linux - fast forward

[nzhook]

Ive opened a couple of save games recently and the Fast forward button is off. However when I turn it on the game slows down?? Can anyone else confirm this.

Im running linux 0.3.3 and was running SVN until my holiday last week.

I cant see this mentioned as a bug or existing problem,

Also what is the speed increase of it, and can it be increased further? (maybe thats another topic in General?)

[lucaspiller]

It speeds up so it uses as much processing power as there is, if you disable the full detail and full animation settings it will run faster.

[dominik81]

Please post your system specifications. And please post a savegame that you think has this bug.

The fast forward button makes the game as fast as your cpu can handle. It just skips a break that is in there to have a constant speed. So technically it's not even possible to run slower when you push the button.

[nzhook]

Please post your system specifications. And please post a savegame that you think has this bug.

The fast forward button makes the game as fast as your cpu can handle. It just skips a break that is in there to have a constant speed. So technically it's not even possible to run slower when you push the button.

Thats why I think somthings strange, and it seems like the bool is set wrong (false when it should be true)

System (desktop) spec is:
AMD 800Mhz 512Mb RAM, Debian Linux semi-sarge (based on woody)

System (laptop) spec is: (NOTE: This is the system I compile from SVN on)
IBM thinkpad, 1Gb PIII, 256Mb RAM, Debian Linux fully-sarge (updated regually)

It dosnt matter which Save games I open they all seem to do the same thing.

Edit: Is the fast forward option saved in the save games?

[dominik81]

Do you experience this bug on both systems? And could you please do a little "benchmarking"? Running the same savegame for one year twice, once with FF, once without. And then tell me how long it took each time.

Edit: Is the fast forward option saved in the save games?

No, it isn't. Only pause mode is saved.

[nzhook]

Do you experience this bug on both systems? And could you please do a little "benchmarking"? Running the same savegame for one year twice, once with FF, once without. And then tell me how long it took each time.

Yes, its both systems.

Here are the results from the laptop (1Gb) system,
Fastforward off up):
Start: 21:29:16
Stop: 21:51:19
Difference: 1323 seconds

Fastforwad on (down):
Start: 21:51:41
Stop: 22:25:02
Difference: 2001 seconds

There maybe a few seconds out from between when I clicked start and stop, but it proberly wouldnt matter.

Situation, I killed everything beforehand to make sure each attempt had the same usage of the CPU. I also made sure the save game was the same. No changes were made (by me) to the map during the tests, including moving. (thank god for TV) The game was in Full Screen mode.

Ive attached the original save game that I used (as I said however it dosnt seem to matter) this was accually one I grabbed off the forums a while ago and kept on playing it, so some people may reconise it.

Let me know if you need any more info,

[Celestar]

Weird, on my laptop, one year fast, forward, takes around 300 seconds in that savegame (800x600, CPU clocked at 1400 MHz, sucky graphics card). In normal mode a year is around 1300 seconds.

Celestar

[dominik81]

Here are my results of the benchmark, Athlon 2100+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9500 Pro (but without the proper drivers in Linux), 800x600:

Normal mode: 817 seconds
Fast forward: 158 seconds
FF with high performance settings: 69 seconds

I had a dozen other programs running at the same time.

I really have no idea why it would slow down on your system. There's no possible way. Does it not speed up either when you disable full animation? And could your SDL version be causing it? Have you tried a precompiled binary? Does it work correctly in older versions (e.g. 0.3.3)?

[hAmpzter]

Could it be that it looks slower to you as the graphics might tend to get a bit behind when pusing the fast-forward?

On my computer (though an Athlon XP 2000+, ~700Mb RAM, nVidia Ti 4200 graphics-card) the graphics tend to skip a bit when I push the fast-forward!

[nzhook]

Ok, just an update now. I just tried disabling full animation (weird how I missed that suggestion before) and it now speeds up when the fast forward button is down.

It still goes slower when full animation is on however, I dont notice any skipping in the graphics in ethir full or partial animations.

Is it possible the full animation code also has a slow code bit? Or could the full animation be assumed off if the fast forward is on? (then nobody else wil see the problem)

[follow]

Also when you scale down the window you are playing, ff start to run faster.

In my configuration (P4, 1G ram, radeon) in 1280x1024 ff is +- the same speed as without ff.
In small window (300x200) it's much faster.

Maybe SDL slows down?

[Darkvater]

That is perfectly normal. FF goes as fast as your CPU can handle. Since the window is smaller, SDL/game doesn't have to draw so many objects, and has more CPU left for faster FF

[Killer 11]

I haven't got that problem but in starcraft there is the same one when you wiev replays on my pc and select 8x speed it runs super fast and when you set 16x speed it runs even slower than 1x
I think that on your pc when you turn on fast forward with all details and animations it's too hard for cpu to run that fast and then it slows down no wait! i think your graphics card can't operate at the speed that cpu can so the image slows down.

[dominik81]

I'll close the bug report because it seems to be due to limited hardware. The CPU tries to increase speed. SDL/xServer/whatever can't handle the graphics fast enough and finally slows everything down.