[ENDED GAME] Bridgewater-Brunel no. 1 - Great Britain sized map (no. 2)

[freddyhayward]

I have got it to work today without any major issues.

[CK]

The game eventually unpaused as usual, it just took a while.

[jamespetts]

Splendid, thank you for confirming.

[freddyhayward]

For me the server only seems to be online for the last 10 minutes of every hour, so I suspect long and repeated autosaves are the problem. IMO, autosaves should only occur at game-time (say, per month) rather than real-time intervals. On a related note, is there no way to sync clients without reloading each time a new client joins or a desync occurs?

[jamespetts]

The in-game autosave feature is disabled, but it is set to run a save/load cycle every hour if no player has joined (thus triggering a save/load cycle) within the last hour.

If a save/load cycle takes 50 minutes, then the saved game is too large to be dealt with reasonably by the server, unless there is some error causing an additional delay; but I cannot test this properly at present until I am able to replace my computer.

[DrSuperGood]

If it is taking 50 minutes to save/load cycle that really is not practical for anyone but the most devote player to use. A new server game might be recommended in such situation, possibly one with 25% less area so that memory usage is less of a problem for the server.

[jamespetts]

If it is taking 50 minutes to save/load cycle that really is not practical for anyone but the most devote player to use. A new server game might be recommended in such situation, possibly one with 25% less area so that memory usage is less of a problem for the server.

Indeed - although we would need to verify that this is the case before making such changes.

However, as I have mentioned before, land area per se has very little on either memory or CPU usage; it is the number of town buildings and quantity of transport infrastructure that has this impact. It is better to have a more spread out map (with local clusters of towns) where long distance transport can occur alongside local transport than have a more concentrated map of homogeneous density. Reducing the rate of town growth might well be worthwhile to prevent excessive load, but this is likely to be very challenging to calibrate.

[freddyhayward]

Issues with the savegame itself aside, wouldn't it still be far better to use in-game intervals for load/save cycles? This would guarantee some level of progression between each cycle. There is little use in autosaving when nothing has happened.

[DrSuperGood]

Issues with the savegame itself aside, wouldn't it still be far better to use in-game intervals for load/save cycles? This would guarantee some level of progression between each cycle. There is little use in autosaving when nothing has happened.

The problem is that it must complete a save/load cycle every time someone joins. If someone tries to join, anyone already in the game would have to wait 50 minutes before they can start playing again. Most people will give up by that time.

[Sirius]

I guess I had the same issue far less extreme on my server.
Due to the smaller map, loading times were -sometimes- around 10 minutes. However, on the same machine, most times it was much faster, around 30s.

[jamespetts]

I should note that the 50 minutes time given is unconfirmed based on the report of the server being available only 10 minutes in any given hour. 10 minutes is still too slow - but 30 seconds is acceptable. It is unclear at the present what might be causing such large fluctuations.

[freddyhayward]

I should note that the 50 minutes time given is unconfirmed based on the report of the server being available only 10 minutes in any given hour. 10 minutes is still too slow - but 30 seconds is acceptable. It is unclear at the present what might be causing such large fluctuations.

I would doubt it is actually 50 minutes - when already connected, the server usually unpauses at ~30 minutes past the hour. The 50 minutes I observed could be due to additional crashes or other clients attempting to join.

[jamespetts]

As discussed here, I have finally put together my new computer and have just this evening set up my Simutrans-Extended development environment.

Some brief testing shows that increasing the number of threads increases performance noticeably for systems that have the requisite number of cores. The server actually has 6 cores available, so I have increased the number of concurrent threads on the server from 4 to 6. This change should take effect with to-morrow morning's restart.

I have also made some other experimental changes for performance. I have increased the server_frames_between_steps setting from 4 to 16 (an increase of a factor of 4). This is to allow a higher framerate and more a responsive interface without overloading players' computers. I have also increased the framerate setting from 10 to 30, which hopefully will be workable given the previous setting change.

I should be grateful for any feedback on these updated settings, which will be applied on to-morrow morning's restart.

I should note that, even testing with my new computer in single player mode, a saved game from the server in the summer seems somewhat slow with the release build and unplayable with a debug build, so it may be that furutre server games may need to be smaller (in terms of the number and/or size of towns rather than in overall map area, as it is buildings and player networks that generate the most CPU load).

[Sirius]

Sorry, I just crashed the server by connecting to it :/

edit: seems to be up again but won't try again.

[CK]

The updated settings seem to be causing my client to crash to desktop (when the server 'comes to life') without any error message. I run on a Core i5-3450 with 24GB RAM if that information is of any use to you.

[jamespetts]

Interesting - thank you for your reports.

Can I check whether you are able to connect without crashing if you manually edit simuconf.tab and set "threads=6"?

