Odd delay in Saving/Loading

[Veneke]

Fired up Rimworld today for the first time in a little while and I've noticed something very strange.

When hitting the Load Colony button (from the main menu), or the Save Colony button (once in a game) Rimworld hangs. The application continues running normally, and it will eventually complete the operation, but it's taking 30 seconds to a minute to bring up the appropriate screen.

I've never encountered this behaviour before, and it seems only to affect the 914 build of the game (previous versions, including 911, operate as expected).

Any ideas what might be happening here?

[milon]

Weird, no I haven't heard if that one before. What OS are you running? My Win7 is behaving as expected.

[Veneke]

Windows 10

What's even more strange is that if I load up the Options menu first and then hit Load Colony (all from the main menu) there's no delay and it performs as normal.

It's not a major issue as the game doesn't crash (not unless I attempt to click during those 30-60 seconds anyway) or corrupt save files or anything like that, but it's really odd.

[milon]

Any chance this is new behavior since upgrading to Win10? I've heard it can be a little wonky for gaming...

[Veneke]

I thought of that, but it can't be; previous versions, including 911, work normally.

Hmm. Just tried 911 again there, and it had the same delay. Maybe it is Win 10. 

[milon]

Do you have any other fullscreen games you can test with? If you're ambitious, can you test with another OS (ie LiveCD for Linux it something)?

[Veneke]

I've had no problem with any other game (GalCiv III, Civ 5, EU IV, CK2, Gnomoria, Prison Architect, Rebel Galaxy - and a bunch more), full-screen or windowed. Is there any in particular which might indicate if it is an OS problem? Maybe I just haven't tried the right one yet.

Testing with another OS isn't something I'd be terribly comfortable doing, sorry.

[milon]

Testing with another OS isn't something I'd be terribly comfortable doing, sorry.

No worries.  I wouldn't want to either.

I've had no problem with any other game (GalCiv III, Civ 5, EU IV, CK2, Gnomoria, Prison Architect, Rebel Galaxy - and a bunch more), full-screen or windowed. Is there any in particular which might indicate if it is an OS problem? Maybe I just haven't tried the right one yet.

Huh. I've no idea what other games to test.  I play very few games, actually.  RimWorld is pretty much single-core, CPU-intensive, and GPU-lite.

So I googled win10 game slowdown, and it's a thing a lot of people are complaining of.  The first link goes to a reddit post where someone says that Win10 uses a lot of CPU on its own.  That could be related.  So check your drivers, and make sure they're all Win10 and up-to-date. 

What apps/services are you running in the background?  You don't necessarily need to list them here.  Just ask yourself if they need to be running.  Google is your friend.  Try to lighten the work the OS has to do and optimize it for performance.

[Veneke]

I looked into the slowdown thing (it was one of the reasons why I delayed upgrading to Win 10), and if it was affecting other games or applications I'd be more inclined to blame the OS. However, it only affects Rimworld, and only in this one specific function.

The processor I've got at the moment is a relatively new (ie <12 months) i7-5820k @3.3 ghz. It uses 1-3% when it's running normal background processes. I can't imagine that Rimworld needs anything like what's spare from that to open up the save/load menu.

Now that you've mentioned the hardware though it got me thinking. I run Rimworld from my HDD. So I swapped it around to my SSD. Same problem there too.



I did, however, manage to fix the problem! I had a load of savegames in the folder (approx 200 10-15mb saves from the last 3-4 versions: I have a hard time letting go ). Deleting them and the save/load menu now works as rapidly as I remember it. Appreciate the assistance!

Looks like I spoke too soon. The delay has been seriously reduced (down now to 5ish seconds) but the delay is still there.

[milon]

About the i7: that's a 6-core processor clocked to 3.3GHz total.  That's great for a multi-threaded environment, but RimWorld is (mostly) not multi-threaded, so it will only use 1 core for most of its operations.  I'm not an expert on the topic, but I believe my older Pentium E5400 Dual-Core 2.7GHz processor will outperform yours when it comes to RimWorld (let's avoid the major multi-core vs single-core debates) because 2.7/2 > 3.3/6.

Anyway, I'm glad it's working better now.  Was it moving to the SSD that sped it up, or removing old saves, or both?  If you still think it's a RimWorld bug, then I suggest you post in the Bugs subforum where someone more knowledgeable than I can help you.

[Veneke]

That's now how multi-core processors work: each core runs at its full speed (ie 3.3ghz in my case). The debate originally was whether a single core processor at a higher clock rate would be superior to a dual core processor at a lower clock rate for the purposes of an application which wasn't designed for multiple cores. However, that isn't the problem here as the processor in question has a high clock rate and the issue that's arisen isn't to do with the application as a whole (which would be the case if the clock rate was a problem) but in a single function of the application.

At any rate it was deleting the savegames which improved the load speed. So, as far as I'm concerned the problem is effectively fixed.

[milon]

That's now how multi-core processors work: each core runs at its full speed (ie 3.3ghz in my case)...

Huh, my bad then.  I promise I googled a lot and did my homework before posting, but there's a lot of confused garbage even now on that topic.  o_O

Anyway, I'm glad it's fixed for you!