Performance Issues...begone!
Published on September 2, 2010 By ScottTykoski In Elemental Dev Journals

More of a maintenance update than anything, Elemental v1.07 focuses on the performance issues seen by both high and low end users. There are more improvements to come as code is continually improved and tile-designs are streamlined, but this update should bring a healthy FPS boost to all. And, if your frames per second remain under-par, new options will give you additional wiggle-room.
 
That's not to say gameplay dosen't get some update love...resources no longer use up city tiles, unit groups save out the necessary info to regenerate themselves on reload, and item stacking heroes is a thing of the past...but performance, memory usage, and overall stability were our targets here.
 

Note: A 1.07.025 hotfix was published with a fix for a crash in the 'Custom Sovereign' system (Merchant/Brilliant/Meditative traits). This would have caused a crash loading saved sovereigns or games with those traits applied as well.
 
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----------- Elemental v1.07 Change Log  -----------
---------------------------------------------------

***************
* Performance *
+ Major improvement to rendering system, especially when over cities.
+ Condensed scene rendering process from 3 passes through scene into a single pass
+ Bunch of fixes to the issues behind "DX Error: Invalid Call", particularly when Alt-Tab'ing. This will continue to be worked on.
+ Added new framerate limiter ( limits framerate to refresh rate of device )
- Removed throttle framerates option (this is always on now)
+ Particle Effects no longer render if the "Disable Particle Effects" option is on
+ Outlines now LOD-out as you zoom out
+ Added option "Disable Outlines" to the options screen to turn off rendering outlines (Might help lower-end machines, and some people prefer no outlines)
+ Commented out unnecessary debug messages

*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed Various Memory Leaks
+ Fixed the issue that was causing the unimproved tile designs for elemental shards to stick around after a shard-harvesting improvement was built on top of them.
+ fixed a bug where if you have the option on where when entering/leaving city build mode, the camera switches between overhead and default view, you could get stuck in overhead view (and forced to manually move the camera back) if you pressed the city build mode button, while already in city build mode
+ fixed bug where AI demands a tribute of 0 gildar
+ fixed display issue where improvement cost entries overfilled the improvement build list
+ fixed display issue where units with long names overfilled the name area on the level up wnd.
+ fixed display issue on battle init wnd, if defense or attack was negative then it showed up as a huge number.  Beserker ring gives a -3 to defense, which could give you negative overall defense.  Same might be true of attack if in the future we have some strange item that decreases your attack.
+ Fixed bug where units in tile designs (like horses, wargs, etc) would not fade out when the tile is under fog of war
+ Fixed "jumping units" when starting new game from within a game (or loading a game within a game)
+ Other fixes regarding battle initition window, creating mountains in map editor, first contact status not being set to relation unknown
+ Fixed a bug where improvements that were flagged as once-per-city were able
to be placed twice.

**********************
* Gameplay / Balance *
+ Fixed bug where economic treaty gold bonuses weren't getting added to the global resource pool
+ Changed how creatures and NPCs increase their stats when they level up to nerf incredibly powerful high-level monsters running around
+ Stacking of items fixed (can now only wear 1 per type per champion)
+ Pioneers in a boat can no longer build a Settlement at sea
+ Wild improvements will now be able to be taken into account in a city's resource usage correctly, if any of them ever have negative resource production
+ Refugee camps (and other wild improvements that provide population storage bonuses) improvements
+ Fixed Miner sovereign profession bonus
+ Fixed Great Warriors faction bonus
+ Removed really high starting mana regen ability from Umber's faction config
+ Fixed Advanced Tracking techs (in both tech trees) to change the player ability that is hooked up to affect movement
+ Fixed broken productionreq tag on vengeance coating
+ References to Ice shards changed to Water for consistency
+ Sprint duration adjusted to 2
+ Lowered HP for fallen peasant
+ Fixed up resource hoard description text
+ Various food resources now provide different amounts as indicated by old description text
+ Improved output of Temple of Essence
+ Improved output of Tower of Titans, Tower of Souls
+ Fixed construction resource cost for curgen's exchange
+ Resource hoard costs now mirror kingdoms resource costs
+ Fixed up description text for construction yard
+ Great Theatre no longer provides +100% Gildar, only +100% Prestige
+ AI: Added code to send sovereign back to his capital city if he has no destination after the early phase of the game
+ Fixes for various terrain types not responding to RaiseLand spell
+ Resource hoards no longer deduct from the buildable tiles of a city (the 'bananna cities' from the forums)

***********
* Battles *
+ Changed the calculation for battle damage to take multiple troops into better account (with each unit getting an individual attack roll).
+ Every time panic is caused, the combat text for the panic will be shown.
+ Fixed a problem where misses and non-damage spells would cause an on hit animation to be played in tactical battles.
+ Fixed a possible bug where units would no longer update their troop counts after reaching a single troop left.
+ When selecting the spell book in tactical battles the cursor should now reset to the arrow.
+ When clicking on a unit's hiergemenon entry in tactical battles the cursor should now reset to the arrow.
+ Turned on bounding box picking for tactical battles to improve the feel of unit selection.
+ Selecting units should now be turned back on while other units are animating in tactical battles.
+ Fixed a bug where unit tooltips in tactical battles would draw over tooltips for items and spells.
+ Added some checks to the battle init window to stop the window from showing when defenders or attackers were null. Also added logic to clear waiting flags in this case.

