Expensive Vanilla Scripts

[Litcube]

Yup. Another problem is that there's too many of them. Some set the attack target, some don't. This is problematic for script trying to get the attack target of their leaders.

Another issue is set destination. Every script should set destination if it's moving to something, but only half do.

I'm almost done the follow rewrite. I've incorporated some of Jack's and Gazz's ideas.

I'm just happy that Gazz is going to release a new set of vanilla turret scripts that are fully optimized. I'm glad he's going to do that for everyone.

Edit: Signing is as good as dead, bobxii.

[bobxii]

Edit: Signing is as good as dead, bobxii.

Gotcha

Well, here's to much improved performance!

[LV]

Any chance that such improvements would be signed?

1. Who's says it would be an improvement, every scripter here who gets their hands dirty in base scripts has more failures than victories with what they have written

The community simply doesn't see them as they never get released

2 I couldn't give a monkey's chuff about signing, never seen the appeal of sweating for hours and hours to get a script "signable" for a group who sneer at anyone who isn't the vanilla purist they are.

The users with common sense play the vanilla first (as everyone should) they come here and upgrade their game. Therefore signing unneeded in my book (and why i'm not part of the process, not that i'm saying it's a bad thing, just not my thang

Bottom line is i don't even know if that process exists anymore for TC without fresh volunteers coming forward, i bet everyone in the ego clouds is 100% rebirth now

The old signing process never died because of dinosaurs like myself, it died because nobody community side could be arsed testing the stuff that got submitted.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche

[Gazz]

(I so wish scripting was multi thread able :S

While that would be nice, how many scripters could work with true multi-threading? It's a rather schizophrenic thing to do.

Scripts can already run on multiple tasks. That's multitasking rather than multithreading but it's what we have to work with.
This can be useful to declutter a script and put the strategic and tactical decisions on completely separate timers.
I did that with the MARS Goblins where the "fight script" runs on a rather short timer by necessity but things like checking for incoming missiles or an RTB orders run on a "command task", which can restart task 0 with another lean script to do something else.

It's also easier to control than one humongous script that does everything.

And no, the goblin script is not a good fight script to use for fighters.
It's what you get when you take a vanilla fight script and hack out everything that isn't absolutely necessary for the most basic maneuvers.

Writing a better fight script would require a completely different design doc.
Even a wing AI would be possible, where a wing has a collective mind making the decisions and it's fighters act upon it. If a fighter is threatened by a missile, a different fighter in the wing might just be in a position to shoot it down...

When you're doing a rewrite, might as well go all the way. Making an individual fighter smarter won't ever save a huge amount of CPU time.

[bobxii]

2 I couldn't give a monkey's chuff about signing, never seen the appeal of sweating for hours and hours to get a script "signable" for a group who sneer at anyone who isn't the vanilla purist they are.

I guess I meant so that there aren't 30 different ways of doing this running around because a mod creator can't assume someone will be using these rewrites and does them himself.

It's also easier to control than one humongous script that does everything.

Even a wing AI would be possible, where a wing has a collective mind making the decisions and it's fighters act upon it. If a fighter is threatened by a missile, a different fighter in the wing might just be in a position to shoot it down...

When you're doing a rewrite, might as well go all the way. Making an individual fighter smarter won't ever save a huge amount of CPU time.

Yes

[Gazz]

I guess I meant so that there aren't 30 different ways of doing this running around because a mod creator can't assume someone will be using these rewrites and does them himself.

If you want to build upon a certain functionality in your script/mod and someone has already written it... you could ask?

[Litcube]

I'm in the testing phase. Using the OP benchmark, I get an increase of 120 FPS.

It's running 4,224 follows in the Universe.


I went with an interupt system. The follow command has either a = wait 999999 ms for a docked ship, or an escort for 9999999 ms. So idle followers aren't actually running any script commands, no checks.

The Lead Monitor task is run on the lead ship which monitors for enemies. If it finds them, it runs a Cmd.Wing.Action on all followers giving the script the parameters of attacknearest, attacksame, protect. The one script handles all of it, it's simple and less than 50 lines.

This Cmd.Wing.Action is run as an interupt. The cool thing about this is that I don't have to run any re-dock or re-escort after everything is finished, as interupts cancel any current waits in the interrupted script, so the main follow loop simply continues on until it gets to the 999999 wait again.


Overall, massive performance gains, same functionality.

[joelR]

Wow litcube. Cant tell you how much im looking forward to this. Include me if you need a tester.

[Gazz]

The Lead Monitor task is run on the lead ship which monitors for enemies. If it finds them, it runs a Cmd.Wing.Action on all followers giving the script the parameters of attacknearest, attacksame, protect. The one script handles all of it, it's simple and less than 50 lines.

You mean on a lead ship that takes part in the fight?

