gotta be your computer"... its to say whatever bug/glitch/tech support issue they have is generally something solve-able on their end.
    Shaders, a mod, an overlay, drivers, settings, corrupt files, bad installs, incompatibility etc etc etc

    When it comes to performance this is less likely the case (unless you want to include that argument of "your computer is too old")
    But those things are suggested first because its like asking if you tried the on/off switch.. not everyone knows how many settings incur input delay, which can be misconstrued as something else sometimes.
    Beyond that.. its about gathering info from that user, and if it looks to be anything outside of the norm (not always the case) like extremely low fps for their given hardware, then we continue diagnosing.

    Otherwise... well, then they are getting the fps that is considered typical for NS2 and their hardware and there's really not much that can be offered in a "tech support" forum except suggestions of overclocking etc?
    There is no "solution" currently..

    And as far as that topic of 80 fps "feels like" X fps.. if any user has anything measurable to go on then we can report it/address it.. but so far that is the most description and information that's been given. Its not that i dont believe it - i do - its that if we don't know the culprit /we can't reproduce it, how can it be addressed? Its a ghost as long as the only thing to go on is "feels"
    dePARA wrote: »
    And Ironhorse, sorry for "trolling" you with that on the server,
    Its all good man, but just remember whenever you feel frustrated.. how much more i am, given that i'm a play testing lead and i can't even figure out whats wrong. :-/
    My theory is frame times, but we currently have no adequate method to measure that AFAIK..
  • YMICrazyYMICrazy Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 165986Members
    Idk how it works exactly but doesn't the spark engine run decently well? The fact that the entire game is scripted in lua on top of the game engine is the reason it runs slow right?

    Either way tech support will not say "The game is horribly optimized CPU wise please get a decent quad core 4 GHz+ CPU to get playable performance." I remember it taking me a while to actually catch on that the game was CPU limited after finding about r_Stats and lowering all my graphical settings to find no performance increase. Lowering graphical settings is the only advice they can offer aside from a new CPU.

    As for performance since the entire game is so heavily scripted in lua squeezing any extra gains at this point is difficult. I mean I heard something about LUAJIT but the fact that it is a side project at the moment does not give me a lot of hope.
  • ImbalanxdImbalanxd Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
    I think the engine is solid. This is exemplified by the fact that combat or classic runs very well for most people.

    It may simply (I use that word quite incorrectly) be a matter of optimizing the game code now. Maybe things are being asked of the engine which simply aren't reasonable. I think a big issue here is that, these kind of optimizations may be less about code efficiency and more about some gameplay changes (not removing infestation entirely, gtfo). Such changes require far more time to get right than code optimizations, which might be why UWE were reluctant to make those changes so late in development.
  • XaoXao Join Date: 2012-12-12 Member: 174840Members
    If I read "Lower your in game resolution" three more times mane I swear.

    Blind already asked my exact question about this topic to Brian Cronin, Lead Programmer, interview here.
  • bizbiz Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167386Members
    Idk how it works exactly but doesn't the spark engine run decently well? The fact that the entire game is scripted in lua on top of the game engine is the reason it runs slow right?

    the game isn't efficient on the gpu side either
    maybe the quality/performance ratio is better on high settings, but it's really bad on low
  • DestherDesther Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165195Members
    Imbalanxd wrote: »
    I think the engine is solid. This is exemplified by the fact that combat or classic runs very well for most people.

    Combat runs better but still fairly slow. The smaller maps increase the player density which slows it down even though infestation and AI units are removed.
  • ezekelezekel Join Date: 2012-11-29 Member: 173589Members, NS2 Map Tester
    The performance increase on the nsl maps was pretty big!

    But I don't know much about how this stuff works, all I know is if the game used more of the cores we have compared to what it uses now, I think a majority of the userbase would see big performance increases because most of us are probably on 3 core processors or more
  • RoobubbaRoobubba Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    I think the idea of a 'performance jam' is a great one, and would love to see UWE do this. Being able to turn around to the community and say 'We spent a week going over every conceivable idea for optimisation and eked out between 10 and 15fps increase in minimum frame rate' would do a hell of a lot to bring back some players who've already left, and give those of us who still play a much needed boost. These kind of creative thinking sessions can be incredibly valuable, as the mod-jam already showed, I think.
  • MestaritonttuMestaritonttu Join Date: 2004-07-29 Member: 30229Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold
    I thought my 60 fps was good. :( Are I should be unhappey?
  • FuleFule Join Date: 2009-06-04 Member: 67683Members
    I thought my 60 fps was good. :( Are I should be unhappey?

    I'm pretty happy with 40-50 outside combat and 15-30 in combat.
    /sarcasm
  • current1ycurrent1y Join Date: 2003-12-08 Member: 24150Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
    I thought my 60 fps was good. :( Are I should be unhappey?

    Nope you shouldn't. The problem is no one can get 60 constant all game. You get 4.5ghz computers getting 150-35 fps.
  • JimWestJimWest Join Date: 2010-01-03 Member: 69865Members, Reinforced - Silver
    edited May 2013
    Everything is on full and got 60 fps and ~ 45 in combat, no prob for my pc.
  • JoseppeJoseppe Join Date: 2012-01-21 Member: 141497Members
    Since some weeks i questioned myself:
    What performance increase could you expect if the lua-code would be written in c++ ?

