Spiral Knights - Any of you techsavy enough to help me (tl;dr PLS HALP)

Any of you techsavy enough to help me (tl;dr PLS HALP)

11 replies [Last post]

Mon, 04/22/2013 - 14:00

Feyi-Feyi

So, you chose to read this. Thank you!

Here goes: I've always had lag on SK and lately i'm actively trying to get rid of it.
Nothing has worked so far so i'm asking for help :)

Details: The lag comes in the form of: skipped parts (still see things happening but i'm not in control) and very frequent screen freezes.
Both retain the last command given before I lose control. Yes I do frequently run into walls/fire/spikes.
Whenever there appear a lot of enemies at once or a when a firetrap fires in PvE, always except for some 4v4 in Gardens in PvP.

Tech Specs: Macbook pro 2009 summer, running OSx 10.6.8.
2.26GHz Intel Core Duo
Swapped out the original RAM for 8gb 1067 MHz DDR3
Running Java6.

(My connection is alright, always have 4 bars, 3 on US. My brother plays on the same one and his SK runs fine.)

PLS HALP!

Feyi

Tue, 04/23/2013 - 15:56

Feyi-Feyi

ermm.

Please?

Thu, 04/25/2013 - 05:46

Wu-Wei

1] http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Performance_issues_FAQ#Lagging_Gameplay

2] Install the game instead of playing it in browser: http://download.threerings.net/spiral/client/spiral-install.dmg

There are various forums where people complain about the macbook pro and network latency, especially running with windows computers on the same network, with no real one-stop solution.

Thu, 04/25/2013 - 16:21

Feyi-Feyi

Hey

Thank you for answering Xutak :)

I've read pretty much everything I could find about lag, alas: nothing has worked for me.
I made this thread as a last resort because I couldn't make it better with what I know, calling out to people with more knowhow.

I play via Armorgames.com so I need to log in via browser, however the game shows up as a seperate java applet. (No browser is active when I play)

Feyi

Fri, 04/26/2013 - 00:21

Wu-Wei

Well..

I know it is frustrating Feyi :/

1] First, reduce your screen resolution in the game and run at lowest graphics options. I used to lag from fire traps and flame throwers but it was the graphics/processing and not my internet connection. Stutter happens on local pc and lag happens on internet connection. When you appear to have jerky movement of freeze times on fire traps it might be stutter.

2] Try a different browser. Some people complain about chrome and java lag. Try using Safari.

3] If it is internet realted, most people switch service providers as that is usually the main cause.

4] Try playing at a different time of day, avoid peak hours when everyone is on, if that makes a difference it is usually traffic overload on your ISP

5] Close alllll unnecessary programs.

6] Monitor your CPU usage and check it when you experience heavy lag

7] Monitor your macbook temperature and fan speed

8] It gets real techy after that. You could try some command-line stuff to determine what and how many connections are open on your pc to the internet.
http://superuser.com/questions/220449/examine-open-tcp-connections-on-mac
http://alvinalexander.com/apple/mac-os-x-network-internet-ports-lsof-net...
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/M...

9] You could do a traceroute to the spiralknights domain to determine where there is delays
http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3366/performing-a-traceroute-in-...

Netstat will give you information about what your pc is doing on the internet, and traceroute will tell you how long it takes to do this and what route it follows.

10] You could run a ping test to determine lag and jitter. It will basically tell you about your "local" from ISP to pingtest server. (My connection rates as D, which is bad for gaming (about 350ms ping and 30ms jitter ^^)
http://www.pingtest.net/

11] You could disable firewalls and antivirus(if you use any) to see if it makes a difference, but it is kinda risky and I doubt it is the cause.
http://www.wikihow.com/Turn-off-Mac-Firewall

I play from South Africa.. so yeh.. lag.. tell me about it. :/ Mostly it is my distance and ISP.

Fri, 04/26/2013 - 02:26

Wu-Wei

There is software available

There is software available to improve lag times. This one supports Spiral Knights, but currently this is for windows and no mac support. :/ http://www.wtfast.com/

Fri, 04/26/2013 - 17:54

Phyrosite

This might help, it helped me.

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/62691

Not guaranteed to help cause all computers are different. Scroll down to see the Mac section.

Sat, 04/27/2013 - 02:56

Wu-Wei

yurr

Yup, that will usually get rid of stutter.

