Paused Game Chews CPU
Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2019 5:37 am
This is a hybrid between a suggestion and a bug report. It's my opinion that it's a bug that when the game is completely paused and in the background it absolutely gobbles up CPU resources, as if it were running full speed. Even when the game is paused with shift-space, the grid pops up, then I alt-tab into say, a browser to view a video, or this forum to make a post, or any other program, it continues to hog resources. It's currently between 185 and 190% of a single core on my CPU (an FX8350) and the chip is exceeding 50C, with the fan reaming into jet engine level of sound. Load Averages are 3.89 to 4.5 on an 8 core... it's pretty bad. Understandable when the game is running a simulation of a pretty big factory, but.... it's completely idle. (Ubuntu 19.04 with kernel 5.0.0-32 and nVidia drivers 430.50)
I'm sorry that you have set the bar of my expectations so high. Your program is otherwise a very good compute-citizen, actually blowing the standards of other non-game programs out of the water. Triple platform compatibility is a dream, and your idea of "stable" versus "unstable" is on another level entirely from every other game on the market. Being mindful of multiple displays is something which is just not done these days, and playing nice with the rest of the system is usually unheard of, but here is this gem of a program showing everyone how it's done.
Thus it is my humble suggestion that a developer find some time to make the game loop stop hammering out updates of nothing while paused, and still not affect the unpaused performance, before 1.0 ships. This should help plenty of players, especially those on laptops.
Much apologies if this has already been suggested (demanded) or talked about in other threads, but I just couldn't think of what terms to search.
I'm sorry that you have set the bar of my expectations so high. Your program is otherwise a very good compute-citizen, actually blowing the standards of other non-game programs out of the water. Triple platform compatibility is a dream, and your idea of "stable" versus "unstable" is on another level entirely from every other game on the market. Being mindful of multiple displays is something which is just not done these days, and playing nice with the rest of the system is usually unheard of, but here is this gem of a program showing everyone how it's done.
Thus it is my humble suggestion that a developer find some time to make the game loop stop hammering out updates of nothing while paused, and still not affect the unpaused performance, before 1.0 ships. This should help plenty of players, especially those on laptops.
Much apologies if this has already been suggested (demanded) or talked about in other threads, but I just couldn't think of what terms to search.