    It seems like:
    The Spark Engine is pretty fast and looks great, but decision to be highly modable (to be one of the core-characteristics of the engine)
    is the reason for the lua integration and the somehow bad performance (game logic/lua-code -> end game: cyst state polling etc.)

    So, the questions i have:
    if the whole engine would be c++ (and not lua), what performance increase could we probably expect ?
    if the performance increase would be really high, would it be ok for yourself to "lose" all the modifications ?

    is the modable feature (lua) a characteristic to keep playing ns2 ?
    vs
    would be a high performance increase (no lua, c++ only) keep you playing ns2 (without mods) ?

    btw: mods doesnt mean maps, models (retextured etc.)
  • killer monkeykiller monkey Join Date: 2010-02-26 Member: 70743Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I can run the game on max setting no problem, buy a new pc
  • xDragonxDragon Join Date: 2012-04-04 Member: 149948Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow
    ^ lol. NS2 suffers from many problems, all of which are very well known at this point. LUA bottlenecks performance quite badly unfortunately, and while the game has come quite far there are many people I know that will not touch this game due to performance. Breaking that down, its not just framerate that causes poor 'performance', input lag and other oddities play into that also. A good example is how ~200 fps in NS2 feels similar to 30 fps in NS1. While I still think that those issues CAN be fixed, its unfortunately becoming less and less likely that they will be fixed within the timeframe needed, unless some big jumps are made soon (something I think they are working on).

    TLDR I hope they also monitor input lag and responsiveness along with framerates, and mouse input accuracy. My biggest complaint anymore is how it feels like my sensitivity is attached to a yo-yo and input lag.
  • JoseppeJoseppe Join Date: 2012-01-21 Member: 141497Members
    edited May 2013
    I can run the game on max setting no problem, buy a new pc

    Game is running bad. Answer: I can run the game on max settings, buy a new PC... Really helpful!
    You get killed many times in a match. Answer: I am a competitive player, get some skill... Really helpful.
    The teams are stacked, can we get balanced teams ?. Answer: I am on the winning team, stop whining... Really helpful.

    Thank god, everybody has the money to buy new hardware everytime a game is running not smoothly on the recommended settings:
    CPU: Core 2 Duo 3,0 GHz
    Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • current1ycurrent1y Join Date: 2003-12-08 Member: 24150Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
    dePARA wrote: »
    ...

    All i want is:
    - Do something like the mod-jam to raise the performance ("perfomance-jam")
    ...

    tumblr_mk0z4xKJei1rbg5ufo1_500.gif <--- Performance jam at 60 fps
  • hozzhozz Join Date: 2012-11-20 Member: 172660Members
    edited May 2013
    The mod jam was not a technical challenge. What you propose is a huge technical challenge, that can't be done easily in a week.

    Isn't JIT compilation of the LUA code being tested? That's the next step before porting the game logic to c++ (if that is feasible effort wise, probably not).

    Also my guess is that a lot of the issues (especially sudden lower fps when in a fight) are due to server performance combined with latency (it's not like other online games are problem free).
  • joshhhjoshhh Milwaukee, WI Join Date: 2011-06-21 Member: 105717Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
    Joseppe wrote: »
    Game is running bad. Answer: I can run the game on max settings, buy a new PC... Really helpful!
    You get killed many times in a match. Answer: I am a competitive player, get some skill... Really helpful.
    The teams are stacked, can we get balanced teams ?. Answer: I am on the winning team, stop whining... Really helpful.

    This is a surprisingly accurate summery of how these forums work. Also +1 Current1y rofl
  • RicezRicez Join Date: 2013-04-13 Member: 184784Members
    An easy place to start is to remove clutter from the maps. You guys did a great job making the maps very detailed, but having 20+ individual cups in cafe or 100+ servers in server room can't be helping performance. I have no idea how many things could be removed or replaced with flat textures, or even if it would give a noticeable performance increase but maybe it's worth a shot.

    I think when you get to this stage in the game's lifetime, most players are here for the gameplay and not the ooohh shiny things
  • kespeckespec Join Date: 2012-11-18 Member: 172279Members
    edited May 2013
    Babyshark wrote: »
    I know what will fix the performance issues!
    Everyone buy an i7. Overclock it to 5GHZ and stop bitching

    why don't you crawl back in your hole.

  • NominousNominous Baltimore, MD Join Date: 2012-02-18 Member: 146518Members
    edited May 2013
    Babyshark wrote: »
    I know what will fix the performance issues!
    Everyone buy an i7. Overclock it to 5GHZ and stop bitching
    Try reading the OP's post or learning about the game before posting useless suggestions. Plenty of people can run this game around 100 FPS even without a water-cooled OC. The problem is that FPS declines sharply toward end-game, as well as large FPS fluctuations during an entire match.
  • JoseppeJoseppe Join Date: 2012-01-21 Member: 141497Members
    Babyshark wrote: »
    I know what will fix the performance issues!
    Everyone buy an i7. Overclock it to 5GHZ and stop bitching

    Your a genius! Thank you so much.

    and...
    sry, that not all people have the money to buy the newest hardware.
    sry, that people talk about their problems on a forum about the game.
    sry, for forcing you to read, think (you really thought well about it, because your a genius, aren´t you ?) and answer on this thread.
    sry, that we cant talk to each other in a proper way, except you.

    but, wait...
    maybe i should create a new account to stay anonymous and troll a little bit around here.
  • CheekySurpriseCheekySurprise Join Date: 2013-05-20 Member: 185306Members
    AAA games need AAAAAA PCs
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