Speed of 1.5.1?

[Monarch1st]

My old machine crashed, and I got a new, better, machine. I7/4 core/8 thread, 3 ghz, win7/64 bit, yada yada. Yay! Much better than my dual core, about 3 ghz, XP 32 bit.

Buuut, it runs OTTD slower. Much slower. The regular speed is a crawl, and even fast forward is excruciatingly slow.
I forget which version of OTTD was the old version, but it was beta about a year and a half ago, give or take. But the old machine ran it more than twice as fast as the new machine runs 1.5.1/64 bit.

What gives? Should I run the 32 bit version on this new machine, is the 64 bit version just slow? Is 1.5.1 bloatware and I should downgrade?
I was expecting to fly thru the first part of the game, but I could take a nap while my first train, the one and only on the map, putts along to it's destination maybe a couple hundred squares away.

Help! I...can't...zzz...stay...zzz...awake...zzzzzzzzz

[Baldy's Boss]

My old machine crashed, and I got a new, better, machine. I7/4 core/8 thread, 3 ghz, win7/64 bit, yada yada. Yay! Much better than my dual core, about 3 ghz, XP 32 bit.

Buuut, it runs OTTD slower. Much slower. The regular speed is a crawl, and even fast forward is excruciatingly slow.
I forget which version of OTTD was the old version, but it was beta about a year and a half ago, give or take. But the old machine ran it more than twice as fast as the new machine runs 1.5.1/64 bit.

What gives? Should I run the 32 bit version on this new machine, is the 64 bit version just slow? Is 1.5.1 bloatware and I should downgrade?
I was expecting to fly thru the first part of the game, but I could take a nap while my first train, the one and only on the map, putts along to it's destination maybe a couple hundred squares away.

Help! I...can't...zzz...stay...zzz...awake...zzzzzzzzz

I found the game suddenly sped up on me after I had been playing for a bit on my i7-3770K,so it's not strictly CPU-related.

[Rubidium]

Often a lot of time is spent in pushing graphics to the video card. OpenTTD uses techniques from basically the early 1990s. Since these techniques are not used as often anymore, these techniques are often axed from the video card and pushed into the video card driver.

For example, palette animation in the 1990s was done by hardware. You send some image data to the video card and when you want to animate using the palette, you just send a new palette to the video card (takes about 1 row of pixels in bandwidth). Now this functionality is no longer present in almost all recent hardware which means that you video card driver needs to either keep a copy of the screen in memory (which it probably can't due to 3D rendering done by the hardware), or it needs to fetch the buffer from the video card. Then it needs to perform the palette animation (check each pixel whether it might need changing) and then send either the changed sections or the whole screen back to the video card for displaying. All in all, a lot more processing needs to be done by your CPU in contrast to the GPU.

Nowadays basically everyone wants/writes 3D graphics/games, and even some of the 2D looking games are written using 3D techniques. However, due to a number of graphical tricks that were done in the design of OpenTTD, such as bridges being lower than the vehicles going under them, it is not simply a task of changing OpenTTD to go 3D because the 3D engines of the video cards do not handle these tricks. They will draw the roof of the vehicle going under the bridge on top of the bridge instead of drawing the bridge over the vehicle going under it.

As such OpenTTD is in a relatively bad situation with respect to the graphics. Hardware optimisations that used to exist 25 years ago get removed and new technology cannot be used due to the design choices of 25 years ago.

The "obvious" solution out of this vicious circle would be ditching the design and making OpenTTD 3D with completely new graphics and the likes, but then it wouldn't be what OpenTTD pretends to be: an improved version of Transport Tycoon (Deluxe). As such you would be creating a new game based on the OpenTTD engine, but if you start with dropping the graphics then you should also tackle some other things such as the lengthening/shortening of vehicles along the different orientiations and you slowly end up with something that isn't even compatible to OpenTTD anymore.

So, solving the graphics issue in OpenTTD can't really be done as the result of solving the issue isn't OpenTTD anymore; it is something else.

[Eddi]

also, you probably got a new OS with your new computer, which probably does weird screen scaling stuff, which again slows things down. try to play in windowed mode rather than fullscreen, and disable any scaling.

all in all, this has probably nothing to do with the processor, and all with the graphics.

[Alberth]

Found some tips that may be helpful:
https://wiki.openttd.org/FAQ_troublesho ... 5_or_later

[andythenorth]

Turn off 'full animation'. Might make no difference, but works for me, the game is unplayable otherwise. Probably related to how palette is cycled for animated colours, or such.

(I have a completely different machine and OS to you, but eh).

[Monarch1st]

Well, not really good news, but at least I understand. Sort of. And there are things to try. And it did get better after a while. (but you'd think it could push those pixels a bit faster, you know?)

Thanks everyone.

[TimeLapse1357]

My old machine crashed, and I got a new, better, machine.

I have seen new computers that were so crammed with free trial ware, "Helper" apps, gadgets and other crap, that even simple games were unplayable.

restart your system and use resource monitor to see if something is hogging resources.

[Monarch1st]

My old machine crashed, and I got a new, better, machine.

I have seen new computers that were so crammed with free trial ware...
restart your system and use resource monitor to see if something is hogging resources.

I keep my system pretty neat and trim. I love ccleaner, revo uninstaller, and decrapifier. I almost get a buzz from getting rid of stuff. Flash player is the worst offender at the moment.

[Monarch1st]

After a few days real-time, and a few hundred years among several games, the speed has stayed high (not as high as i was hoping, but still pretty good. slightly better than my old machine, and doesn't seem to drop when more trains are added.)

What I don't get is the speed doesn't drop between games. I.e. shutting the game down, shutting the machine down in fact between games.
Are some graphic settings saved somewhere so it knows where graphics stuff goes next time?
Not complaining, pleased in fact. Just puzzled.

[Phreeze]

ccleaner uninstallers etc.are crapware too jsut do not install crap, and you don't have to clean anything.

and even with all that bulls*** etc, scaling etc, the i7 is fast enough to play the game with all options etc..could have been sth else (more like antivirus blocking the cpu caus of scanning in realtime or updating itself etc.)

[Train<In>Vain]

Speed, of 1.5.1, on my Acer C720 ($199) is "fast and smooth", even with the biggest map - at 1080p. Thanks Linus for linux!!!

BTW thanks Open TTD devs for making the best game the bestest!