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 8)
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on Sep 03, 2010

Wait a minute are you telling me that I can no longer build my ocean city Atlantis? 

on Sep 03, 2010

The performance is very good and the groups (party, squad, company) are better balanced with 1.07, but the death of a Sovereign should not kill the AI player, because one lucky attack can kill an enemy that is much stronger than the player.

- After the death in friendly or neutral territory a Sovereign should be teleported back to the next city with 1 HP and 1 Mana.

- After the death in enemy territory a Sovereign should be teleported back to the next city with 1 HP and 1 Mana after 10 turns.

on Sep 03, 2010

BoogieBac
Note that a fix for 'shards respawning on reload' did get in for 1.07...this also fixes random shards spawning in the campaign.

 

That's why in my actual game I'm around turn 175 and I found a SINGLE air shard, on the other side of the continent!

I actually like this, the background is specific about them being rare 

on Sep 03, 2010

hmmm, was playing my pre-patch game and had an odd issue.  Large units make it nearly impossible to choose adjacent units.  When I had the dragon in my party, I couldn't click on any adjacent characters unless I used their portraits.  Characters really need to be tied to the tile they are on much better, this has been a constant issue for me in battles...  Especially the way they move around the tile, sometimes its just hopeless.  ergh. 

on Sep 03, 2010

I noticed too, that I get a CTD when playing on a rather large custom map (20x20), and click on the minimap. Although performance did seem MUCH better, I only played about 10-15 turns before clicking the minimap, and the CTD.

 

on Sep 03, 2010

malichai11

Quoting BNotorious, reply 20
Quoting Shadowshard, reply 2Are shards working now?

yeah and him too...

 

I'm sorry, I haven't seen this answered yet. Are shards now working in tactical combat to increase the damage of your spells?

They definitely appear to be, since now my sov and his spawn can do upwards of 160dmg with fireball   (I'm finishing a pre-1.07 game where easily 20 shards spawned, mostly air, but about 5 or 6 are fire).

 

[Edit] I should clarify that I haven't seen them do 160dmg in one shot, but they have consistently produced more damage than they were before. The 160 is coming from the max damage info in the spell book when I go to cast it.

on Sep 03, 2010

Performance boost was a must for my part, the game was near (not quite) unplayable. Now.... *loading*....

The rest seems like good changes as well. Keep up the good work!

 

on Sep 03, 2010

Werewindlefr
So, there's a lot of improvement, but there's still quite a lot to be done. Balance, for instance, isn't fully achieved yet: hammers are slightly too good, bows are terrible and too pricey. Lord of Ice is insanely overpowered: it's a low-mid level summon that's as strong as a whole army. It's a one-elemental panzer division. 68 attacks? Yeah... right.

Last night I played as an Empire for the first time. by the 20th turn or so I had rearched the tech with hammers.  I was very suprised that they were 40 att (I have never gotten that high a damage from weapons because I keep restarting the game.)  Now I do like the damage but this I would thing would be furtaher down the tech tree for Warfare. So here I was creating units (3 to be extact) with Att 41  Def 2  HP 5 Peasants) Just wiping out creatures left and right at the beginning of the game.

And I noticed that this tech had three hammers each better than the last (last being the Lord Hammer.) Shouldn't these hammers be on different tecks? The lower damage hammers should be on low end tech. Does not make sense.

on Sep 03, 2010

Ugh!  Still having Out Of Memory crashes.  I've been conditioned to scream every time I hear the Windows 7 gong. 

 

Oh well.  Here's hoping for 1.8!

on Sep 03, 2010

excellent work SD... thanks (again) for your diligence and dedication...

on Sep 03, 2010

Gravedancer



Quoting bortlings,
reply 72
They did manage to get married though.


I think the AI starts out married.

At least that's my theory based upon the existence of "spouse units" in the CoreUnits.xml file and the fact that I've seen kids born within the very first few turns of the game.

You are correct. I tested this out on Wednesday night while working on my custome factions.

I created a tiny map with a small island. I put in 7 starting locations next to each other on the map. Then started the game with my 5 custom factions and 1 premade facinon then me.

All the factions atarted the game married. Which means they do starte with two units on the 1st turn. While my guy was single and got Jank at the end of the first turn but he could not move. Which put my guy at a disadvantage. That is not such a big deal since normally the Soverigns would be a littel spread out.

Now the probelm comes in that all these AI factions will get children before me on every game. Which will lead to a pretty decent hero when they mature in (100 turns I think.)  Not sure if this was intended

on Sep 03, 2010

Thanks for all the hard work Stardock!

 

We are four steps closer to our perfect Elemental!

on Sep 03, 2010

If they were truly working hard this would have never happened and they would have listened to and read the beta notes........

on Sep 03, 2010

Thank you so much for all the hard work to keep the patches coming.  You guys *rock*.

on Sep 03, 2010

Zero_the_Hero

I apreciate all the effort of SD to hurry with the patches and taking our feedback into major account, but we MUST NOT forget that these patches are merely COMPLETING an unfinished game.

These patches could really be directed into improving the AI and balance the game, but instead all the efforts are directed to fix several amature bugs that shouldn't be there from the beggining.


I agree with keep giving feedback and how to improve the AI/game systems. Just don't see why someone can't be happy with the patch AND still do that.

I mean, if I was one of those that was crashing every 15-20 turns or going into slow down mode right in the meat of the game (around 100 turns), or when my city got bigger, and now I'm not, I'd be pretty happy that can actually PLAY the game, so I can then give feedback on the other stuff.

 

 

Zero_the_Hero


I've also saw something that other player commented here on the forums (don't remember in what post) about the AI cities having a lot of huts, and only that. So it's another way of the AI getting stucked.

 

Which faction? I could put them in my next game and see. I didn't see that in my games so far. Last time I played Krax and Resoln and they had much more stuff in their cities (and expanded like the plague)

Reason I ask for faction is because it seems that each one might have their own AI. It seemed to be that way when I peeked at the XML anyway. So it might be one faction's build order is written badly.

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