Tech Specs for Huge Maps/Games

[SwissFan91]

I have a very old crappy laptop (12 years old) that I still use for OTTD which can handle vanilla games fine. However, it very much struggles with my current game using JGR patchpack, an 8k x 8k map and a boat load of GRFs.

The actual in-game itself runs OK (which is why I still play it) but the title screen, load game screen and save game screen take a few business days to load. My question is: do other people experience lag while running huge games, maps and GRF lists or is this something a new laptop would fix? Do I have unrealistic expectations and need to cut my GRF list and map size down to have a better experience?

For reference the laptop has a Pentium 2.4ghz B980 processor & 4GB RAM. I know 4GB is very low for modern requirements but not sure if purely upgrading on this would help OTTD run faster or if big games are just big games.

(I haven't posted this in JGR patchpack as I am curious how other large games run on vanilla OTTD too)

[jfs]

No computer in existence can run an 8k map well. The amount of data in the game world is just too large, and because the game is single-threaded having a multi-core CPU helps very little on overall performance.

[ebla71]

No computer in existence can run an 8k map well. The amount of data in the game world is just too large, and because the game is single-threaded having a multi-core CPU helps very little on overall performance.

I'm currently preparing a 16k x 16x map for the JGR pack and can confirm that loading the scenario in the editor takes 1-2 minutes, but otherwise everything else seems to be ok. And my laptop is also 4-5 years old with Intel i7-7600U @ 2.80GHz, 16 GB RAM and 400 GB SSD.

[kkidslogin]

No computer in existence can run an 8k map well. The amount of data in the game world is just too large, and because the game is single-threaded having a multi-core CPU helps very little on overall performance.

I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of CPUs that can do it. From what I'm hearing, the bottleneck, even on that Pentium, is due to disk writing speeds, not CPU or RAM limitations. Assuming you have ample cache, any modern CPU could probably do it (I'll test on my middling 5700g, which is a desktop CPU but a bit old and very average now when it comes to single-thread, later---if I remember to lol).

I have a very old crappy laptop (12 years old) that I still use for OTTD which can handle vanilla games fine. However, it very much struggles with my current game using JGR patchpack, an 8k x 8k map and a boat load of GRFs.

The actual in-game itself runs OK (which is why I still play it) but the title screen, load game screen and save game screen take a few business days to load. My question is: do other people experience lag while running huge games, maps and GRF lists or is this something a new laptop would fix? Do I have unrealistic expectations and need to cut my GRF list and map size down to have a better experience?

For reference the laptop has a Pentium 2.4ghz B980 processor & 4GB RAM. I know 4GB is very low for modern requirements but not sure if purely upgrading on this would help OTTD run faster or if big games are just big games.

(I haven't posted this in JGR patchpack as I am curious how other large games run on vanilla OTTD too)

A new laptop would probably fix it. What you are experiencing is a bottleneck in how fast your computer can read and write to and from permanent storage. To avoid this problem, a laptop with an NVMe drive would be best (These are pretty cheap these days).

[jfs]

OpenTTD does not do disk access during gameplay. The only time OpenTTD reaches to the disk is for loading game data, and when you (or autosave) loads/saves the game in progress. The core game itself does not. If disk access is limiting your performance, it's because you have too little RAM and the operating system has to do swapping. A map sized 8k x 8k contains 67,108,864 tiles (yes, 67 million), which I believe uses a total of 1 GB of static storage for the map array, plus all the dynamic storage required for towns, industries, vehicles, and other moving/"living" objects. I would expect a memory usage of between 2 GB and 4 GB for an 8k map game. If your machine can't keep that all in RAM without swapping then you should definitely not be playing maps that large.
Compare with a standard size 256x256 map, which is a factor 1024 smaller, that would take between 2 and 4 MB of memory, small enough that it can fit entirely inside the cache of a modern higher-end CPU.

