Sluggish Simutrans October 07, 2008, 09:23:16 am Hello all, I'm on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and whenever I play Simutrans it runs VERY slowly. I'm using 100.0 with pak64 and I cannot get an FPS higher than 25. The game feels REALLY sluggish (especially when compared to OpenTTD, which runs just fine on this system) and it slows to a crawl whenever I've got lots happening on screen at once. Is there any way to bump the framerate up? I've already tried editing the simutrans.conf file and turning a few settings down, but that didn't help very much and I don't think the game should be running this slowly.My PCs specs are as follows:Pentium 4 Mobile 2.00 GhZ512 MB RAM40 GB HD spaceUbuntu 8.04 Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #1 – October 07, 2008, 10:00:27 am Try to start with the -nomidi option. For one reason or the other, sound is causing trouble on Linux machines. Note that changing the sound option in the program itself does not help. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #2 – October 07, 2008, 10:04:07 am Already tried that, that helped a little but the game itself still feels very sluggish and slow. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #3 – October 07, 2008, 10:15:54 am Hmm, what's your mapsize? And how many convois (vehicles) are running around approximately? There are performance limits of course, depending on those two.What's happening in a small map (256x256) with a few vehicles? Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #4 – October 07, 2008, 10:54:49 am Map size is 256 x 256, and its early in the game so I have no fewer than 4-5 convoys running around. I don't know how many my competitors have though. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #5 – October 07, 2008, 11:07:13 am I know this is rather stupid question... but you aren't running BOINC or converting video or some similar resource intensive task, right?I had a somewhat similar problem (on Windows) with some of the nightlies. The game sometimes stopped responding for a second or two - not more - and then resumed. It could have been autosaving. But a while back it stopped.Maybe it's some problem that resurfaces only here and there and was already fixed? You could always try with latest nightly build.http://www.wernieman.de/simutrans/index.en.html Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #6 – October 07, 2008, 11:13:29 am For Linux, the Link is:http://www.wernieman.de/simutrans/index.en.html#_Linux Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #7 – October 07, 2008, 11:56:28 am I'm not running anything process-intensive in the background, at least I don't think I am. I play the game coming from a cold boot and its still sluggish and slow. I'm reading up getting the drivers for my Thinkpad T30's Radeon working right, because that might be my issue here. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #8 – October 07, 2008, 12:26:12 pm QuoteMap size is 256 x 256, and its early in the game so I have no fewer than 4-5 convoys running around.Well, Simutrans should be nowhere near sluggish then.QuoteI don't know how many my competitors have though.What happens when you disable all AI-competitors? There have been reports that they sometimes have as much as 250 vehicles running around on one line. But you would have noted that amount, I'm sure. My best guess is one of the drivers, indeed. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #9 – October 07, 2008, 01:26:14 pm Nope, its not the drivers, i've got direct rendering enabled already (glxinfo | grep direct gives me a 'yes') and the thing is still sluggish. Disabling AI competitors gets me nothing, too. I tried setting the water animation redraw interval to 0 and 40000 respectively and got nothing too. My attention turns to my version of SDL. Perhaps that is the culprit? Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #10 – October 07, 2008, 01:35:38 pm Wich SDL-Version do you have installed?Normaly simutrans do not use "direkt rendering", because it is a 2d-programm and not a 3d. So you need a quick 2d card.... Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #11 – October 07, 2008, 01:38:01 pm 100.0 had a few performance problems IIRC - it used way too much CPU.Try a nightly version and see if it gets any better.About an fps-rate better than 25 - simutrans doesn't animate as smooth as that even 25fps were needed. And in the config files there's an entry limiting the fps to a given value - have you changed that? Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #12 – October 07, 2008, 02:26:01 pm As DirrrtyDirk said, the official 100.0 is known to have a serious performance problem (leading to high CPU usage), and may not respond well to mouse clicks for building tools, among others. A nightly build would solve that for the individual player who cares enough to look for a solution, but I think that it would be better to provide a new official version.We could vote for a recent nightly build after testing it, and put it on the download pages, together with suitable revisions of the different pak sets. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #13 – October 08, 2008, 10:30:40 am As opposed to a nightly, is there an archive of previous stable versions? I'd rather try something stable than not. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #14 – October 08, 2008, 11:06:40 am Well, during the last years there have been only two versions that have officially been called "stable". And still both had bugs. One was 88.10.5 (that one's really old by now - I wouldn't recommend using that. There are simply too many wonderful features that have been changed or added since then) and the other was 99.17.1. - which was the last release before 100.0.But just as I said: 99.17.1 also had a problem or two. But IIRC it was only connected to map rotation - so as long as you don't use that feature, it should be quite stable. I just don't know if it is still available.Generally, older versions were listed on the old forum (now in the archive). No idea if the download links there still work, though. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #15 – October 08, 2008, 11:19:07 am Thats the disadvantage of the nightly-System. There are not so many "stable" Versions.When some Tester said: This Version is good, then we should make a "Stable". Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #16 – October 08, 2008, 12:29:22 pm Ok, I tried 99.17 and its a bit faster, but the map generation takes a long time. How does one check their version of SDL on Ubuntu? Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #17 – October 08, 2008, 12:45:30 pm What settings (map size, number of cities, number of factories and markets) do you use?I'm asking, because when people complain about map generation taking too long, most of the time it is because they use way too high values for the starting parameters. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #18 – October 08, 2008, 01:59:04 pm I didn't touch the starting values, this is what it had when I first started it:Map Size: 256x256Cities: 16Median Citizens/City: 800Intercity Road Length: 800Traffic Density: 7Factories Outside Cities: 30Markets In Cities: 330Tourist Attractions: 6Water Level: 5Mountain Height: 100Map Roughness: 4Summer Snowline: 8Winter Snowline: 4Desert Climate: 0Tropical Climate: 0Mediterranean Climate: 3Temperate Climate: 6Tundra: 8Alpine Climate: 6 Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #19 – October 08, 2008, 02:05:11 pm Markets In Cities: 330can you make it a little bit "smaler"? Quote Selected Last Edit: October 08, 2008, 03:19:10 pm by wernieman
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #20 – October 08, 2008, 02:24:15 pm Yep, the usual problem. Try something like:Factories 10 (these are only power plants anyway)andMarkets 15-30 (these are complete production chains!)With that, you'll be amazed at how fast map generation will suddenly be. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #21 – October 08, 2008, 02:44:17 pm Yup, map generation is muuuch faster now, so is the game. Its still a little choppier than what i'm used to seeing, like when i'm scrolling around the map (part of me is expecting Simutrans to run as fast as OpenTTD, since the latter runs just fine on this PC). I'm beginning to think this is normal, but the videos I see on Youtube tell a different story. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #22 – October 08, 2008, 03:41:12 pm Hi!The smoothness of the veicle movement also depends a bit on the pak set. I heard it shall be better in 128 than in 64. I haven't compared it i must admit so i cann only p**** this on as a rumor.Besides that there are several possibilities to save ressources and make the programm run faster in the "simuconf.tab". For example you can decrease the pathfinding search depth (dramatically if you play on small maps like 256x256). Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #23 – October 11, 2008, 09:47:42 pm Actually, the nightlies make the movement much smoother. ANd more than 15 fps does not change the visual experience but for very fast trains. Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #24 – October 12, 2008, 08:19:39 pm A Problem of the generation of the nightlys or is the code changed? Quote Selected
Re: Sluggish Simutrans Reply #25 – October 13, 2008, 11:55:23 am No wernieman - they run smoother (=better) - so it's not a problem at all. Quite the opposite! Quote Selected
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