Dupe routes not updating real time

[frogglebunwich]

If I complete a dig or a build I can see the route options for the dupe do not change in the game board for several ticks afterwards during play and remain impassable when the game is paused, when they ought to change immediately and the game board should reflect the instantaneous state of play, according to the rules, in real time, while the game is paused, if the build is complete so I can give orders. eg if I remove a fallen block of sand or add a ladder, after completion the move icon remains red where the dupe should be able to travel but cannot, for many seconds.

Much of the game is time critical, such as grabbing the bristle berry before the shine bug eats it or getting out of the way of asphyxiation or entombment or falling liquids or sand. If the dupes cannot respond in real time it is annoying at the least.

As I recall this did not present as a problem in previous updates.

I tend to play the exploration and survival game and time critical elements are very important to my play, I am finding the game more annoying now, dupe behaviour in general has got complex and irrational in relation to the priority settings (a lot of this is to do with dupes choosing jobs from across the map and preventing local dupes from carrying out simple tasks making it necessary to put doors everywhere to block access). I am also wondering if priorities are updating real time as well. I get the feeling all the testers and devs are playing this at 3x speed and simply dont notice that it has become this clunky.

edit: another example of this, I just saw a dupe climb through a sandstone tile block they had just placed, completing an impassable floor (also consisting of farm tiles) and the block was placed between two sections of ladder, the dupe just climbed up the ladder through the completed tile block as if it was not there. It looks and feels broken IMHO. 

 

[SackMaggie]

Yup It would hurt fps a lot to let all calculation done in 1 frame (real time)

So rather than recalculate all path in every single frame, let it calculate every once in awhile is better.

[leoroy]

Sadly dupes might get stuck in weird places because of this, just as you explained. Just have to deal with it. It's like you have to do some baby-sitting with your dupes

[Oozinator]

2 hours ago, frogglebunwich said:

 It looks and feels broken IMHO. 

 

When they move two tiles through air horizontally behind a locked door, while the stepstone was removed..
Perhaps they changed pathfinding to boost fps, but yes it sucks.
 

[frogglebunwich]

IMHO I am puzzled because I don't have any FPS problems at all and I am playing a 768² map but only half a dozen dupes, though I am using a PC built for gaming, its about 4 years old, so it is not cutting edge but does have passable memory capacity and bandwidth (32gb, Z97, i7, GTX1070) and has no problems at all. Are they developing for the mobile market or console or something?

I did notice my 768² map is using about 10Gb of memory and Windows 7 needs 4+Gb. Anyone with less than 16Gb is not going to have smooth play IMHO no matter how you chop the code around, it would be a shame to ruin the game in futile errand to bring it to an incompatible platform or min spec. The game engine needs to be built from the ground up for that kind of thing.

If the issue is dupe count then maybe they should limit or balance that instead of shrinking the map and deprecating core mechanics, which IMHO isn't making a good experience. Alternatively have main menu performance options which are suitable for different platforms and let players choose.

[Argelle]

@frogglebunwich what are 768² maps?

On normal map (vanilla, no mod) I see 1.6 Gb memory use here (not 10Gb). Do you refer to RAM memory or save file size?

(even so, file size has only a 1.8 Gb imprint, again on my computer, 10 dupes).

 

[frogglebunwich]

23 minutes ago, Argelle said:

@frogglebunwich what are 768² maps?

On normal map (vanilla, no mod) I see 1.6 Gb memory use here (not 10Gb). Do you refer to RAM memory or save file size?

(even so, file size has only a 1.8 Gb imprint, again on my computer, 10 dupes).

 

The RAM# I am referring to is Win7 task manager RAM usage graph which runs 14+Gb with the game active and drops to 4+Gb when the game closes but that is about what you would expect with a 6x bigger map. (The save is below 4Mb.)

768² is the size of the map, default is 256x384 (98,304).  768²= 768x768 (589,824). Exactly 6x bigger, 6x 1.6Gb = 9.6Gb which is about right.

So that might explain the shrinking map size to drop the RAM requirements but that does not explain the core mechanics going adrift. Yesterday I saw a dupe fetch meal lice through an insulated tile wall which stretched unbroken over 6 tiles away from the dupe in the X+ and Y+ axis directions.

Strikes me it is not functioning as intended and something has gone wrong in there and it needs fixing, if they find out what it is and fix it maybe the performance will improve as well.

[Yunru]

49 minutes ago, frogglebunwich said:

Anyone with less than 16Gb is not going to have smooth play IMHO no matter how you chop the code around, it would be a shame to ruin the game in futile errand to bring it to an incompatible platform or min spec. The game engine needs to be built from the ground up for that kind of thing.

Uhh.... No.

The only reason big titles use so much is because they're "lazy" (time is money so really they're just being cheap) and performing far less optimisation than they should, because "gaming" setups have so much available.

[malloc]

I find this issue has a number of minor issues related to it that I can ignore such as digging/building/collecting items through solid objects in an active construction area or jumping onto and from the ghost tile that just got dug out.

The real issue with comes when doing exploratory tunnels (dig 3 vertical tiles, move one right/left from top tile, dig three more, repeat) it either takes half a dozen cycles or complete pause/unpause/manual move digger repeatedly due to the path updating as they are two steps heading to another part of the base on another task.  I would not mind a path update on dupes that are digging after each dig completes and leave the rest on their every 20th tick or whatever it is now.

[frogglebunwich]

I just realised this snowballs into a bigger problem as it is one of the contributors to dupes running across the map for jobs when they have job close at hand. Since their pathfinding takes so long to update they are getting new jobs before the nearby jobs made available by their last action become reachable.

Running across the map though (and leaving near jobs undone) is a major inefficiency but it would need even more checks to prioritise close jobs.

I still dont understand what makes the devs act as if there is an FPS problem because I dont see one, so I dont know what the contributing factors might be. Though it reminds me a bit of factorio in as much as some people with huge factories complain about FPS but with my humble noob factory I don't have a problem.

If one restarted ONI each update, as one ought, I dont see how it could get that big !