How much more can performance be increased? (Test w/Results)

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by toorvis, February 21, 2014.

  1. toorvis

    toorvis Member

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    Hello there community. I've got a question regarding the performance of the game, and how much it can be improved.

    After todays update, me and a friend tried to benchmark the game and see how much it can handle in its current state. I'm not sure if it was the server, or the game itself, but I saw similar issues that SupCom had with the AI command overload that made the game slow down by large ammounts.

    Before I say what I did it's probably reasonable to give you the a little overview of what my setup is:

    Internet:

    I'm running a 40/40 fibre connection, which should be more than enough and shouldn't slow down my game at all.

    PC: (cuz Mac is shait)

    I'm running a high end build, using the following components:

    MSI Big-Bang XPower II MBU
    Zotac Titan AMP edition GPU
    Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition CPU
    32gb Kingston HyperX RAM
    Windows 7 Ultimate - 64bit

    Here's a quick Firestrike Extreme 3dmark I did to give you a quick system overview, the test was done with PA running in the background and everything in base clock and without adjustments. My best tests scores are high 4900's

    http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/2505706

    The test:

    The test took place in a 7 planet solar system, utilizing all the different types of biomes available. there were 2 players on the map, including one AI that we destroyed immediately, to proceed with the benchmark.

    My friend moved to one Tropic type planet, while I moved to a moon to prepare, the idea was for him to try and turtle, while I would launch a massive invasion force and attack him.

    While he prepared his defense, I started building out the whole moon, getting a metal income of about 3,5k and an energy income of 190k, I also made 15 T2 factories, and 3 portals. For this test I was allowed by him to make 3 portals on his planet, to make transfer of eventual troops quicker, but already at this point (before I started building troops) we noticed "lag" tendencies.

    What my friend did was to make 3 long walls, with defense filling up in between the space, filling the airspace with units and tons of troops behind it.

    He stopped at roughly 500 units to keep track of the numbers.

    When I started producing, I set the factories to queue up 2500 Leveler assault tanks. At 500 the lag started to become "annoying" where I actually started clipping when I wanted to turn the planet around. At 2500 units a second was about 4-5 seconds IRL, but the worst part was that I had to micro the units through the portal in bunches of like 10-20 of them, or else they'd clog up and get stuck and I'd have to reclaim and rebuild the portals lol.

    After getting all the units through, I was quite impressed that the game didn't run any slower when the fighting began, the lagging didn't get any worse, and as the unit died, the game gradually sped up towards normal speed. The game ended in a couple of nukes and a commander deletion just to finish it, but it was quite interesting to see how it worked out.

    Conclusion:

    So far I'm quite impressed with the performance as it's still beta and the lag would be unbearable if it was a full release game. I'm just wondering how much more game performance can improve considering the galactic warfare and up to 40 player matches is going to happen. with 20 players and 100 units each you've already gotten to the limit where we saw it "not fun" to play because of lag.

    Imagine the performance you'll need to run 40 player matches without a unit cap, it'd be crazy.

    It would be quite interesting to hear what people has to say about this, I'm quite into computers and how things work in the computer world, but as far as programming and game engine architecture goes, I'm not very wise.

    Getting any insight from the Uber or any other programmer on how the server/engine could be improved as much as supporting 40 players would be very cool, because even though I'm not much into the core of game developing, it would be very interesting for me to know how it's done.

    -----

    Other then that, I'd like to say that you're doing a tremendous job on the game, and even at this point, I don't regret a second that I supported you in the Kickstarter Campaign!

    Kind Regards
    ¨~ Chris
    Last edited: February 21, 2014
  2. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Was this test done before 61250/61450, or after? Just curious. :)
    drz1 likes this.
  3. toorvis

    toorvis Member

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    Hello there Garat, my steam says that an update is required, so if you released that update in the past 8-9 hours or so, it probably was before that.

    Edit: It seems like we have been using the 61250 update, as we had all the units with textures. If the 61450 update was released later this evening, we will do another test today and post the results, as I see you've done some GPU rendering changes too. I will also update my TITAN with beta drivers from Nvidia for maximum efficiency!

    ¨~ Chris
    Last edited: February 21, 2014

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