Elemental: v1.07 Update

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.

---------------------------------------------------
----------- 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 11)

151

NeoWolfen

on Sep 03, 2010

!.07 sadly didnt fix then cant progress turn issue, nor did it fix the out of memory crash issue every 20-30 turns, which are my biggest gripes right now.

Oh and while I remember that annoying rename your city to another factions city name bug when switchign ebtween them REALLY needs quashing that bugs the heck out of me.

Love that monsters have been toned dramatically down now they got crazy hard way too quickly for my tastes, the Ai is still city building like mad however..not that it is necessarily a bad thing but ive noticed they build pioneers inhumanly fast (possible bug) and they don't really build new cities close to thier own necessarily as so much as by the nearest resource..so they spread out pretty far very quickly.

Seems to be some bug with npc's too I got one npc duplicated about 5 times wondering around my world in my current game and they all had the baby picture Cuessessa or whatever the npc is called was the one reproduced. (as an aside all my children have this npc's bio when they come of age too).

Oh and in the workshop in the cartography you cannot load all the maps available TO load, the second from last of the large maps for example will not load..period in the cartogrophers workshop.

152

PyroMancer2k

on Sep 04, 2010

Austinvn

reply 129

It's more difficult to give feedback when the mechanics are unclear to us - sure I could say "it feels like defense sucks because my 100 defense sovereign got hit for 20 by a 24 attack squad" - but is that really something that can happen often in the current system, or was I just incredibly unlucky? Without knowing the calculations behind that result, it's hard to say.

Assuming the Dice roll are 1D24 vs 1D100 the odds of scoring at least 20 Damage is 0.4%. So like 1 in 250. The odds of them doing any damage is 11.5%

153

PyroMancer2k

on Sep 04, 2010

NeoWolf73

reply 151

I had this bug in one of my games. Since you say you can't progress far in the game you can check this but in my game it seemed like they were suppose to be the other Enemy Sovs because I like to play with Max enemies and yet for some reason there was only ONE enemy faction. Also all those heroes with baby pic had Mana, something normal wondering heroes don't have.

154

Phantus

on Sep 04, 2010

Thanks for doing the job you should have already done.

155

Austinvn

on Sep 04, 2010

PyroMancer2k

reply 152

Assuming the Dice roll are 1D24 vs 1D100 the odds of scoring at least 20 Damage is 0.4%. So like 1 in 250. The odds of them doing any damage is 11.5%

Right - my problem is with that "assuming" part. We already know from the patch notes that it's been changed from 1d24 to separate rolls, but are we talking about 6d4 vs. 1d100, or 6 separate calculations of 1d4 vs. 1d100, or some other possibility I haven't thought of? (for the situation of a squad of 6x 4 attack units vs. a 100 defense sovereign).

This is difficult to test since a 'lucky' hit of 20 is possible in any of those situations, it's a question of how often it'll happen. The difference may be several orders of magnitude depending on how you do the calculation, but it's a fraction of a percent either way, it'd take thousands of trials to get a reliable average. I have seen absurdly unlikely hits like this happen, I'd like to know whether this is something that I can expect to happen maybe once per game or once in a hundred games, but I'd rather not have to run thousands of trials to find out, I'm just saying that an official explanation of the calculations from Stardock would be appreciated.

156

PyroMancer2k

on Sep 04, 2010

Austinvn

reply 155

Well if they are always rolling Dice with a Min value of 1 then 6 attacks of 1d4 vs 1d100 would never score 20. The most it could hope for is 4 vs 1 roll for 3 damage times 6 for a total of 18 Damage. But that would be a 1 in 2400 (4*100*6) chance. This also assumes "fair" dice rolling. As sometimes some programs use random number gens that aren't completely random causing things to happen more often then they should. Sometimes it's related to hardware though more then the code itself. Cause a Computer can't truly do anything "Random" it needs to pull the number from someplace.

Anyhow I digress. Yes it would be very helpful for us to know mechanics behind this rather then us making assumptions about on how something works. Because when it comes down to discussing improvements to the system we will just be taking shots in the dark which won't be as helpful. Like until fairly recently when the devs mentioned it in another post I didn't even know the game had the ability to handle different weapon damage types and that armor was giving different resistant bonuses for these weapons. The UI makes no real reference of this at all. It might of been mentioned in the manual which I only skimmed but I doubt it was there. Besides I'm of the mind that a game should be intuitive enough through UI and such that you shouldn't need a manual.

157

Danners

on Sep 04, 2010

Hi everyone.

I booted up the game for the first time, updated to 1.07 and I have been playing the campaign just to get familiar with the game. I haven't had one issue until just now. I'm on turn 260 and all of a sudden, the game went from silky smooth to extreme choppiness, even in the option screen and main menu (the background scrolling was even choppy).

I exited the game and restarted it. I loaded up my game and if I scroll or zoom the map, everything is smooth. I can issue orders to my cities without problems. However, as soon as I try to move any troop, it goes back to being choppy and laggy. I have even tried to hit the next turn button without issuing orders, or, canceling all move orders and hitting next turn but nothing works. Issue persists each time I load my save game.

Is this just the general issue people have when they get deep into a game that I've been reading about?

My PC is an Intel i7, 2.6ghz, 6GB RAM, nVidia GTX 275 graphics card, Win7 64-bit Premium.

