Firefox issue

[KGB]

SnotlinG, Piranha,

I've noticed the following issue when playing the game with Firefox (just finally figured it out this weekend).

At some point during the turn after moving several units the browser begins to consume 80-100% of my CPU (40-50% on my dual core machine). Once this happens even if I just sit there and do nothing the browser continues to consume the CPU. If I minimize the browser the CPU use immediately drops to 0%. Then if I maximize again jumps back to consuming 100% CPU. Making another program active doesn't reduce the CPU usage, only minimizing it does.

If I wait long enough doing nothing in the game, say 2 minutes or more the CPU usage will eventually drop back down to 0%.

Here is a screenshot showing what I mean (right click and open in a new tab/window):

http://www.warlorders.com/Screenshots/ss3.JPG

Once the game gets into this mode of massive CPU use the game crawls. I either have to wait 2 minutes or kill the browser and restart it.

KGB

[piranha]

I have experienced the same in chrome but just 2-3 times. Still hard to know what casues it. If you reload the page does it go away? Or only if you close the browser and reopen it?

Really hard to know what is causing it but I know one thing that you could see with fire bug.

If there is something that starts making ajax calls to the server very often like more than 1 per second. You would see that in fire bug and that should slow things down, not sure how often you experience it but if it happens a lot you could look for that.

[KGB]

Piranha,

Happens all the time on my home machine. Very hard to play the game now due to that slowdown. Literally happens the minute I open a game turn. It disappears when I minimize the game. Also disappears if I jump back to the Forum/main account page. Going back into a game jumps immediately to the busy state.

I opened Firebug. The only thing I see in the console is the Java Chat message check every 4-5 seconds where it appears the game is trying to see if there has been any updates to the main chat window. Nothing else appears in the console.

KGB

[KGB]

It's definitely related to Fog of War.

I played 4 turns tonite.

Game 1 was on a Beta2 game (no FOW obviously). Firefox was steady at about 5-7% CPU.
Game 2 was on a Beta3 game with no FOW. Firefox was steady at about 6-7% CPU.
Game 3 was on a Beta3 game with no FOW. Firefox was steady at about 6-7% CPU.
Game 4 was on a Beta3 game with FOW. Firefox was steady in the 40-50% CPU.

So something to do with the processing of FOW logic. It must be being endlessly repeatedly called to determine the FOW and whether it needs to be updated.

My home machine is older (4 years) with an dual core 4600 Athlon CPU under WinXP 64 Pro, 4 Gigs of Ram. I have no problems playing games like Dragon Age on it still. So while it's older, it's not 100% obsolete.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

For your FOW game, have you explored a lot into the fog when it gets a bit slower, or is this directly from start, even if you move units only in your already unfogged areas?

[joasoze]

I get extreme slowdown in Chrome quite often. Always right after I have had a "box" open. Like the city screen or a battle. Then I have to exit the game and reopen to get performance back to normal. This is on a new Asus with a I7 Quadcore and GTX 460M Nvidia card.

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

It happens immediately at the start of my turn. As soon as the map loads it jumps to 30+% CPU usage and gets worse as the turn goes on.

JoeSoze,

Interesting observation. Most turns I get a hero offer due to gold in my games. Today I paid closer attention and in a game where I got no hero offer I noticed that the CPU usage was lower than the 50% I am used to. My movement also seemed a lot faster than normal (I often minimize the game to speed up movement and then unminimize 3-4 seconds later to see my unit appear at it's destination instead of the painful slow movement on the screen).

Then to test a box opening, I clicked on the chat window and battle windows and indeed it seemed like my game got even slower and my CPU use jumped to 50%. So I'd agree with you that something with a box opening triggers part of the slowdown.


I was originally going to blame all the water animation but it animates on open map games and those use 5% of my CPU so it's definitely NOT water animation related.

Just noticed one more thing that might be part of it. I noticed at home I am running 1900x1200 browser mode and the resolution reports as 'high'. On my work PC, I am running in at most 1280x1024 (a non-maximumed browser on my 1680x1080 screen) and the resolution reports as 'low'. So maybe it's resolution related? What is the difference between high and low and can I switch between them somehow?

KGB

[piranha]

The highres option is used if the Y resolution is high enough to fit the buttons under the map, otherwise low is used to place them along the side. There shouldn't be any other difference. You can just change between low and high in the url and reload the page and it will load the other version.

I did some testing now but I wan't able to get the slow down (wasn't my turn). I see that the CPU load increase when a popupbox is opened but for me it drops back when I close it. I'll play my next turns and keep looking at the CPU to see if I can find out what causes it.

[KGB]

Piranha,

Something else to report here that I've been playing with the last couple of days.

A couple of days ago when I last posted I had the browser in full screen mode (maximized). I get the 50% CPU usage. After looking at my post about the low/high res and how I run at work I tried changing the browser on my home machine to not be maximized. What I did is click the button next to the 'X' to go back to the last known size other than maximized. On my home machine that was just a few pixels smaller on the right hand side.

I was shocked when the CPU use immediately dropped into the 15-18% range. I then hit the maximize button. The CPU usage stayed at 15-18%.

Over the last couple of days I've been playing turns with maximized browser and I've closed and opened Firefox many times. But the problem appears to be gone. I basically stay in the 15-18% usage range.

This has made the game a lot more responsive. Not what I consider great but at least playable.

So I have NO idea why just minimizing by a couple of pixels then maximizing again would fix this issue. The only real difference I see is that when I minimize by a few pixels a top menu bar about an inch thick gets drawn over the main play screen (in my original screen shot you can see there is NO top menu bar). That disappears when I maximize. Could that have something to do with it? Maybe the game is drawing parts over top of parts repeatedly because windows thinks they are 'damaged' and need to be redrawn?

KGB