performance test

[titi]

Some thoughts about a performance test for MG....
In internet multiplayer games we often see LAG problems. From what I learned yesterday, this is mainly caused by very slow computers which cannot catch up even if glest goes in ultra speed mode, skipping lots of frames. This made me think about performance tests ....

Maybe this can be done with a specific scenario which runs some kind of testgame recording the render speed ( fps ).
maybe just let a horde of lets say 100 swordman attack your mainbuilding and you have No units to fight with .......
The only thing we need for this is a lua command which starts and stops the fps/performance recording and maybe can request the result to display it.

By this we get some performance numbers  which we maybe can use later somehow. For the moment we can simply identify slow computers and problems ...

What do you think of this?

[Trappin]

I've got a slow computer (2.1g cpu /1g ram) AND slow internet 200kbps down/ 80kbps up (directional antenna not dish).

Sign me up for the slow computer test!

[tomreyn]

I like the idea. Ideally, this test could be invoked through a command line option, in a similar fashion to 'autotest', but with the extra LUA script and FPS + game time logging to a certain log file (either performance log, debug.log or a new log file), and automatic exit after 5 minutes or so. This way, it could be (shell, not in-game) scripted.

[titi]

I will setup a scenario that does something like this ( really easy to do )
And then we can see which problems we face and how we get the measurement itself in there.

[titi]

here is a benchmark scenario ( not benchmarking yet of course ):
 
http://www.titusgames.de/benchmark.7z
Just let it play .....

[Omega]

But that won't solve fast-computer, slow-internet problems, which may possibly make up a good amount of the internet lag too.

[titi]

No of course not, but it helps us to see problems with computers which simply cannot handle some more units due to bad/slow hardware.

Maybe they have to be blocked from multiplayer lol   

[wciow]

Well I let the scenario run, no noticeable slowdown. If your computer can't run this small benchmark you need to upgrade. this benchmark only represents 1/10th of what can be happening during the middle of a big 4v4 game!

[Trappin]

My computer ran the scenario with no problems

titi, modify the scenario, allow the first set of triggers to complete THEN add a gridlock script where  5-10 additional units become stuck while attempting to complete an scenario objective THEN run the original scenario script again while the gridlocked units continue to fail at pathing to the scenario objective.

This is whats been happening in some AI/multiplayer games - AI units get stuck and no one notices it until there are so many units on the map that it causes the weakest computer to grind to a halt and drop out of the game?