Running the game at 1920x1200 Res, 4x Aliasing, Outlines off, Shadows Low, and everything else was left at whatever default is.

158

Nick-Danger

on Sep 04, 2010

Danners

reply 157

Hi everyone.
I booted up the game for the first time, updated to 1.07 and I have been playing the campaign just to get familiar with the game. I haven't had one issue until just now. I'm on turn 260 and all of a sudden, the game went from silky smooth to extreme choppiness, even in the option screen and main menu (the background scrolling was even choppy).

I exited the game and restarted it. I loaded up my game and if I scroll or zoom the map, everything is smooth. I can issue orders to my cities without problems. However, as soon as I try to move any troop, it goes back to being choppy and laggy. I have even tried to hit the next turn button without issuing orders, or, canceling all move orders and hitting next turn but nothing works. Issue persists each time I load my save game.

Is this just the general issue people have when they get deep into a game that I've been reading about?...

Hard to say. It sounds like it (or very similar, or the OOM type of problem combined with something else, or...). However, the OOM I get starts around turn 100 or so (on large map, 5 foes, second-hardest difficulty). I start to get stuttering and when I immediately try to save, saving crashes with an OOM error. If I try to anticipate stuttering and save every 10 turns or so I'll occasionally get the 'saving causes OOM crash' thing. In all cases the save does not occur when it initiates the OOM crash.

You problem sounds similar but different.

If you do try Machater's fix then it should have an effect if OOM is part of your problem.

159

Danners

on Sep 04, 2010

Nick-Danger

reply 158

Machater has a fix helps a number of folks with the OOM issue, thread is here. I haven't tried it yet so can't personally vouch for it. Read his first post and check the thread for specifics/updates/etc.

If you do try Machater's fix then it should have an effect if OOM is part of your problem.

Unfortunately, I have Win7 64bit and Machater's fix says "IF YOU ARE RUNNING A 64BIT OS DO NOT DO THIS!!!" (his emphasis, not mine).

I'll have to try and strip down all the fancy bells and whistles and see if that will solve the problem. But as you said, it doesn't sound like the typical issue people seem to be having.

160

Nick-Danger

on Sep 04, 2010

Danners

reply 159

Unfortunately, I have Win7 64bit and Machater's fix says "IF YOU ARE RUNNING A 64BIT OS DO NOT DO THIS!!!" (his emphasis, not mine)

I think you're misreading. His complete quote there is:

"If you have 32bit Vista or Windows 7(IF YOU ARE RUNNING A 64BIT OS DO NOT DO THIS!!!) you need to go into command line and type BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072"

I read that as:

-If you have 32 bit Vista/Win7 then go into command line and type BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072.

-If you have 64 bit Vista Win7 then don't do that (and just use the patch as normally described).

Previous to that quote of his he says:

"If you have a 64bit OS then all you need to do is patch your game."

Note: his fix is for Vista/Win7. Regarding WinXP he says:

-"If you have 32bit Windows XP then you are out of luck as far as I know."

-"I don't know anything about Windows XP 64bit so no clue how it will work on that."

So he's not advocating using it for either 32 or 64 bit WinXP.

------------------

I could be wrong of course, but feel fairly confident.

161

Danners

on Sep 04, 2010

Nick-Danger

reply 160

Quoting Danners, reply 159Unfortunately, I have Win7 64bit and Machater's fix says "IF YOU ARE RUNNING A 64BIT OS DO NOT DO THIS!!!" (his emphasis, not mine)I think you're misreading. His complete quote there is:
"If you have 32bit Vista or Windows 7(IF YOU ARE RUNNING A 64BIT OS DO NOT DO THIS!!!) you need to go into command line and type BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072"

I read that as:

-If you have 32 bit Vista/Win7 then go into command line and type BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072.

-If you have 64 bit Vista Win7 then don't do that (and just use the patch as normally described).

Previous to that quote of his he says:

"If you have a 64bit OS then all you need to do is patch your game."

Note: his fix is for Vista/Win7. Regarding WinXP he says:

-"If you have 32bit Windows XP then you are out of luck as far as I know."

-"I don't know anything about Windows XP 64bit so no clue how it will work on that."

So he's not advocating using it for either 32 or 64 bit WinXP.

------------------

I could be wrong of course, but feel fairly confident.

Well, don't I look like the fool...that's what I get for not reading all the way through

162

Lfseeney

on Sep 05, 2010

To Danners

This sounds like the Mem Leak Issue.

As you use more Mem, it starts to use your Hard drive as Mem, this gets slower and slower.

Lee

163

MensEtManus

on Sep 05, 2010

Pre 1.07:

Out of Memory would show up around turns 200-300.

Post 1.07:

Out of Memory shows up around turn 500 but the game crashes every 5-10 or so turns.

164

Nick-Danger

on Sep 05, 2010

Danners

reply 161

Well, don't I look like the fool...

Negatory Danners. I had to read it several times to be fairly confident I understood the instructions. It's not the clearest. It's one of those 'if you understand it, it's easy to understand' instructions.

I hope you enjoy Elemental and stick with it. Big improvements are on the way

165

pacov

on Sep 05, 2010

This patch solved alot of my slowdown problems, but they still all come back late game. So, in 1.06 I'd start seeing slowdown around turn 50-100. In 1.07, I see slowdown at turn 300 or so. So, obviously some great tweaks, but more needs to be done.

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