Patch 6.02A makes game run slower?

[jazzrack]

if it is slower, it's not enough for me to notice

XP Pro
athlon XP 1700 (about 1.5ghz)
512 ram
boatload of crap running in the background

[Hotwheelz]

Im starting to realize how much slower it is for me. Im simming a season now, and its taken about twice as long as it did before the patch.

XP Pro
AMD 2500+ @ 2.0
512MB Kingston HyperX

Only Winamp and AIM are running...

[Henry]

Did some testing last night...

1.4 mhz 384mb W2K machine...

V6.01, full season, standard league, defaults, took 26 minutes
V6.02a, full season, standard league, defaults, took 84 minutes

Turned off 40 man roster, waivers, minor league options, Rule 5, and Minor league Fa, and the season took 35 minutes.

Conclusion is that something in the V6.02a options turned off above are causing the slowdown.

[Tekneek]

Originally posted by Skipaway
Glad to see people complaining about speed!

This gotta teach something to those who's asking for more features at the cost of game speed.

Heh. I would rather have the new features and can adjust to the slowdown. There have been almost three or four times the normal amount of transactions, which is consistent with it being that much slower than before. Perhaps that is all it is, and I prefer all the new transactions. It is really changing things up. There are borderline veterans that are moving around the league each season now.

[McSweeny]

man you guys are hilarious

first you complain long and loud about the AI and the waiver system, and then you all start bitching about the patch that addressed those issues slowing your games down! what do you want? sheesh!

i want a car that gets 800,000 miles to the gallon and NEVER needs an oil change! be a little realistic

[highandoutside]

It runs a bit slower for me, as well. But it certainly is worth it if the AI continues to improve. I will give up speed for "smarter" AI any day of the week.

[DerekT]

Um, question, how big is this a problem.

I mean I recall back in the Sierra Baseball days where it took an hour and a half to sim a day (because the game wanted to keep track of weekly stats).

I can understand if someone is saying "I simmed a day and it took 3 hours", but 10 seconds to 50 seconds for a day, what could you have cured cancer in that time or something.

For those who outright sim seasons I can sort of understand (having it go to 30 minutes to 1 and a half hours is a bit of adjustment), but to complain about seconds seems a bit much to me.

[bigsmooth]

I don't care what everyone else says, I have definately noticed that sims take MUCH longer under the new patch. I have never
complained about AI intelligence or anything - but I do want a game that doesn't take forever to sim a season. This issue has 4 pages and not one response from the company.

[Steve Kuffrey]

Originally posted by McSweeny
man you guys are hilarious

first you complain long and loud about the AI and the waiver system, and then you all start bitching about the patch that addressed those issues slowing your games down! what do you want? sheesh!

i want a car that gets 800,000 miles to the gallon and NEVER needs an oil change! be a little realistic

I have not done any long term simming yet so can't speak to the change here but I do feel that anytime you increase the depth that the AI goes to in evaluating players, roster moves, lineups, etc that has to take more time there is no way around it. Is it possible that some of these can be streamlined to increase sim speed? Maybe, but only Markus really knows.

I quoted the above post because it was something that crossed my mind as I was reading the posts myself.

Presently I'd suggest either:

-Make do with the slower sim speeds
-Toggle some of the "roster move" options
-Cut back on the number of programs or processes running in the background.
-Upgrade your OS, RAM or other PC components if possible.

I'm sure that the speed issue will be looked at, but there's no promises that there will be increases in speed since alot of work has gone into trying to get the roster and player AI to where it needs to be(not saying that it is there but progress is being made).

[octones]

Definately is slower for me.

p4 2.8 @ 3.2ghz
1 gb dual channel ram
win xp

But, the amount of transactions are much greater and players are moving around on waivers all the time. Maybe too much.

[Zweiblumen]

I don't want to annoy anyone, but you really can't have it both ways. The smarter the AI, the slower that AI will be. AI is all about search. Searching through many many many possibilities for the 'best' option. Humans can think, computers can search. Until there are major fundamental breakthroughs in AI (which I don't believe are coming any time soon) there will always be a tradeoff between machine 'intelligence' and how long it takes to simulate that intelligence.

I can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been for Markus to get the AI to use waivers even approximately correctly. We should all be impressed that this works at all.