[kkidslogin]

OpenTTD does not do disk access during gameplay. The only time OpenTTD reaches to the disk is for loading game data, and when you (or autosave) loads/saves the game in progress. The core game itself does not. If disk access is limiting your performance, it's because you have too little RAM and the operating system has to do swapping. A map sized 8k x 8k contains 67,108,864 tiles (yes, 67 million), which I believe uses a total of 1 GB of static storage for the map array, plus all the dynamic storage required for towns, industries, vehicles, and other moving/"living" objects. I would expect a memory usage of between 2 GB and 4 GB for an 8k map game. If your machine can't keep that all in RAM without swapping then you should definitely not be playing maps that large.
Compare with a standard size 256x256 map, which is a factor 1024 smaller, that would take between 2 and 4 MB of memory, small enough that it can fit entirely inside the cache of a modern higher-end CPU.

That's what I was saying. The OP said the game itself works well enough; it's the title screen, load game screen, and save game screen that are having difficulty, suggesting that it's a disk issue.

[2TallTyler]

The title screen usually runs a 256x256 map, and shouldn't be affected by the savegames of the player.

Another factor to loading the main menu is how long it takes to scan NewGRFs. This happens every time you load the game, and scans all NewGRFs in your NewGRF folder, so the more you have downloaded, the longer it takes.

[jfs]

That's what I was saying. The OP said the game itself works well enough; it's the title screen, load game screen, and save game screen that are having difficulty, suggesting that it's a disk issue.

Sorry. Yes, I was not reading the OP properly.

[ebla71]

OpenTTD does not do disk access during gameplay. The only time OpenTTD reaches to the disk is for loading game data, and when you (or autosave) loads/saves the game in progress. The core game itself does not. If disk access is limiting your performance, it's because you have too little RAM and the operating system has to do swapping. A map sized 8k x 8k contains 67,108,864 tiles (yes, 67 million), which I believe uses a total of 1 GB of static storage for the map array, plus all the dynamic storage required for towns, industries, vehicles, and other moving/"living" objects. I would expect a memory usage of between 2 GB and 4 GB for an 8k map game. If your machine can't keep that all in RAM without swapping then you should definitely not be playing maps that large.

Just checked and a 16k x 16k map when loaded in the scenario editor (not a running game) leads to OTTD consuming 3.2 GB RAM per instance of the program.

I can open and run two instances of OTTD in parallel on my laptop and work in them without too many problems. Loading takes a minute or two and scrolling is a bit more slow than the 4k x 4k games I've played so far but speed it clearly well-acceptable on this configuration.

[kkidslogin]

OpenTTD does not do disk access during gameplay. The only time OpenTTD reaches to the disk is for loading game data, and when you (or autosave) loads/saves the game in progress. The core game itself does not. If disk access is limiting your performance, it's because you have too little RAM and the operating system has to do swapping. A map sized 8k x 8k contains 67,108,864 tiles (yes, 67 million), which I believe uses a total of 1 GB of static storage for the map array, plus all the dynamic storage required for towns, industries, vehicles, and other moving/"living" objects. I would expect a memory usage of between 2 GB and 4 GB for an 8k map game. If your machine can't keep that all in RAM without swapping then you should definitely not be playing maps that large.

Just checked and a 16k x 16k map when loaded in the scenario editor (not a running game) leads to OTTD consuming 3.2 GB RAM per instance of the program.

I can open and run two instances of OTTD in parallel on my laptop and work in them without too many problems. Loading takes a minute or two and scrolling is a bit more slow than the 4k x 4k games I've played so far but speed it clearly well-acceptable on this configuration.

Interesting. These huge maps are a lot more feasible now than when 4k was first introduced.

Mayhap we could get larger sizes merged into trunk, now that any computer worth its salt has 8-16GiB of RAM.

[ebla71]

Interesting. These huge maps are a lot more feasible now than when 4k was first introduced.

Mayhap we could get larger sizes merged into trunk, now that any computer worth its salt has 8-16GiB of RAM.

I'd like to strongly support this!!!

[kkidslogin]

Well, on the other hand, any computer that can handle that sort of map can run JGRPP, and only really serious players can utilize maps over 4k*4k. The usual casual vanilla player (in my experience, as in talking about me lol) can hardly finish a 2k*2k map.

[Redirect Left]

Mayhap we could get larger sizes merged into trunk, now that any computer worth its salt has 8-16GiB of RAM.

By that logic, think of the map sizes I can handle, I have 64GB of RAM

[ebla71]

Well, on the other hand, any computer that can handle that sort of map can run JGRPP, and only really serious players can utilize maps over 4k*4k. The usual casual vanilla player (in my experience, as in talking about me lol) can hardly finish a 2k*2k map.

