[0.16.latest] Map reached old computer ability to run it

[Camylarde]

Hi,

my father's old comp (my previous rig) is sporting Core2 Duo E8400 (3GHz) and 4 GB DDR2. We're playing a map that reached about 70MB save size and in the last 5 gameplay hours his comp started to suffer odd behavior.

1) He is catching up with the server upon load and is unable to catch up - gets dropped. I have to pause the server for him to catch up. (then the catch up eventually finishes) I've noticed that his catch up speed was slowing down for him last several gameplays.
2) Despite the catchup problem, he is now unable to move in the game, having exactly 5UPS/FPS, hears his footsteps sound, but is static, and I don't see a movement on my side either. When I pause server, FPS/UPS goes back to 60 until unpaused.

Same behavior is happening when we move the map from the rented server to my own machine-host multiplayer game option. We get same problems and results.

When I slowed down the gamespeed on the server to 1/2 of the normal speed, his (and mine) FPS/UPS return to server matching 30/30 and is able to play again at that halved speed. .

Its obvious we have reached the limits of his rig with this map, but as the factory must still grow, I am trying to see if the problem is with the 4GB ram - I could get him more, but DDR2 being antique and expensive I want to be sure this is the right way to go.

Any opinions or experience to confirm this?

If it was CPU, we would have seen gradual slowing down on his side, but he went from 60 straight down to 5(effective zero as the game bugs out).
If it was GPU, only FPS would suffer and we've lowered the settings considerably to work even in the densest forest and base areas - cannot be it.

Alternatively - I am not wiz with the server setup (either rented or local) so I wonder if there is something that forces his machine to lag out versus mine, and whether I could perhaps slow things down on teh server to wait for the weakest link (but be aaprox 55ups instead of halved that we're forced into at the moment)?

Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks!

[TheD4nkLord]

Not that I know much of a solution, but I have the same problem with one of my friends I was playing with.
The map we were playing on is only 31MB in size though, and my friend has been completely unable to join.

I think the best option would be to upgrade the PC but not sure if there's any solution besides that.

I Hope this gets fixed for you!

[FuryoftheStars]

Seems like that PC is *very* old. You could give a RAM upgrade a try. There’s some on Newegg right now for less than $30.

https://www.newegg.com/crucial-4gb-240- ... 6820148287

[Jap2.0]

Alternatively - I am not wiz with the server setup (either rented or local) so I wonder if there is something that forces his machine to lag out versus mine, and whether I could perhaps slow things down on teh server to wait for the weakest link (but be aaprox 55ups instead of halved that we're forced into at the moment)?

The command "/c game.speed = x" will slow your game down to a fraction of the speed, where x=1 is 60 UPS. (I'm assuming this is the method you were using). Without going to 30 UPS, you can do something like /c game.speed = 0.8 (which would be 48 UPS) or /c game.speed = 0.9 (54 UPS). Feel free to experiment with it. Note that this command disables achievements on that map (which there are multiple ways around, but let's not get into that...).


A brief explanation of how multiplayer works: each client simulates the full game, just given the other players' inputs. If the server is capable of running faster than the client, that player will do its best to keep up (sacrificing FPS with reckless abandon), but then the server will ultimately drop that player if their computer can't keep up. As a result, as soon as the client cannot simulate as fast as the server, things go downhill very quickly - it wouldn't be a gradual slowdown.

A quick aside - are you on 0.17, or 0.16? Edit: saw title

It's not a GPU issue.

As for ways to improve UPS on his end; this could be and most likely is a mixture of a lot of things. Check how much memory is being used when Factorio is running on his PC. (While you're at it, check if there are any background processes taking up a lot of CPU time.) If it's not using/almost using all of his memory, getting more won't help. If it is, then Factorio may be running out of memory (i.e. using the pagefile, i.e. using the hard drive as RAM. Hard drives are not RAM.) However, faster memory might help. The CPU (being a bit on the old side) is probably also slowing it down. Unfortunately, it's hard to upgrade small but integral parts of a computer that old - the CPU, motherboard, and memory must all be compatible. Getting only a faster CPU is almost out of the question; getting something compatible with his motherboard would have to be something like the Core 2 Duo E8600 - which looks like it can be had for $15-20 on Amazon (although I can't guarantee that buying random legacy computer equipment off amazon is never sketchy), but I don't know if/how much you're willing to spend on this - and past a certain point, even cheap new parts may be much faster. As for memory, faster memory may help (I don't know how fast the current memory is); it looks like support for DDR 3 is possible with that CPU, but difficult and often limited by the motherboard, so I don't know if that's an option for you. I also doubt that overclocking (on cpu or memory) is feasible, but having a quick poke around in the bios to see if you can quick increase the frequency on anything without adverse affects might not be a bad idea.

Anyway, that's a bit of a long and jumbled mess, but I hope you find it of some use - and feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.



Edit: I see that you're on 0.16. 0.17 is still experimental, but still very stable (and probably will become the stable branch soon anyway). It has a completely rewritten rendering engine (including benefits to CPU), which may also help you guys slightly. Note that it does require something supporting OpenGL 3.3 or DirectX 11 (feature level 10, i.e. many DX 10 cards support it). Assuming you have a dedicated GPU (if not I have no idea), that appears to include most Nvidia GPUs since 2006 and most AMD cards since 2007.

[eradicator]

Map size mostly grows with exploring the map, and is thus unrelated to simulation speed.

