[Dominik][0.16.36] Flickering electricity GUI

[Jon8RFC]

I didn't want to alt+tab out and have the game reset anything, so I recorded with my phone:
https://youtu.be/j-3KDmrqFeU

Notice that it's the entire GUI for the power/electricity display, and not just the graphs at the bottom. Sadly, I didn't get the power bars above. I tried to get quick recordings before it corrected itself.

I closed and re-opened multiple times, and the flickering was there, no matter what time frame I selected. Maybe I happened to open it once during the very brief moment of a power shortage and it got stuck somehow, because there were regular shortages at the time when lasers were going on and off. I've never seen anything like this before, and the rest of the game was fine, as you can see in the background.

I stopped the recording to check the productivity GUI for flickering--hit ESC, then P, and the flickering didn't exist. When I checked again in electricity, the flickering didn't occur again. It's hard to see, despite the 60fps recording, but the flickering was much more intense and frequent than shown in the recording. It's a little easier to see fullscreen at 1080/60fps, but it's still much less intense than was shown in the game. If I suffered from photosensitive epilepsy, it certainly could've been triggering.

[Jon8RFC]

I just noticed, in the recording, that the steam engine power bar is extending and overlapping with the accumulator power bar, seemingly synchronized with the flickering. I didn't notice this during gameplay.

[Dominik]

Oh wow, that overlapping bar is interesting. Any idea how to simulate this?
It seems that the flickering goes with the high frequency readings visible in the graphs. Do you think that is really the case? It looks like some quick switching of the accumulators. Having your save would help, can you upload it please?
What FPS/UPS do you have? (F4->show fps). Perhaps it might have to do with your older GPU. Not the bug itself - something clearly is wrong - but the fact that you can see it.

[Jon8RFC]

Well shoot, I was on a multiplayer server and disconnected without thinking to save it that time. So, it may be a lost cause.

It was running very smoothly with just three other players in a medium-sized base/map. I notice slowness when it hits high 40s or very low 50s, and it didn't feel sluggish at all, so I'm guessing high 50s for fps. The ups was staying pegged at 59-60, and the multiplayer clock never displayed, and those two are easier to notice since they rarely change.

The key to the strangeness was that it always occurred when I'd close and open a new electricity window, and regardless of the time frames I kept switching between to try and get it to stop (it occurred on the 1hour time frame, for example). Opening up the productivity window seemed to reset things to normal. I'd estimate that it was only about 60 seconds that it was going on as I opened multiple electrical graphs, watched, clicked around on time frames, and got my phone to record.

[Dominik]

I believe that what is responsible is some circuit network switch. The overlapping bar means that in one state the engines are the only energy source, in the other the panels and accumulators are added. And these two states are switching each tick or so, which causes all that mess. So no bug present after all. The flickering is ugly for sure. Some reorganization of the gui could stop it, but that is a minor issue at this moment. As for your case, just fixing the switch, which I don't think does anything good, would fix it.

[mrvn]

The power switch splits a network in two or joins them depending on it's state. If you switch it on and off every tick you get your flickering. I believe the overlapping bars are simply a trick of the eye because of that fast switching.

To fix this add a hysteresis to your power switches so they don't switch every second.

[Jon8RFC]

Yes, I do specifically remember power switches on that map. I mentioned the power shortage from laser usage, and someone tossed in at least one circuit network power switch shortly afterward.

Very strange that it caused the entire gui to flicker instead of just the one section, but that's a great diagnosis from such little information I provided! Nice work!