Spiral Knights - Monster/effect loading causes lockups.

Monster/effect loading causes lockups.

5 replies [Last post]

Sun, 10/30/2011 - 10:21

Eketek

Whenever a new monster or effect appears for the first time in a level, the game almost always locks up for 2 to 5 seconds on my computer. This is triggered when, for the first time, monsters spawn, when items are used, when abilities are used, and even when a treasure box is opened for the first time.

This problem is made worse by the fact that whenever the lockup occurs, I am usually moving. This inevitably causes me to run straight into groups of monsters. It also occasionally causes me to die when surrounded, instead of escaping with shields and careful movement. I also get hit many times more than I should because of these lockups.

I don't get lockups for anything which was previously loaded (including things which caused a lockup). Almost none of these lockups should occur - all monsters and possible effects "should" be loaded and cached when the level is loaded (or earlier).

I think a lot of the lag complaints on this forum might be related.

Sun, 10/30/2011 - 18:52

Starlinvf

My first guess would be

My first guess would be insufficient RAM to handle the entire system. Java's garbage clean up is one thing, but that sounds a lot more like heavy page swapping.

Mon, 10/31/2011 - 19:20

Eketek

That was my first guess too,

That was my first guess too, so I raised the heap space to 512 megabytes (-Xmx512m inserted into the shortcut). It made no difference. I also have 4 gigabytes of RAM in my computer and plenty of it is left free while the game is running.

My computer is pretty weak with processing, but aside from previously unseen monsters and effects, it handles everything just fine.

Mon, 10/31/2011 - 23:05

Starlinvf

Increasing the Heap would

Increasing the Heap would make it worse. But what version of java are you running?

Wed, 11/02/2011 - 18:58

Eketek

Actually, heap space

Actually, heap space adjustment made no effect whatsoever (I have the memory). The problem seems to be objects which aren't currently in a cache being moved into a cache at the wrong time -- when I am vulnerable and I have to dodge monsters that are actively trying to kill me.

I am currently running version 1.6.021 of Java. I am trying to update it, but the updater is a bit unreliable.

Wed, 11/16/2011 - 23:04

Eketek

It has been fixed

The 2011-11-16 patch fixed it. I can now safely enter a room without having to aim for a corner or some other safe spot. Things appear for the first time without causing a major lockup. Your programmer(s) did a good job.

I guessed this is what got fixed when I saw "Systems with more memory should now see increased performance." in the patch notes.

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Monster/effect loading causes lockups.