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On Recent Memory Optimizations

Discussion in 'Release 40 Feedback Forum' started by Black Tortoise, Apr 8, 2017.

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  1. Black Tortoise

    Black Tortoise Avatar

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    So, SotA has finally hit the record - the one and only application I have ever run on this machine that has used up swap space. I even forgot I had a system monitoring graph dedicated to swap space, until today.

    TLDR: Memory optimizations have improved in adventure scenes, but seem to be worse in housing scenes.

    So thanks @Chris and gang for whatever first pass at memory optimizations youve done. I know that trying to optimize anything while still in early development is practically whack-a-mole, if not entirely self defeating. Yet us players are demanding our system resources back, so comply you must, right? So thanks :). I have noticed a big decrease in memory allocations when in adventure scenes. I can even transition through several adventure scenes now, and it seems my memory allocations plateau at around 50% of my physical memory, or about 8GB. Entering and exiting several adventure scenes doesnt seem to allocate memory above this threshold, though I am not exactly testing thoroughly.

    There is now a bigger problem with housing scenes, at least for me on Linux. My housing scene at Storm's Reach (which is not a vastly populated town...) eats up around 75% of my main memory pretty quick. The bad part is - it doesnt cap there. It (SotA) used to cap at around 80-90% of total memory, and never really went above that, no matter how many scene transitions I did. However, now, it just keeps eating more and more memory when I enter and exit different scenes, spilling out of physical memory and into swap space. So it uses up nearly 100% of my 16GB of memory, and then needs more. This only happens with housing scenes, presumably due to the number of unique objects. As long as I stay in adventure scenes, SoTA only eats up a baby-behemoth of ~5-8GB.

    I currently adapt by switching to the next housing scene, logging all the way out (exiting the SotA client), then logging back in directly to the scene, and dealing with the ~13-14GB allocation it seems to need for housing scenes. I have houses in 2 different housing scenes, so this is rather time consuming. I also will need to exit the client and reload directly into a chosen adventure scene in the same way. If I go from one housing scene to another, or adventure to housing, the game will allocate all of my main memory and start using swap space.

    So basically, there have been optimizations which seem to benefit adventure scenes, but its gotten worse for housing. I can accept it and deal with it until the game is more "market ready" (I know yall dont like that word "launch" or "release" ;) ). Just FYI, it was better before these optimizations (2 releases back?) when in player housing - I wasnt forced to exit the client, though it certainly allocated a whackass amount of memory then as well ;).

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    Specs: Ubuntu 14.04, 16GB RAM, intel i5 3.2 ghz, SSD, nvidia 1080

    None of the above is the result of any formal testing or metrics gathering - Im just looking at graphs of system resource sensor data, and have never actually seen my swap space used before. How bow da?
     
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  2. Hedgekod

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    I came here looking for any other notes about people's performance for this release because I have noticed some backsteps with this release as well. I'm not sure if my issues are memory-related or not, I'm pretty busy with work lately and haven't tried to figure it out. Perhaps it coincided with an update to the newest version of Unity?

    So let me add some anecdotal ramblings if I may. :) Here, at a high and informal level, are descriptions of the things I've noticed. These are changes versus the previous release as far as I can tell:

    - Generally more stuttering with more graphically intensive views. I will have to experiment a little more to begin to guess if this has anything to do with the swap issue mentioned above by @Black Tortoise or if it seems more like a raw graphics performance kind of thing. I haven't been restarting the client at all during a play session and I will say it does seem to get worse as time goes on, to the point where last night even the overworld in a lot of places was starting to stutter for me which has typically been very smooth for more than a couple releases now. However, even when I first start up a fresh game I'm noticing a... difference from before that's not positive.

    - Something I noticed that tells me that perhaps some fundamental stuff was affected by a Unity version upgrade or something, and Portalarium knows they have to re-optimize things: I'm at work so can't post any image, but the draw distance on grass seems to be less. I noticed this because I own a POT with the grasslands template and for the longest time I was always hoping they'd increase the draw distance for the grass. There's a TON of open space in that template with just grass and looking out any medium to far distance would create a very non-immersive effect where the grass would just stop a certain radius from you and the very patterned-looking "grass" ground texture would stretch out beyond that. Very noticeable with some of the large flat areas of this template. Then, I believe it was within the prior release or two, it all got better and I instantly noticed they had increased the draw distance effectively to infinity. Well ok :) , I know probably not really, but the increased distance perhaps combined with a better LOD fallback for the grass or something made it finally look really, really good and I couldn't really see the underlying ground texture at all as far as I could see! This was awesome! :D Then R40 hit and I've now started seeing the obvious border of the grass once more, even though it seems further out than in the past if my memory serves me.

    I fully understand that due to certain kinds of changes optimization that was done in the past might need to be redone. I guess ultimately I'm simply wondering: Did something change? Something that "broke" previous optimizations and caused Portalarium to dial back any draw distances? @Chris

    Overall though, I do want to say that the game continues to look more and more beautiful and I definitely get the sense of the graphics reaching a much more competitive state overall. So, I definitely understand that there's still work to do with the type of things I'm talking about, such as draw distance of various things like decorations, walls on lots, and such. I'm just curious if there's anything to say about any temporary "steps back" in this regard recently.

    Oh, my machine specs if useful: Win7, 16GB RAM, intel i7@4.5GHZ, SSD, Nvidia 980ti, usually play with graphics options maxed (2560 x 1440 res)
     
  3. Ravicus Domdred

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    they should put a gypsy banker in some adventure scenes just so that people can access a bank not in a housing scene. UO had gypsy bankers randomly throughout. It would help people that did not have housing. Maybe make a gypsy npc camp with some generic crafting stations as well.
     
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