[CK]

Setting threads to 6 does work. As for performance, scrolling through the map is a lot smoother, but the game itself seems to run a lot slower. (vehicles move for a few seconds, then it idles for a couple of seconds, then it starts to move, rinse and repeat)

[jamespetts]

Setting threads to 6 does work. As for performance, scrolling through the map is a lot smoother, but the game itself seems to run a lot slower. (vehicles move for a few seconds, then it idles for a couple of seconds, then it starts to move, rinse and repeat)

Interesting, thank you for that. I will need to try connecting myself to test this. I suspect that future maps will need to be smaller (in terms of number/size of towns, rather than land area) so as to avoid overloading people's computers.

The number of threads issue is a bug that deserves its own thread, I think. Until that be remedied, I suggest that people do manually edit their simuconf.tab files as suggested.

[DrSuperGood]

Setting threads to 6 does work. As for performance, scrolling through the map is a lot smoother, but the game itself seems to run a lot slower. (vehicles move for a few seconds, then it idles for a couple of seconds, then it starts to move, rinse and repeat)

That is because the server is running slow. The simulation pauses waiting for the server to give the go ahead to proceed.

[freddyhayward]

Is there any reason not to store the current game and begin a new one with a smaller population, given that performance won't improve for some time (if at all)? Recently there have only been three active players, myself, CK and whoever controls Arlspike Fisherman, and I certainly wouldn't mind.

[jamespetts]

Is there any reason not to store the current game and begin a new one with a smaller population, given that performance won't improve for some time (if at all)? Recently there have only been three active players, myself, CK and whoever controls Arlspike Fisherman, and I certainly wouldn't mind.

It will take some time to set up a new game - I think that the new year would be the best time for this. In the meantime, a very demanding game on the server is useful for testing.

[Phystam]

I have Java island map with simutrans pak128.britain-ex scale(1tile=125m), and it would be good for the next game. It has less map size and more realistic terrain than the current game. May I provide it for the next game?

[DrSuperGood]

Recently there have only been three active players, myself, CK and whoever controls Arlspike Fisherman, and I certainly wouldn't mind.

Because when I try to join 9/10 times the server fails to respond or the server takes so long to respond that joining times out during the server saving stage.

[freddyhayward]

Because when I try to join 9/10 times the server fails to respond or the server takes so long to respond that joining times out during the server saving stage.

That's what I'm trying to say, this situation isn't good for anyone.
edit: Phystam, could you upload the map? I'd be interested to take a look.

[jamespetts]

I have Java island map with simutrans pak128.britain-ex scale(1tile=125m), and it would be good for the next game. It has less map size and more realistic terrain than the current game. May I provide it for the next game?

Interesting - what size is this map and what does it look like?

[Phystam]

The map looks like below, and it has 8500x1690 map size with 125m tile scale.
When you convert the image to BMP or PPM file format, then you can use the heightmap.


I also have a 100m tile scale map, so I attach it too. This map has 10624x2112 map size.



EDIT:
This heightmap has been created from ALOS World 3D - 30m ©JAXA.

[CK]

Ah, the Indonesian island of Java. The terrain does force players to follow the contours and thus it rewards tilting trains. I'm in favour of this for the next map.

[DrSuperGood]

Would be acceptable as long as there is enough flat land. Nothing worse than trying to build when every single tile crossed changes elevation.

[jamespetts]

Interesting. This will be a somewhat different challenge to the present map as this allows land journeys from and to all points, rather than forcing players to use ships, save for the north-western island, where there is a possibly bridgeable channel.

[CK]

Although the current map has reached the point where multiple cross-sea tunnels are operational due to the sheer abundance of funds (and those tunnels provide an excellent return on investment).

[Phystam]

Northern coast has large flat area but southern coast has harder terrain. Construction of railway to southern coast will be challenging task. On the other hand, northern flat area would have large amount of population, so it would be also hard task to avoid overcloud.

[DrSuperGood]

Although the current map has reached the point where multiple cross-sea tunnels are operational due to the sheer abundance of funds (and those tunnels provide an excellent return on investment).

I am pretty sure there were rules in place on the server to stop one doing this. Specifically that in 2016 the longest tunnel one could build is 57 km, with earlier dates limiting to shorter tunnels based on the real length of tunnels built. This rule was to stop people repeating the old extended server where there were 12-16 cross map tunnels since railway tunnels first became available.

At some stage a system limiting the length of underwater tunnels is intended but is currently a low priority.

[Ves]

I still cannot enter the server. It tells me that it didnt recieve the NWC_GAME package within 10 minutes, alternative a bad one.

However, that new map looks very cool, I would support that as the next game map!

[CK]

I still cannot enter the server. It tells me that it didnt recieve the NWC_GAME package within 10 minutes, alternative a bad one.

However, that new map looks very cool, I would support that as the next game map!

It requires a lot of patience and generally a couple of attempts to eventually be able to enter the server, but I can confirm that it is possible.

[jamespetts]

It requires a lot of patience and generally a couple of attempts to eventually be able to enter the server, but I can confirm that it is possible.

That is useful to know. May I ask what the performance is like once you do manage to login?