Version 0.4.5

[Kristo]

I recently downloaded windows binary 0.4.5 and installed it over version 0.4 (w/o uninstalling first). The game started ok, albeit very slowly. I tried running the tutorial, but got segfault when trying to recruit something. Unfortunately, the command line window closed before I could get a good look at it.

[gandalf]

Well, with 0.4.5 I'm not happy.
It is so unbelievable slow. Takes one (or two) eternities to start, just initialising truetype fonts . Then it goes on playing music one minute after I have selected campaing -> easy level.
Running Linux, Debian stable 3.0. g++ -v 2.95.4 and 24 bit color,
and running wesnoth -windowed.

The really annoying displaying of messages in the beginning is a lot faster than in 0.4 version though, so it's not all bad!

[gandalf]

Have I missed it, or is there a button to quit the game while playing a scenario? Otherwise, that would be nice to have in 0.4.6 version.

[Kristo]

Have I missed it, or is there a button to quit the game while playing a scenario? Otherwise, that would be nice to have in 0.4.6 version.

I've found that pounding on the escape key several times works pretty well.

Kristo

[Dave]

I recently downloaded windows binary 0.4.5 and installed it over version 0.4 (w/o uninstalling first). The game started ok, albeit very slowly. I tried running the tutorial, but got segfault when trying to recruit something. Unfortunately, the command line window closed before I could get a good look at it.

A corrected version is now up that works properly.

David

[Dave]

Well, with 0.4.5 I'm not happy.
It is so unbelievable slow. Takes one (or two) eternities to start, just initialising truetype fonts . Then it goes on playing music one minute after I have selected campaing -> easy level.
Running Linux, Debian stable 3.0. g++ -v 2.95.4 and 24 bit color,
and running wesnoth -windowed.

The really annoying displaying of messages in the beginning is a lot faster than in 0.4 version though, so it's not all bad!

How fast is your machine?

It goes rather fast on my machine...

David

[gandalf]

How fast is your machine?

1.3 GHz AMD Athlon, 512 MB RAM.

[miyo]

:cry:
Well, with 0.4.5 I'm not happy.
It is so unbelievable slow. Takes one (or two) eternities to start, just initialising truetype fonts . Then it goes on playing music one minute after I have selected campaing -> easy level.
Running Linux, Debian stable 3.0. g++ -v 2.95.4 and 24 bit color,
and running wesnoth -windowed.

The really annoying displaying of messages in the beginning is a lot faster than in 0.4 version though, so it's not all bad! :shock:

How fast is your machine?

It goes rather fast on my machine...

David,

Wesnoth is fast for me: running on Debian (Sid).

Could this have something to do with SDL library versions? eg. Debian (Woody, stable, 3.0) has libsdl-ttf 1.2.2 while Debian (Sid) has 2.0.6 (which I am using) Also noticed that Gandalf is using 24 bit color depth (I am using 16 bits).

IMHO [1], fullscreen runs faster than windowed.

- Miyo

[1] In My Humble Opinion

[Kristo]

A corrected version is now up that works properly.

David

Thanks - it's at least playable now. Here are some things I've noticed with this latest Windows binary:

1. The game takes a long time (~20 sec on a P2 400) trying to determine my locale before giving up and defaulting to "en."

2. It takes a similarly long amount of time to load the Tutorial. Furthermore, it appears that your button click routine blocks until it's finished loading the map (i.e., I can't move the mouse during this time).

3. The combat sounds don't always play. I'm not sure if this is because they haven't been implemented for all units yet or a glitch in SDL.

Kristo

[Kristo]

IMHO [1], fullscreen runs faster than windowed.

I concur, at least for the Windows version. If nothing else, the slow movement bug along the map edge is more apparent when in a window vs. fullscreen.

Kristo

[Dave]

Could this have something to do with SDL library versions? eg. Debian (Woody, stable, 3.0) has libsdl-ttf 1.2.2 while Debian (Sid) has 2.0.6 (which I am using) Also noticed that Gandalf is using 24 bit color depth (I am using 16 bits).

I don't think the specific speed problems Gandalf is reporting have anything to do with SDL.

He is saying it pauses when it starts up (before printing the 'initialized true type fonts' message), and then again when he selects the difficulty level.

I think that the 'true type fonts' message is a red herring. It does many other things at this time which it doesn't report, and I think the thing that is taking a long time is loading all the game data. The game now reloads all the game data when you select a difficulty level, so it can preprocess the game data with the difficulty level setting you have chosen.

I think it is taking a long time to load in all the cfg data, and that's why it's pausing for such a long time in each instance.

One possibility why it could be taking longer on his machine is if he is using a different version of the STL, especially one which doesn't have a good implementation of string streams.

This isn't to say that the rest of the game (e.g. SDL related parts) couldn't be sped up, but I do think that Gandalf's specific problem relates to loading the configuration files. I may try to use a vector instead of a stringstream and see if that speeds things up any, since vector is the most basic C++ container, and thus is most likely to be optimized on all compilers.

IMHO [1], fullscreen runs faster than windowed.

This is highly OS, video card, windowing system, etc etc dependant, but in general I think it's to be expected, and is true of most games. I don't think anything I could do could possibly have any influence over it.

16 bpp will always run faster than any other colour depth, since the game uses 16 bpp, and if your display runs anything else, then it'll have to be emulated.

David

[Dave]

1. The game takes a long time (~20 sec on a P2 400) trying to determine my locale before giving up and defaulting to "en."

I'm pretty sure that's not time to determine the locale...I think it's the same sort of problem as Gandalf is having.

2. It takes a similarly long amount of time to load the Tutorial. Furthermore, it appears that your button click routine blocks until it's finished loading the map (i.e., I can't move the mouse during this time).

There is a problem in Windows that you can't move the mouse around, giving the appearance of it having crashed, at certain times. I am still investigating this. This does not happen in Linux.

3. The combat sounds don't always play. I'm not sure if this is because they haven't been implemented for all units yet or a glitch in SDL.

Only a few units have sound and animation in their attacks at this time.

David

[miyo]

Well, with 0.4.5 I'm not happy.
It is so unbelievable slow. Takes one (or two) eternities to start, just initialising truetype fonts . Then it goes on playing music one minute after I have selected campaing -> easy level.

Could you send us strace output?

- Miyo

[miyo]

Well, with 0.4.5 I'm not happy.
It is so unbelievable slow. Takes one (or two) eternities to start, just initialising truetype fonts . Then it goes on playing music one minute after I have selected campaing -> easy level.

Dave,

we need benchmarking. Initializing fonts took n.n seconds, loading savegame took n.n seconds, initialising cfg-files took n.n seconds, etc.

- Miyo

[Dave]

@miyo: I will look at adding some benchmarking.

I have found a bug, that occurs sometimes when you try to load and save games. It appears to occur only if you have a game going, press escape to go to the main menu, and then load a new game. It segfaults, but only sometimes.

Has anyone else experienced this bug, or got any information on it?

David