Easiest way to check if it's "can't run the map at all" or "is weakest link in MP": Have the affected person load the savegame in singleplayer. While singleplayer is *slightly* (less than 5%) faster than joining multiplayer it'll give you a good idea of how fast the old system can run the map. If the map runs at i.e. 50~55UPS in singleplayer then the problem is simply that the server is "too fast", in which case /c speed = 0.? can temporarily fix your problem (but you'll have to adjust it down as the factory grows).

As a result, as soon as the client cannot simulate as fast as the server, things go downhill very quickly - it wouldn't be a gradual slowdown.

I'd go so far and say it's not even "very quick" either, it's an instant yes/no situation. Either the game goes into full panic mode and sacrifices all FPS to try to catch up to the server even though it can't, or it runs at 60fps. There isn't really a situation where an MP client runs at <60fps unless the server does too. In this regard i do believe that @OP misread the info and it wasn't actually 5FPS/5UPS but rather 5FPS/55UPS (or similar), at least that's what i get in that situation.

[mmmPI]

If you lower the graphic settings to the minimum and check the boxes to reduce the number of sprite, colors and everything you can, you don't need 4GB of RAM, this would be required on huge maps or with many mods.

The GPU is also probably not the problem in itself, since the problem occurs when the UPS of any players can't keep up to 60 not the FPS . You would have seen 55FPS/60UPS, or 50/60 before the other problem.

CPU is probably the bottleneck here, to help with the catch up time, you can pause the game when the other player is joining and dowloading until he has caught up, so that its computer will have easier time catching up on freezed game.


Reducing the speed of the server is the next step, using command disable achievement anyway, so if you slow it to 50% you may as well increase mining and running speed by 50% just so that it doesn't feel as much. Robots and trains will look slow.

Disabling pollution or biters can help in huge maps, it's another alternative that impact more the gameplay.

And you can look for "ups friendly" designs, there are many discussions for optimizing megabases, they are equally informative when dealing with a slow computer, but usually when i reach that point i try to conclude the map and go for the next one

[Ultros]

IMO there is little point in trying to upgrade the E8400, it's over 11 years old and you might spend more upgrading it than simply getting a newer computer due to difficulty in getting parts for it. As others have mentioned, UPS depends on the CPU (not GPU) and you are unlikely to gain much from adding more RAM if your computer isn't low on RAM.

Furthermore, the E8400 is one of the best CPUs on LGA775 and you don't really have a significant upgrade path for single-threaded performace. The Q9650 is faster multi-threaded, but Factorio is mostly a single-thread performance game.

You can get whole i5 3570 systems shipped on Ebay for $150 or so, and these systems will be way more capable in gaming (and general processing) than your current computer.

[Jap2.0]

Map size mostly grows with exploring the map, and is thus unrelated to simulation speed.

Easiest way to check if it's "can't run the map at all" or "is weakest link in MP": Have the affected person load the savegame in singleplayer. While singleplayer is *slightly* (less than 5%) faster than joining multiplayer it'll give you a good idea of how fast the old system can run the map. If the map runs at i.e. 50~55UPS in singleplayer then the problem is simply that the server is "too fast", in which case /c speed = 0.? can temporarily fix your problem (but you'll have to adjust it down as the factory grows).

As a result, as soon as the client cannot simulate as fast as the server, things go downhill very quickly - it wouldn't be a gradual slowdown.

I'd go so far and say it's not even "very quick" either, it's an instant yes/no situation. Either the game goes into full panic mode and sacrifices all FPS to try to catch up to the server even though it can't, or it runs at 60fps. There isn't really a situation where an MP client runs at <60fps unless the server does too. In this regard i do believe that @OP misread the info and it wasn't actually 5FPS/5UPS but rather 5FPS/55UPS (or similar), at least that's what i get in that situation.

The reason I say very quickly instead of instantly is because there is the time where you start frantically dropping frames, and because (only to a very small extent) variance in update time means that there are likely a couple times the client can't keep up on some ticks but can on others. But yes, pretty much instantly.

Because 3 people posted before I edited my post, I'm just going to quick post the edit here:

I see that you're on 0.16. 0.17 is still experimental, but still very stable (and probably will become the stable branch soon anyway). It has a completely rewritten rendering engine (including benefits to CPU), which may also help you guys slightly. Note that it does require something supporting OpenGL 3.3 or DirectX 11 (feature level 10, i.e. many DX 10 cards support it). Assuming you have a dedicated GPU (if not I have no idea), that appears to include most Nvidia GPUs since 2006 and most AMD cards since 2007.

[Camylarde]

Thanks to all for the meaningful suggestions. It all makes sence and I will have to find time to buy new machine and transfer their files. Reinstall ahoy.

[darkfrei]

Thanks to all for the meaningful suggestions. It all makes sence and I will have to find time to buy new machine and transfer their files. Reinstall ahoy.

Here's some mods for bad computers, for example you can delete empty chunks and you get free RAM back.

[Camylarde]

Thanks to all for the meaningful suggestions. It all makes sence and I will have to find time to buy new machine and transfer their files. Reinstall ahoy.

Here's some mods for bad computers, for example you can delete empty chunks and you get free RAM back.

Marvellous, exactly what I was looking for. Sorry for noticing only now, I wasn't playing due to being too busy and wasn't monitoring this forum either...
Many thanks!