Forum Discussion

bananabread1234's avatar
9 years ago

Anything concerning sims seem to be delayed on lots with large amount of sims on Speed 3.

I've noticed that on heavily populated community lots and on speed 3, anything related to sims seems to stop working every few sim minutes or so. One minute, everyone's happily talking to each other, but then everything stops. However, I can move the camera around. Sims bob their heads, but they aren't doing any interaction animations. Then their interactions and animations resume, like nothing ever happened.

Other things I've noticed is that the time jumps back into the past, and Speed 3 isn't as fast as before. This is probably because the game is switching on the LOW_PERFORMANCE clock type, which happens if the game clock and the actual time processed for sims, starts to desync. Another thing I've noticed is that if sims gain moodlets just before the delay happens, their emotion won't update until the delay is over. Thought bubbles seem to stop working during this "delay", and only start working again when the sims start to move again.

For specifics, on my computer which is relatively fine, the time jumps back into the past, along with the LOW_PERFORMANCE clock type starting at about 18 seconds on speed 3. at the library venue, around noon.


Here's the game's rating on my specs to give you a quick overview:

Spoiler
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 4 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 3193 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 4590 RAM: 8130 Adjusted RAM: 7618 Cores: 4



What causes this desync? I think it may be the game getting overloaded with autonomy and routing, but I'm not a Sim Guru, so I don't know.

This bug has been reported by a lot of people, see the following:
1
2
3
  • Okay, I investigated a bit more, and it seems that the amount of objects may be the cause of the problem, my sim went to the gym where the game lagged as usual, then, when I removed the building with its contents, the sims started chatting with each other without any delays. Perhaps an object is bogging the simulation down?
  • "simmythesim;14787304" wrote:
    Okay, I investigated a bit more, and it seems that the amount of objects may be the cause of the problem, my sim went to the gym where the game lagged as usual, then, when I removed the building with its contents, the sims started chatting with each other without any delays. Perhaps an object is bogging the simulation down?


    Is this the gym that came with the world, or was it edited? Autonomy optimization is an ongoing effort of ours, so I'll let our QA team about this. Thanks!
  • "SimGuruEugi;14809604" wrote:
    "simmythesim;14787304" wrote:
    Okay, I investigated a bit more, and it seems that the amount of objects may be the cause of the problem, my sim went to the gym where the game lagged as usual, then, when I removed the building with its contents, the sims started chatting with each other without any delays. Perhaps an object is bogging the simulation down?


    Is this the gym that came with the world, or was it edited? Autonomy optimization is an ongoing effort of ours, so I'll let our QA team about this. Thanks!


    Nope, it came with the base game.
  • @SimGuruModSquad, going back to this, I removed the time limit on how much time the game can spend on the "simulate" function, and added a timer on it. The results were worrying, even on Speed 1, the "simulate" function executed around 100 ms most of the time on the library lot in Willow Creek around noon, and varying wildly from 200 ms to 2000 ms.

    Here's a small log of the execution time of the simulate function at the Willow Creek library on Monday, around noon, on Speed 3.


    Function took 342.39721298217773 ms
    Function took 2067.561149597168 ms
    Function took 420.31288146972656 ms
    Function took 697.6380348205566 ms
    Function took 380.08594512939453 ms
    Function took 335.02912521362305 ms
    Function took 346.2541103363037 ms
    Function took 247.98202514648438 ms
    Function took 232.00416564941406 ms
    Function took 449.1159915924072 ms
    Function took 179.48317527770996 ms
    Function took 749.9978542327881 ms
    Function took 757.5180530548096 ms
    Function took 201.5058994293213 ms
    Function took 270.4651355743408 ms
    Function took 218.54281425476074 ms
    Function took 339.475154876709 ms
    Function took 183.9010715484619 ms
    Function took 285.5231761932373 ms
  • I managed to replace the game's simulate function and time each simulated element's execution time. Something is very wrong here, as most of the time, one processed thing in the simulate function could take up to 100 ms! Here's another little log just in case it helps you diagnose the problem.


    Only things that took longer than 5 ms to process are shown on the log. The number on the left side is the time it took to execute the processed element in milliseconds.

    Whenever the timeline has finished "Done with sim timeline for now" is printed.

    156.94403648376465
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 158.44392776489258 ms
    39.52813148498535
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 80.05785942077637 ms
    11.007070541381836 .@6026; 15.00 minutes>
    101.86004638671875 None
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 119.37308311462402 ms
    8.507013320922852
    100.50296783447266
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 126.4350414276123 ms
    13.012886047363281
    100.57902336120605
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 116.59383773803711 ms
    100.10290145874023
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 102.10514068603516 ms
    100.18301010131836
    Done with sim timeline for now
    Function took 103.546142578125 ms
    219.33889389038086


    Here's how it looks like when the game is running normally. I've removed the 5ms limit to show everything that was processed


    0.0
    0.49996376037597656
    0.49996376037597656
    0.5009174346923828
    Done with sim timeline for now


    Unless I'm misunderstanding this, the code should only be scheduling things right?
  • Hey @simmythesim, thanks for the info. There were a number of optimizations in the dine out patch, did you notice any improvements after that release?

    In any case, we know there is performance work to be done on library lots, it's in the list of things to looks at - will try to get to it sooner rather than later.

    -SGMS
  • "SimGuruModSquad;14978737" wrote:
    Hey @simmythesim, thanks for the info. There were a number of optimizations in the dine out patch, did you notice any improvements after that release?

    In any case, we know there is performance work to be done on library lots, it's in the list of things to looks at - will try to get to it sooner rather than later.

    -SGMS


    Thanks for responding SGMS! Hope you can fix it soon!

    EDIT: And no, there were no improvements in the Dine Out patch for libraries, although on other venues, sims are more responsive.