The size of the binaries is OTTD14 14.4 MB vs. JGRPP 0.63.1 53.4 MB which should not make any difference anywhere.

Not sure why JGRPP is almost 4x larger but might more due to efficiency of the compiler than on tons of extra features?!?

Whatever - I'd definitely like to have larger map sizes also in the standard OTTD and if anybody thinks this is too much for the inexperienced player, maybe it could be made available only via the "special" menue?

[AntoninKyrene]

That's a Sandy Bridge processor, which can handle 16GB of RAM if the mainboard microcode allows for it. Along with an SSD, it could breathe some usable life into the JGR Universe. Especially if you could virtualize it and run it in a RAM Disk, where disk I/O becomes (essentially) irrelevant.

Realizing that 99% of people in this universe would consider such an expenditure to be ludicrous on a CPU from 2012, it falls upon We the 1% to keep uselessness relevant. That's why I am here. Long live PowerPC.

[kkidslogin]

Well, on the other hand, any computer that can handle that sort of map can run JGRPP, and only really serious players can utilize maps over 4k*4k. The usual casual vanilla player (in my experience, as in talking about me lol) can hardly finish a 2k*2k map.

The size of the binaries is OTTD14 14.4 MB vs. JGRPP 0.63.1 53.4 MB which should not make any difference anywhere.

Not sure why JGRPP is almost 4x larger but might more due to efficiency of the compiler than on tons of extra features?!?

Whatever - I'd definitely like to have larger map sizes also in the standard OTTD and if anybody thinks this is too much for the inexperienced player, maybe it could be made available only via the "special" menue?

Both games use the same compilers. The size difference is because JGRPP has a lot more features and code. Not that a ~40MiB difference matters on most machines nowadays.

[kkidslogin]

~snip~ ...it falls upon We the 1% to keep uselessness relevant. That's why I am here. Long live PowerPC.

[ebla71]

Both games use the same compilers. The size difference is because JGRPP has a lot more features and code. Not that a ~40MiB difference matters on most machines nowadays.

I know that it has a lot of extra features - but 4x as much size? Wow. Still - you're right that it will possibly not matter for most people.

[AntoninKyrene]

For consideration - fresh from the lab...


JGR 0.64.2 as a VM

HOST: MinisForum MS-A1 / AMD 8700G / 96GB RAM / 2TB PCIe Gen 4x4 @ 7000/6500 / Windows 10 (x64)

GUEST: 1 vCPU / 6GB vRAM / 24GB vNVMe / 512K vVRAM / Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon

OPTIONS: 8k x 8k / Towns = ~27,000 / Industries = ~56,000 / NewGRF = 22

TIME TO PAUSE SCREEN: 41.45 seconds


JGR 0.64.2 as Native

HOST: Mac mini M2 / 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD / macOS Sequoia

OPTIONS: 8k x 8k / Towns = ~27,000 / Industries = ~56,000 / NewGRF = 22

TIME TO PAUSE SCREEN: 43.11 seconds


The oldest remaining hardware we have is a pristine Mac mini 2010 (the aluminum unit with an aftermarket internal MCE Tech BD-R/RE, one of the rarest computers still functioning on planet Earth methinks!) and last I recall it was running Linux. I'll see if we can get JGR running on it, and if so, I'll post the Time to Pause for comparison...

[JGR]

Well, on the other hand, any computer that can handle that sort of map can run JGRPP, and only really serious players can utilize maps over 4k*4k. The usual casual vanilla player (in my experience, as in talking about me lol) can hardly finish a 2k*2k map.

The size of the binaries is OTTD14 14.4 MB vs. JGRPP 0.63.1 53.4 MB which should not make any difference anywhere.

Not sure why JGRPP is almost 4x larger but might more due to efficiency of the compiler than on tons of extra features?!?

Whatever - I'd definitely like to have larger map sizes also in the standard OTTD and if anybody thinks this is too much for the inexperienced player, maybe it could be made available only via the "special" menue?

The size difference is mostly due to added debugging/symbol information for annotating crash logs.

I do not think that vanilla has any interest in maps larger than 4k x 4k, it's not a purely technical limitation.