So there's been a lot of talk on the steam community tab that the bad performance and long loading times is linked with using the steam version, namely the added steam overlay is causing the issues, they claim that using the uber launcher version has solved all problems. Would just like a confirmation from the devs if this is true? Many thanks
It's already confirmed and devs know about that problem. You don't really need to play though launcher, you can just disable Steam Overlay in game "Properties".
Bob Berry post is here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/game-not-responding-and-massive-memory-usage.51850/#post-793818 If it's make no difference it's most likely mean your problem isn't related to Overlay. PS: You see, I was right, it's not server side bugs.
That thread has one of em saying "SXX nice catch on the Steam Overlay issue. We'll talk to Valve about that." He`s complimenting you on spotting something, and claims he will look into it, this is not confirmation that the overlay is causing any issues... "If it's make no difference it's most likely mean your problem isn't related to Overlay." Obviously... Thanks for your help, i think.
"PS: You see, I was right, it's not server side bugs. " Again, how do you know? The game has worked absolutely fine up until beta release, then loading times has been horrible for me... How can this be related to the steam overlay if ive allways been using the overlay?? Please provide evidence.
You can always ask him using PM person, I'm sure he'll answer. Just facts: There is confirmed memory leaks. [link] There is confirmed issue with slow loading times [link] There is Linux version which not looks like affected by problem at all. There is many people on Windows who aren't affected at all, they never had long loading times. This is why I'm think it's never was server-side problem. Just because each version of game are using different functions of drivers/OS and in some cases they might trigger some bugs in driver/steam or used middleware.
Valve actually patches performance issues caused by the overlay as seen here. ps: You can actually benefit the changes by switching your Steam client to beta, Steam settings => first tab dropdown
Two facts: This game using OpenGL on all platforms. Both Steam and Nvidia drivers have same codebase across all platforms, it's mean most bugs are affect every platform.
So for anyone else still wandering, SSX actually answered the question rather indirectly. The whole process for loading is not ideal at all, and needs a lot of work where they can make things quicker and notify that things are still working. Also, probably best to stick to small systems! There doesn't however seem to be any EVIDENCE of the steam overlay causing this issue.... Quote from SSX`s link above. "It's clear this "game starting" issue is one of the biggies that we need to address ASAP. Before the game can start, several things need to happen: the game server turns the system description into actual planet geometry. everyone in the lobby clicks ready the server sends the finished planet geometries to each client each client builds render structures out of that geometry the server builds the initial simulation state the server sends the initial sim entities to each client the client switches from the "game starting" screen to gameplay This can be improved in several ways: Steps 1 and 2 currently run is parallel, but step 3 doesn't start until they both finish. That is silly. There is no reason why we can't start sending the game config as soon as you land in the lobby. Also, we are sending more information in step 3 than the client really needs. Step 4 uses the foreground thread more than it should, causing the window to lock up at times. It is also just slower than it should be. (This is the CPU intensive step.) In step 6, we could be a lot smarter about the order the initial sim entities are sent so the client doesn't need to wait for them all before proceeding. But we would have to make sure we sent the important ones (planets+metal spots) first and the less important ones (trees) later. In short, really long start times probably mean than you joined a game with large planets and have a slow(er) internet connection. We can improve this (overlap the download with the lobby, download less) and we can communicate it better (progress bar)."
When you copy/paste a quote, at least make it clear that you did. It looks as if you typed that up yourself.
Let me explain this a bit better. The main problems not in Steam Overlay, they are in Steam version and game itself. Everything is loading so slow because of some CPU bottleneck. And Steam Overlay affect performance because it's create one extra overhead and increase CPU load. I'm know this because I'm Linux user and when Valve only started to push first released of Linux client Overlay slow down many games a lot for me. You can check thread of this guy: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/using-steam-and-bad-fps-try-this.52160/ And his original thread on Steam which confirm my idea.
IMHO the whole joining process, as experienced by the player, is not optimal and could be improved for the release version. Besides beeing hideously slow, especially when there are 4 or 5 largish planets involved, it shows no information at all. Instead of "Joining game" with a spinning thingy below that, how about some real information? What is beeing done currently? How fast? Approximate time until ready. Things like that would make it easier to see if something got stuck, reducing the considerable timesink joining games has become. Alpha worked really well for me though. Currently, when joining games with 5 planets with maybe a size 5 amongst them, most times I arrive random spawned. And in about 50%, all other players had dropped. If Im lucky, another one makes it in at the same time or at least some minutes (!) later. Why not transmitt the goemetry data and render it in background while still beeing in the lobby. In the roster, display the percentage of preloading each player has completed and when all are ready, start the game. Of course there has to be a timeout, if someone doesnt make it in x minutes, kick him. Each player also gets a small line of info on the screen what his system is doing at the moment. Something like: Retreiving planet dataset ..xx%....done. Generating geometry...xx%...done. Retreiving initial gamestate....xx%..done. Rendering.....xx%..done. Waiting for other players..... btw. I disabled Steam overlay and it changed nothing for me. Long loading most times and some games just dont start at all, stuck in the lobby. Even while loading a game, large periods of time can be observed where my system does next to nothing. Sub 10% CPU load, only tiniest ammounts of RAM alloced and network traffic very low to nil. So I come to the blunt statement that its not something on the client actually bottlenecking for me.
I absolutely agree that the joining game flow sucks. It should be a lot faster, as much as possible should happen while you are still in the lobby, and anything taking more than 5-10 seconds should have some kind of progress indicator. We'll get there, but it takes time. We should be able to trim off some of the low-hanging fruit reasonably quickly (I hope), but I can't promise any particular timeline.
I also though this. However, someone suggested me to use ProcessExplorer to check CPU/GPU usage, and in fact, when you think that nothing happens, the GPU is working a lot (seems to be building textures). See the following thread for more explanations: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/loading-times-my-experience.52120/
GPU does nothing. No heavy computation going on. Saw this even before having a look with software, cause when the fans are on low and it doesnt heat up at least one or two degrees its clearly doing nothing. My 5970 was not exactly known as a cool runner. Now, checking with process explorer completely confirmed that. The game spends huge periods of time just sitting there, doing next to nothing. For nearly a minute, CPU load is way below 10%, GPU load has some short spikes up to 30%, no new RAW or VRAM alloced, no network traffic.
