Post by Pete on Mar 12, 2012 16:48:06 GMT -5
Don't you hate it when the game just slows down in the middle of a match, and crawls along with pauses every second? What causes this, how can we battle the scourge that is the slowdown?
Well I guess it's all down to bandwidth right? Your connections suffers some sort of issue and it's all over... Or is it?
Well I nave been firing up some tests and it's time to reveal the findings.
It all started when I noticed that I tend to get slowdowns in the middle of matches, when lots is happening on the board. I originally put it down to all those actions needing more data to send out to the server, thus the match ran slower, but I then wondered why this would be the case. It made sense if you thought like a human, but not like a computer, I mean how much extra overhead is 1 action going to cause? 1Kbps of data?
Well I logged on to "ye old router" and setup the bandwidth monitoring while no other machines were online. The game uses about 65Kbps outbound and 60Kbps inbound (it send out more) at day one. Scrutinising the router while playing a few matches, during slowdowns etc and when it was fast, found that it made no difference in the number of cards on the table as to the bandwidth. 10 cards doing stuff? Still around 65Kbps. No cards? 65Kbps. It fluctuates by about a mean of 15Kbps, but you get the idea.
So this got me thinking, just what is causing the slowdowns? Well sometimes I hear the old "ding" of an email and get a lag for a few seconds. Hmmm, odd. Maybe they could be caused by lack of processing power and memory by the idevice? Well this was a Eureka moment. Turning off my iPad and back on, then playing matches I experienced somewhat less delays, than when I had opened a series of apps on purpose to try slow it down. Turning off mail checking etc, seemed to help...
So what about the delays I was still getting? Well good question, but I'm guessing that the opponent also could have memory/processing issues, or an older model like an iPad 1. This could effect the gameplay when many cards are doing things.
So in conclusion, bandwidth and a clear connection is important, but so is freeing up memory and CPU cycles on your idevice. Go ahead try it, turn off and on again and retest your experience.
Technical errata:
100Kbps is approximately the same amount of data as a 384K ADSL connection can push up the line, after overhead, so 65Kbps is nearing that limit. Spikes that occur naturally can cause delays on that type of connection.
During tests, Ram usage on the IPAD 2 was reduced to 50meg before opening AC and CPU cycles at around 20%. After opening ACR I could not see what effect was on the RAM or CPU (it can't multitask) but more slowdowns occurred than when it was a fresh boot.
If more people find these results to be true I might setup a new test where I ssh to my IPad while playing and run top from the command line to monitor CPU and RAM realtime, but I'm too tired to do that now.
Goodnight
Pete
Well I guess it's all down to bandwidth right? Your connections suffers some sort of issue and it's all over... Or is it?
Well I nave been firing up some tests and it's time to reveal the findings.
It all started when I noticed that I tend to get slowdowns in the middle of matches, when lots is happening on the board. I originally put it down to all those actions needing more data to send out to the server, thus the match ran slower, but I then wondered why this would be the case. It made sense if you thought like a human, but not like a computer, I mean how much extra overhead is 1 action going to cause? 1Kbps of data?
Well I logged on to "ye old router" and setup the bandwidth monitoring while no other machines were online. The game uses about 65Kbps outbound and 60Kbps inbound (it send out more) at day one. Scrutinising the router while playing a few matches, during slowdowns etc and when it was fast, found that it made no difference in the number of cards on the table as to the bandwidth. 10 cards doing stuff? Still around 65Kbps. No cards? 65Kbps. It fluctuates by about a mean of 15Kbps, but you get the idea.
So this got me thinking, just what is causing the slowdowns? Well sometimes I hear the old "ding" of an email and get a lag for a few seconds. Hmmm, odd. Maybe they could be caused by lack of processing power and memory by the idevice? Well this was a Eureka moment. Turning off my iPad and back on, then playing matches I experienced somewhat less delays, than when I had opened a series of apps on purpose to try slow it down. Turning off mail checking etc, seemed to help...
So what about the delays I was still getting? Well good question, but I'm guessing that the opponent also could have memory/processing issues, or an older model like an iPad 1. This could effect the gameplay when many cards are doing things.
So in conclusion, bandwidth and a clear connection is important, but so is freeing up memory and CPU cycles on your idevice. Go ahead try it, turn off and on again and retest your experience.
Technical errata:
100Kbps is approximately the same amount of data as a 384K ADSL connection can push up the line, after overhead, so 65Kbps is nearing that limit. Spikes that occur naturally can cause delays on that type of connection.
During tests, Ram usage on the IPAD 2 was reduced to 50meg before opening AC and CPU cycles at around 20%. After opening ACR I could not see what effect was on the RAM or CPU (it can't multitask) but more slowdowns occurred than when it was a fresh boot.
If more people find these results to be true I might setup a new test where I ssh to my IPad while playing and run top from the command line to monitor CPU and RAM realtime, but I'm too tired to do that now.
Goodnight
Pete