Sun, 04/28/2013 - 05:08

Feyi-Feyi

Hey

@Xutak:

Thanks for such a detailed answer! Alas: as I said my internet connection is fine (A+) and it's really the mac part that's the problem here.
It does indeed get very hot when playing SK but it is a known issue with Macbook Pro models from 2009 so I don't know how much SK is to blame for.
It takes up one full core when playing which seems a lot to me..

@Phyro:

I already am running the java tweaks. Only the 64bit command line helps for me, seeing as OOO implemented a lot of the changes in that thread themselves.
The people who made the original thread that Thrillhaus' one is based one all went back to standard OOO settings too.

Feyi

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 07:06

Wu-Wei

hmm..

100% CPU core usage seems a bit much to me as well. Not sure what mine runs at, I will check tonight.

EDIT: Well, I am not saying anything new, I jut checked the original threads and this has been done :D Refer to my latest post to compare the logfiles on your machine to those of your brother, since on one it is working and the other not.

Yeah.. that .. -XX:+UseParallelGC is still really a stop-the-world garbage collector for java. When it does memory cleanup/maintenace, it stop the application until it is complete. You might need to try another parameter for concurrent garbage collection so the app does not freeze.

If you want to read about the different GC types and fucntioning -> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc-tuning-6-140523.html

Try implementing Young generation collection using CMS Collector, it is really for single cores but collection is concurrent and wont stop the application.
Also might need to disable errors on execessive GC time and out of memory errorswith command -XX:-UseGCOverheadLimit

Please refer to the last part of that webpage http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc-tuning-6-140523.html#icms for java tuning and enabling concurrent GC.

Recommended options can be found here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/gc-tuning-6-140523.html#ic...

Shorter version: http://sanjaal.com/java/tag/jvm-option-parameter-xxuseparallelgc/

Also I am not sure increasing the memory heap size will be beneficial, since increasing the heap size will make the time between garbage collections longer and the more garbage to collect at one time, causing long pauses and freezing of the app till the collection is complete. .. No wonder they reverted back to standard settings.

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 04:19

#10

Wu-Wei

On my pc (Windows 7) there is

On my pc (Windows 7) there is a launcher.log file in my spiral knights folder. It shows the settings that Spiral Knights starts up with. The last part is this..
You can check if there is such a file on your pc and see what yours start up with.

-Dcom.threerings.getdown=true
-Xmx256M
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
-XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=10
-Djava.library.path=C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Three Rings Design\Spiral Knights\./native
-Dorg.lwjgl.util.NoChecks=true
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false
-Dappdir=C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Three Rings Design\Spiral Knights\.
-Dresource_dir=C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Three Rings Design\Spiral Knights\./rsrc
-Xmx512M

I am unsure why there is 2 Xmx## settings ^^ i did not make any changes. But you will see if something is added. For example. Just now I made an extra.txt file in my Spiral Knights folder for tests. Entered "-Xmx1G" and then when I launch the game that part gets added at the bottom of that log file, so it tells me it read my extra.txt file. Ima remove this again because mine is working alright with standard settings.

Perhaps you can check this on your log file on your pc and your brother's pc to see if there are different settings.

Also there should be a projectx.log file that logs application errors and information.
Such as :
2013/04/28 21:55:14:578 WARNING J$a.b: Really long invoker unit [unit=News Reader (class com.threerings.projectx.client.bw), time=9027ms]
2013/04/28 22:34:45:402 INFO J$a.b: Connection failed
java.io.IOException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond
2013/04/28 22:49:10:448 WARNING J$a.b: Frame index went negative! [anim=Open, fidx=-2, accum=-0.03999996, elapsed=-0.17, frames=-2]

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 12:32

#11

Wu-Wei

Stats

On my pc:

Windows 7
Intel i3 (quad core) CPU @ 2.4GHz
3 GB ram

While running FSC, 1 core runs at about 50% usage and another core runs at about 65% average usage. Total CPU load 25%.

So yeh, it is quite CPU hungry.

I suppose it is better if you can get a new PC. Level 2 cache and level 3 cache also makes a difference. Most games and run-time environments such as Java improves as technology improves. The old hardware with new software is always a problem.

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Any of you techsavy enough to help me (tl;dr PLS HALP)