Why end turn take so long?

[whatevername]

I will try to reply from the point of view of a developer. In my game I have a fast turn processing but my main reason for having these is that I'm a solo developer so I also need to test the game and design it so faster turns save *my* time. In order to make thest fast turns I had to make significant optimizations (which was somewhat expensive). I also don't see these fast turns as a valid selling point, it does not make much sense from marketing point of view. My game won't get any favourable reviews because of these. In addition, considering how much troublesome this optimiation was (I had to make the internal workings of the game more complex and sophisticated) and how small of impact it has on the fun of the game I think in my next game I won't do it again (I somewhat regret doing this fast turns processing).

Additional thing is the internet. Players nowadays are *OBSESSED* by the AI, you will get negative reviews if you have it poor also it's one of the major complains of the players. So, you need to address it this way or another. And AI is really bogging down the CPU very fast no matter waht kind of game you make. The players back then (HoM&M3) were less mature, they were kids, now the players are adults (35 years is the average player's age IIRC) back then they simply wanted a fun game. Nowadays you want a game which won't get too many negative reviewes on Steam. Long turns won't give you negative reviews. Poor AI will give negative reviews for sure. You can trade long turns for better AI. So, the choice is obvious, one should make long turns

Haaaiiii mengz! I decided to make my own car, but it drives at a top speed of only 2 miles per hour. Because I have to drive it myself to test it and feel how it rides I had to remove the pedals under the driver's seat and install a motor under the hood. Don't see how this engine is a valid selling point because this gasoline shit is so freaking expensive! The Flintstones won't even review my car! Next time I'm gonna make a new car I won't do it again (I still regret removing the pedals... this car-gym idea was brilliant).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

this is not about the actual A.I. taking too long but other stuff making it take too long. like unoptimized shit and loops and processor intensive graphics when they're supposed to be handled by the gra-card.

Graphics are not an issue for end turn processing since nothing is rendered during end turn processing.
Unless you mean displaying the "AI units movement during AI's turn"?

Haaaiiii mengz! I decided to make my own car, but it drives at a top speed of only 2 miles per hour. Because I have to drive it myself to test it and feel how it rides I had to remove the pedals under the driver's seat and install a motor under the hood. Don't see how this engine is a valid selling point because this gasoline shit is so freaking expensive! The Flintstones won't even review my car! Next time I'm gonna make a new car I won't do it again (I still regret removing the pedals... this car-gym idea was brilliant).

EndTurn processing is not the speed of the car. EndTurn is like a speed of opening the door of the car. Typical driver won't care and will comply about the driving speed (AI). Therefore mose engineer focus on making the car drive fast, not make it's dor open fast.
So, you actually proved my point

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a small insight into the decision making of the developer. Feel free to disagree as much as you like, but, especially big studios, think that way. No one cares about end turn processing speed because the player does not care. If you do, and you want to change it, try asking (commenst, etc) the developers if their game will have a fast turn processing. If they see people ask for it, they will deliver. It's as simple as that
Like "hey, I don't mind if the AI is a bit poorer because of this but can you make the end turn be processed faster in yoiur game?", I bet many developers would be delighter to read such comment/request.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

People won't care if opening their car's doors takes five minutes.

 

[Cadmus]

Sure the player cares, he just won't bitch about it because the game has 3829 worse issues that make it shit in the first place.
I understand this kind of thinking, it's really easy to justify omitting some work because it doesn't show up in the reviews and there's no obvious way it helps you make money. On the other hand, the players don't give a shit what makes money and want the game to be good.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a small insight into the decision making of the developer. Feel free to disagree as much as you like, but, especially big studios, think that way. No one cares about end turn processing speed because the player does not care. If you do, and you want to change it, try asking (commenst, etc) the developers if their game will have a fast turn processing. If they see people ask for it, they will deliver. It's as simple as that
Like "hey, I don't mind if the AI is a bit poorer because of this but can you make the end turn be processed faster in yoiur game?", I bet many developers would be delighter to read such comment/request.

Yeah, next time I'm posting on Ubisoft forum, I'll let them know and they'll fix it.

 

[Destroid]

LordArchibald No matter how good the game, I'll drop it if the turn times are too long. Early HoI3 and Aurora suffered really bad from this. I think about 10 seconds is a reasonable upper limit to make the player wait with nothing to do. I think 3 seconds or less would be strongly preferable though.

 

[Reapa]

Graphics are not an issue for end turn processing since nothing is rendered during end turn processing.
Unless you mean displaying the "AI units movement during AI's turn"?