Secondly, I'm surprised that anyone who sims more than a day at a time uses waivers. Since the waiver time is 3 days, what good are they to you if you are simming weeks or months at a go? I suppose it puts restrictions on your own activities, but you could just turn off waivers and exercise discipline in moving guys around who would have to clear waivers first.

[Henry]

RESPONSE:

The additions of roster and waiver rules will add time to the simulation - no way around that. The more complexity added to the game, the more time it will take. My machine (generally slow) showed a 3-1 time difference (84 minutes to 26) but a "power machine" might show a 5 minute to 15 minutes difference - well within reason.


I would, however, like Markus to check and see if the "a" update he issued yesterday might have a bug in it somewhere that might have made that added time more than it should be.

[darrylr]

Thanks for the reply Steve,

The intent of my post was more to point out to the development team the time changes I have seen. I suspected that maybe Markus would be suprised that it took so much longer now and that he may have some idea of some extra looping going on in the source code or something. I can understand that it will take more time for OOTP to process the extra AI and if the implementation and outcome is as Markus intended and expected than I will forgot about it and move on. If the AI is greatly improved then I think everything should be happy. If people don't like all those realistic transaction options then they can turn them off.

During my testing I had everything else turned off on my system including my virus scanner and all non-base windows processes.

[octones]

Well I'm just simming through history at the moment without controlling any team yet. My year sim time went from more or less 10 minutes to well over 30 minutes for a season.

But, if it is going to mix things up more and make transactions more realistic then I'm all for it.

[Henry]

Originally posted by Zweiblumen
Secondly, I'm surprised that anyone who sims more than a day at a time uses waivers. Since the waiver time is 3 days, what good are they to you if you are simming weeks or months at a go? I suppose it puts restrictions on your own activities, but you could just turn off waivers and exercise discipline in moving guys around who would have to clear waivers first.

This is where the "lighbulb" should go on !!

Excellent point.

[sguthrie]

Well, what I've done is set my waiver period to 7 days so I can sim a week and still use wiavers.

[adventureran]

Originally posted by Steve Kuffrey
Presently I'd suggest either:

-Make do with the slower sim speeds
-Toggle some of the "roster move" options
-Cut back on the number of programs or processes running in the background.
-Upgrade your OS, RAM or other PC components if possible.

I'm sure that the speed issue will be looked at, but there's no promises that there will be increases in speed since alot of work has gone into trying to get the roster and player AI to where it needs to be(not saying that it is there but progress is being made).

These are the answers we have come to love and expect. First buy the game. Then while patching, we will make it miserable for you.

I could certainly understand these kinds of things happening (or at least more so) in a new version release. But in a "patch" ... ? And since we've already been admonished for using the terms patch and update incorrectly, I believe this is just a patch.

And I'm sorry, but while Steve may give the "corporate answer", it appears he just does not know So I would much rather see him post something along the lines of ... "Markus is aware of your concerns and is looking into it." However, the "just live with it" response is always good for customer appeasement.

I was truly hoping that after the debaucle that was V.5.04a,b,c, etc. that lessons would have been learned and corrections would have been made to the system. Ah well ... lessoned learned by the customer.

[sguthrie]

Originally posted by adventureran
I could certainly understand these kinds of things happening (or at least more so) in a new version release. But in a "patch" ... ? And since we've already been admonished for using the terms patch and update incorrectly, I believe this is just a patch.

So you'd be okay if the AI and depth chart logic was correct from the beginning, and the game ran slower, but since they had to fix it after realeas it's different somehow? I don't see the difference.

[Henry]

adventuran,

I can't say I agree with you. Your assuming that this is a "bug" and there is nothing "yet" to suggest that. It makes much more sense that this is the result of adding all the roster rules to the game - and getting them to work right. If so, Steve is right in saying either live with the increased speed or turn off the options.

On the other hand, Markus is aware of the concern, and will certainly look into IF there is something he can do about it - that should be a given.

[adventureran]

No, I'd certainly not expect it to be correct when the game is released. That would be expecting far too much.

The difference is leagues have been formed, converted, etc. Now we have what appear to be some major "adjustments".

Originally posted by sguthrie
So you'd be okay if the AI and depth chart logic was correct from the beginning, and the game ran slower, but since they had to fix it after realeas it's different somehow? I don't see the difference.