******
* UI *
+ Adopted the unit vitals context for a Details tab to show when a wild improvement is selected on the main map, to give more meaningful and easier to read information
- If the improvement is under construction, it says so and uses the level slider to show the progress towards completion and the turns left
- If the improvement is done, it shows what that improvement is producing and has an entry to get further information about the improvement by opening up the lorebook
- Also, it shows which city an improvement is linked to, or "Not linked" if it isn't.  If it is linked, the tooltip explains that this city is contributing production bonuses to the resource production of that improvement.  If the improvement is not linked, the tooltip says how many tiles the nearest city needs to be closer to link with that city, explaining that it will be able to get city production bonuses if it does link
+ New Tactical Icons hooked up for Smelter, Trade Center, Construction Yard, Merchant Guild
+ New Tile Designs for Ventri Iron Mine, Stone Quarry, Clay Quarry, Marble Quarry, Drath Village, Shrill Hive, Spider Nest
+ Fixed bug where double-clicking on a spell you couldn't cast from the spellbook popup would queue a bunch of "Can't cast tactical spell" message boxes to appear over and over, now just plays a little failure sound if something that can't be cast is double-clicked
+ Fixed a typo in a campaign dialog
+ When you build an improvement on a resource, the map notifier for it is removed
+ Fixed typo "completly restored" to "completely restored"
+ Fixed some places where the display of per-turn gold production lagged behind changes to it, gets rid of some income discrepancies between some screens when loading a game, adding/cancelling a treaty, etc.


****************
* Known Issues *

+ Tactical Battles: Stuck turn if you use space bar or click "Pass Turn" button while selected unit is moving.  Clicking auto-resolve will end the battle if the turn is stuck.
+ Occasional instances of damage indicators not appearing over units.


Comments (Page 2)
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on Sep 02, 2010

Thanks a lot for the hard work.

First, let's help you a bit: creating a custom sovereign with the Brilliant talent makes the game crash.

Then a question: are the units in a stack comparing their roll to the defense of the opponent on an individual basis now?

 

Edit: Meditative makes the game crash, just like Brilliant.

on Sep 02, 2010

 
That's not to say gameplay dosen't get some update love...

OMG instant

Boogie, I love you! (and the team )

on Sep 02, 2010

Spyndel
Wow! A lot of fixes.  Thanks for your continued efforts on the game!

what he said.......

on Sep 02, 2010

Hazzas!  Move'n baby... were move'n now!  Ty kind sirs for your work, it is much appreciated.

on Sep 02, 2010

Shadowshard
Are shards working now?

yeah and him too...

on Sep 02, 2010

I feel some man love happening. lol

 

Great update!

on Sep 02, 2010

Werewindlefr
Thanks a lot for the hard work.

First, let's help you a bit: creating a custom sovereign with the Brilliant talent makes the game crash.

Then a question: are the units in a stack comparing their roll to the defense of the opponent on an individual basis now?

 

Edit: Meditative makes the game crash, just like Brilliant.

Wow, I must just be a bug-seeking missile... the *first* thing I did after loading up post-patch was to start a new game, creating a custom sovereign... who was both Brilliant and Meditative. (The game asploded, ofc.)

on Sep 02, 2010

Thank you to you and the rest of the team.  It's much appreciated.

on Sep 02, 2010

First, let's help you a bit: creating a custom sovereign with the Brilliant talent makes the game crash.

Then a question: are the units in a stack comparing their roll to the defense of the opponent on an individual basis now?



Edit: Meditative makes the game crash, just like Brilliant.

That explains things... almost ALL of my heroes have Brilliant or something. Thus, my game doesn't work right now.

Time to find out whats causing that bug... then it's time for a quickfix, Stardock.

on Sep 02, 2010

Wow, I have at 5870 (2GB) and disabling outlines is a huge help to the framerate (playing at 5540x1050) and it was already much improved vs. 1.06 before I tried that.  I think it looks better too.  Kudos so far.  

on Sep 02, 2010

Big thanks for another quick patch. I also had the Brilliant and Meditative traits crash the game when saving a custom sov. Very happy with the speed boost in the game and now I can finally play to end game

on Sep 02, 2010

SD is already working on the hotfix for the custom Sov crashes with any talent/profession that generates resources. Yay IRC!

on Sep 02, 2010

I think it looks better too.
Yeah, some people were saining it looks more 'painted' without outlines...and the extra boost to performance is the icing on the cake!  (I prefer them on, but to each their own...)

Time to find out whats causing that bug... then it's time for a quickfix, Stardock.
A 1 minute fix   Rebuilding now, the restaging.

 

on Sep 02, 2010



* Battles *
+ Changed the calculation for battle damage to take multiple troops into better account (with each unit getting an individual attack roll).

 

Wow...really? Seriously? I wasn't expecting this to get fixed so quickly. So...does this only change attack rolls, ie: each unit attacks using their own attack value, not the combined attack value of the stack? And what about defense? Does each unit count their own defense or the defense of the combined stack? Really hope this has been fixed completely because it was one of my main gripes...

 

::keeps fingers crossed::

 

Anyone tested this yet?

 

Thanks Stardock! Keep it up!

on Sep 02, 2010

 Awesome! Thanks for the update and continual hard work!

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