EndTurn processing is not the speed of the car. EndTurn is like a speed of opening the door of the car. Typical driver won't care and will comply about the driving speed (AI). Therefore mose engineer focus on making the car drive fast, not make it's dor open fast.
So, you actually proved my point

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a small insight into the decision making of the developer. Feel free to disagree as much as you like, but, especially big studios, think that way. No one cares about end turn processing speed because the player does not care. If you do, and you want to change it, try asking (commenst, etc) the developers if their game will have a fast turn processing. If they see people ask for it, they will deliver. It's as simple as that
Like "hey, I don't mind if the AI is a bit poorer because of this but can you make the end turn be processed faster in yoiur game?", I bet many developers would be delighter to read such comment/request.

wow
ever heard of idle animations? dynamic shadows? bloom? frames / second? ffs the game doesn't stop showing you an image when it's processing enemy turns. at least in none of the games i've played.

 

[Burning Bridges]

LordArchibald
whats' the name of your game?

 

[Perkel]

wow
ever heard of idle animations? dynamic shadows? bloom? frames / second? ffs the game doesn't stop showing you an image when it's processing enemy turns. at least in none of the games i've played.

Those things literally don't have anything to do with how fast end turn works. All of those are mostly done on GPU.
CPU is the one that makes all important parts for end turn speed.

Overall biggest problem is linearity of calculations as i am aware. None of end turn stuff can be paralleled to other cores because every new calculation needs answer from previous calculation (unlike something like bloom or shadows)

The more AI players you play with, the more assets it controlls, the more rules it needs to caculate..... the more time it needs to finish "end turn" time.

You can see it easily in CIV5. When you play with few AI end turns are fast. When you increase AI count turns take longer and with AI expansion each AI will take more time every turn because AI controlls more and more assets every time.

 

[Reapa]

Those things literally don't have anything to do with how fast end turn works. All of those are mostly done on GPU.

idealy. only idealy. fact is however whenever end turn maxes out your cpu you get fps drops. some of them going way down to zero. so obviously gpu doesn't take care of all the shit on it's own. and then you can literally watch your cpu idle at a certain value while doing nothing on your own turn. this happens with every game i've played since starting this thread. whether it's homm 7, eador: motbw, endless legend. and like i've explained before, anything that gets processed while you're doing nothing will still need to be processed on end turn, taking up cpu resources that would otherwise be available only for the ai. for some reason the games don't even exclude any core from all that shit to keep it free for ai processing.

 

[Perkel]

idealy. only idealy. fact is however whenever end turn maxes out your cpu you get fps drops. some of them going way down to zero. so obviously gpu doesn't take care of all the shit on it's own. and then you can literally watch your cpu idle at a certain value while doing nothing on your own turn. this happens with every game i've played since starting this thread. whether it's homm 7, eador: motbw, endless legend. and like i've explained before, anything that gets processed while you're doing nothing will still need to be processed on end turn, taking up cpu resources that would otherwise be available only for the ai. for some reason the games don't even exclude any core from all that shit to keep it free for ai processing.

It does that because end turn maxes out CPU not the other way around. FPS drops are literally caused by end turn logic hogging all of CPU time so graphics don't have cpu time needed to properly run graphics thus FPS drops you noticed.

So to sum up above. Games already do what you want. All CPU power is moved to game logic when you hit end turn while GPU usually doesn't get his proper share of CPU time.

So where is the problem ?

 

[Reapa]

It does that because end turn maxes out CPU not the other way around. FPS drops are literally caused by end turn logic hogging all of CPU time so graphics don't have cpu time needed to properly run graphics thus FPS drops you noticed.

So to sum up above. Games already do what you want. All CPU power is moved to game logic when you hit end turn while GPU usually doesn't get his proper share of CPU time.

So where is the problem ?

who the fuck taught you how cpus work? if anything needs cpu processing it gets it. if 2 things need cpu processing at the same time both get half the speed because the processor will
handle interleaved steps of each of those things. it doesn't automatically decide which process is more important for the player. this is a 3 pages thread and i already made that clear and even gave you a way to test it if you didn't believe it one page ago.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I think you are getting over obsessed with details. What would stop a programmer from simply stopping animations and other things and render a static image? You make it sound like it's set in stone.

One thing that really matters is complexity of the algorithms, another if the programmer understands what the engine is doing. If he doesn't know, he is not able to say where execution time goes out of control.