Quoting: amonobeaxThe problem is related with unit population. The game engine can't handle the physics calculation of huge armies and so it starts lagging.

Most likely something you talking about isn't related to engine or physics. To check it press Ctrl+P and check "simulation" (must be 10) and "server" (must be 1) FPS and if it's 1/10 it's mean server is running fine.

If you have issue with unit movement stuttering then it's related to downstream bandwidth which is may be related to your connection speed or throttling on server-side. PA is client-server game where all simulation done by the server which mean state of each unit have to be passed over network so it's have heavy bandwidth usage. If you play in multiplayer and game hosted on developers servers you need at least 2Mb/s downstream bandwidth to play. If you have less you'll most likely met stuttering.

Though game only pass information over network for units that you see on screen and almost (or may be even completely) ignore units on other planets except they're destroyed or something. I tested it right now and looks like current bandwidth limit on servers is 4.5Mb/s per player. With this limit you can have 1300 fireflies (spy planes) on screen patrolling without any lags.

So what internet connection speed you have? Are you from some island region (e.g everyone from South Africa have issues)? Connected over WiFi/mobile?

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Quoting: DamonLinuxPLCan any tell me if this is fixed now?

Coherent UI isn't really stable without --software-ui on any drivers. There is some chance that situation will improve once they change to newer version of Chromium (40 instead of 28), but problem with open source drivers need to be fixed by middleware developers.

Quoting: edoGood, but I bought the bundle while I was using the windows partition. Since are keys bought outside the steam store I guess that it doesn't matter (they will still count as windows keys no matter if I was using linux or not))

Except you use it in DRM-free way (without a loggin-in) developers have their own statistics to determine OS usage as PA depend on their network service.

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Also new PTE (test version) finally introduced "Play From Here" button for ChronoCam. So now it's not only possible to save/load, but also use time warp feature to reset game state to any point in timeline.

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Quoting: ZeitgeistWhen a game is promised to have linux support the GOL community has to ask if the game renderer will be OpenGL. D3D is a no go for us.

Then you'll remain with no games at all as all developers target D3D in first place. There only two games from Kickstarter that using OpenGL on Windows: Broken Age and Planetary Annihilation.

And yeah problem with Larian's wasn't OpenGL, but shitty Audiokinetic Wwise middleware. So you better ask developers if they using any middleware without source code and Linux support.

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Quoting: Spl-itI want to buy this game but I'm hesitant to buy it because it runs on Unity

This game is using pre-rendered backgrounds so it's hard to imagine there is anything that can make it run slow.

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Quoting: GuestGames don't run as fast as the CPU can possibly go - at least not these days.

No matter what Intel marketing say even high-end CPUs are extremely slow and compared to GPUs their performance increase really slow too. When you have 1000 units on map any mediocre CPU can handle it, but when there is 10000-20000 units it's hard for any CPU.

Quoting: GuestThey're given a time based tick, and I do doubt that any RTS will be slowed down by game logic taking longer than that tick (poor programming aside).

All RTS games are CPU bottlenecked no matter if they old or new and if you have 20,000 units in game it's will be bottlenecked on any CPU no matter how powerful it is. And in PA each projectile is a unit that need collision detection with everything else on same planet.

Multi Threading optimizations is possible, but they require a lot of workarounds as passing data between CPU cores is extremely slow and you can't just access gamestate from within multiple cores. Workaround is to split one huge "world state" in multiple smaller "worlds" like areas where each area simulated on different core, but then you have to fake a lot of things and for example AI won't able to efficiently access all data needed.

There also some things that are extremely taxing even if you have just 1000 units. For example "flocking" in pathfinding is extremely expensive and even if you have group of 1000 units and you can't have RTS with huge units crowds without it. It's can be accelerated on GPU, but it's won't help as not all GPUs have same compute abilities.

Quoting: GuestSo yes, slow graphics can slow down gameplay logic - and that's where next gen APIs can help (by removing a lot of driver overhead, reducing CPU load of the renderer).

Graphics can't slow down simulation likely in any RTS released in last 10 years.
All RTS run simulation in separate threads.

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Quoting: GuestI was referring to game logic simulation - that shouldn't be a bottleneck for anyone.

Problem is: main CPU load in RTS are from simulation, not from renderer. So basically when you have 2+ players in game there is always chance that one of them will have slower CPU and as result he'll bottleneck the game.

And the more players is there the higher is that chance.

Quoting: GuestOf course, such things are often tied to the renderer in some fashion or other, which can definitely slow a lock/step implementation down.

I doubt there is any RTS around where simulation tied to renderer.

Quoting: GuestWhich is all a bit of a sidetrack from the main topic, though Oxide are probably going to have similar issues to handle as well.

Like every other RTS developer, but this is usually solved on game design level via unit cap or limited size of maps or resources available. Their game also a lot more traditional because it's use height level maps and a lot simpler terrain so they have less problems than PA on sphere. Also if they abandon a lot of legacy hardware they may also use things like GPU compute for some tricks, but it's won't make a lot sense as it's still bottlenecked by slowest supported hardware.

So there is more questions than answers as there too few information about the game.

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*Accidental double post. Removed*

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Quoting: GuestThey shouldn't be sending that much data surely? I don't have PA (at least, not yet), but I would have thought they'd do the obvious: synch any required variables, so the same simulation runs on all machines - then you only need send client actions to everyone in a lock-step fashion.

PA is designed for start to be client-server game exactly because traditional model when simulation run on every machine has a serious issues:
1. Player with slowest CPU limit sim performance for everyone.
2. Players with high latency (e.g Australia + Europe + USA) cause issues for everyone.
Basically with traditional P2P networking/simulation it's impossible to have more than 12 players in game because it's will lag too much (if simulation is synchronous like in Supreme Commander) or heavy cheating will be possible if simulation is asynchronous (like in Total Annihilation and many old games).
PA can handle 40 players just fine if server is powerful enough.

Also without client-server model things like ChronoCam is almost impossible and there no way to protect game from cheaters (map hacks). So client-server is costly as state of each unit/projectile have to be transferred over network, but it's have own advantages.

Quoting: GuestProperly threaded (and there's the catch), simulation of everything won't be the bottleneck. I'll assume Oxide Games have put a bit more effort in there than the PA people.

Renderer multithreading have nothing to do with simulation threading. Amount of units they show in trailer nowhere near to what may be present in PA. Also PA renderer is threaded even if it's hacky with current OpenGL.

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Quoting: badberWhat's the issue with PA and big unit numbers?

Interesting what he meant too because main bottleneck is simulation and not GAPI.

In PA like in any RTS simulation going to lag after some point as physics for units and projectile simulation are costly. Also guys with slow internet may have "lags" because it's client-server so it's using abysmal about of bandwidth and server start throttling as some point.

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