[0.17.63] Nearly unresponsive UI when game.speed set to extremes

Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.

Moderator: ickputzdirwech

Post Reply
User avatar
Jon8RFC
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 553
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 3:39 pm
Contact:

[0.17.63] Nearly unresponsive UI when game.speed set to extremes

Post by Jon8RFC »

When setting game.speed to extremes for a given processor, the UI becomes difficult or impossible to use. At higher speeds, it gets worse over time, as expected.

As shown in this video, it takes a little over three and a half minutes to quit the game. I used a script to use the Windows "show mouse pointer location" to coincide exactly with mouse clicks, so that you can visually see when I clicked and when the UI responded:

https://youtu.be/cnNYJmdBIv0


As I barely understand and can infer, that's because HID inputs are run inside--and at the mercy--of the same thread as the game simulation. I understand that it's probably working as the code is written to work...but is the intention of the working code for the UI to be nearly unusable and at the mercy of the game simulation?

I remember there being situations in multiplayer in which slow systems couldn't use the UI and quit the game, and that was fixed. What could be done here?

What about hard-coding 60 fps/ups to menus and pausing the simulation thread's game.speed setting? When the user pauses the simulation with ESC, should the simulation and UI both continue to run at 0.6 fps/ups or ten-million-plus fps/ups?

What about a separate, duplicate thread watching for HID input? It doesn't have to relay into the simulation thread, but if ESC or similar is detected, it pauses the simulation thread and goes into the hard-coded 60 fps/ups menu. Just trying to share ideas, not claim that I am Linus Torvalds, haha.

It's an edge-case scenario, I know, but is the game ready for 10 million or greater UPS for an extended period of time? If I let it run like that for 12 hours, would there be a problem?
Image


User avatar
Impatient
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 883
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 2:51 am
Contact:

Re: [0.17.63] Nearly unresponsive UI when game.speed set to extremes

Post by Impatient »

I once also had an experience which made me suspect the user input and the UI (including the ESC menu) runs in the same thread as the in-game calculations.
viewtopic.php?t=63765

Post Reply

Return to “Ideas and Suggestions”