For continuity, I'd have gone with some neutral race satellite in sector Null.
There are billions of free tasks on that ship so it can have one for every wing.
The wingleader dieing would have no consequence whatsoever.

Even if the lead ship is the carrier, it can die. The wing still needs to carry on.

This Cmd.Wing.Action is run as an interupt. The cool thing about this is that I don't have to run any re-dock or re-escort after everything is finished, as interupts cancel any current waits in the interrupted script, so the main follow loop simply continues on until it gets to the 999999 wait again.

You can do some really neat tricks with interrupts, including interrupting them just to give their loop a kick in the rear. =)
I've used it before to queue up attack targets for ships so a wing would methodically go through an enemy wing without getting broken up into 5 1v1 duels.

[Litcube]

For continuity, I'd have gone with some neutral race satellite in sector Null.
There are billions of free tasks on that ship so it can have one for every wing.
The wingleader dieing would have no consequence whatsoever.

Attaching a killed signal would be a lot smoother, wouldn't it?

[Litcube]

Wow litcube. Cant tell you how much im looking forward to this. Include me if you need a tester.

You'll probably need to start a new game to see the effects. Take a bench mark for me, Joel, see if it makes a difference in your game. Also, if there weren't many follows in your jobs file to begin with, you won't notice much difference.


Total beta disclaimer, etc.

[ external image ]

When you're done dumping these in /scripts, rename the !move.follow.template.pck to something else as a back up. If you don't the engine will still use the original.

[TrixX]

Nice mate, been wanting to trial this, thanks for releasing

[joelR]

Wow litcube. Cant tell you how much im looking forward to this. Include me if you need a tester.

You'll probably need to start a new game to see the effects. Take a bench mark for me, Joel, see if it makes a difference in your game. Also, if there weren't many follows in your jobs file to begin with, you won't notice much difference.


Total beta disclaimer, etc.

[ external image ]

When you're done dumping these in /scripts, rename the !move.follow.template.pck to something else as a back up. If you don't the engine will still use the original.

Ok great. Looking forward to testing it. I wont be able to start testing till Tuesday. I wont be home much tomorrow.

-Joel

PS Anything in particular I could to to try and break this?

[Litcube]

Nice mate, been wanting to trial this, thanks for releasing

I figured I may as well.

PS Anything in particular I could to to try and break this?

Good question. In terms of breaking, not really. If it breaks, you'll get a lock-up. In my game, SETA 10x for about 5 hours real time, no lockups + normal goofing off for another 2. You'd think everything that can happen in a job Universe would have by now, but you never know.

In terms of playability, keep close attention to how the wings react. They will react a little different now. For example, attack nearest actually works. Attack same might not, as the vanilla fight.object is broken (it sets the attack object to null right before jumping into a fight, easy fix). So attack same is going to essentially work like protect.

Play normally. Make a benchmark before you install this. IE. Start a new game and get a bench. Then install this, start a new game with the same start, get a bench. Then you can play away.

The reason I'm keeping this relatively hidden (no new thread, or fancy release title), is it's such a fundamental script to the engine. Roughly half the Universe runs this script, and all the time, and it's called by about 7 or 8 of them randomly, for the craziest things. I need to be confident it'll be all right before declaring this public worthy.

[joelR]

Ok I had a little time this morning to run some tests. Here is whats happened so far. I really need more time to let the universe do its thing but here is what I discovered:

All tests were done in a modified game.

First a game without your test scripts using FRAPS:

Location US east of Zyarths dominion 95-100 FPS
Roughly 9500 running script tasks

This is an empty sector as you know. I jumped to several populated sectors and FPS was roughly 30-50 fps depending on what I was looking at.

Then I turned on the following:

IR 15.24 - Everything set to insane + Hotwar + Carrier and Fighter response
And ran rapid improvement....
Luickes Brennans Triumph Tortuga
Pirate Guild set to Insane
Phanon Corporation (Damn you Tanditech!)

Script tasks jumped to 12000 and FPS only dropped about 10. The game was a bit less responsive with the occasional "burp".

I ran seta at 10 for only 2 minutes though. !job.wing.protect was at 3300 tasks. Really needed more time to get things going in the universe but that was what I had time for.

Ok...then I removed the vanilla script you mentioned and dropped yours into the script folder and started a new game. Game froze after about 3 minutes or so....I saw about 2200 tasks in that monitor script you had before it locked up.

Tested the same scripts in the maxxed out game and the same happened after about 3 minutes. So I wasnt able to really test any FPS improvements.

Thats all for now. Let me know if you need me to try something else.

-Joel

[Litcube]

I'm installing a vanilla game right now to see if I can reproduce.

[Litcube]

Vanilla Rewrite 0.20b:
[ external image ]


Ok, I installed a fresh vanilla game with only this package. After 40 mins in SETA 10x, I could not get a crash.


So, I've added logging to every command. In your X3TC output folder, you'll find a log1212.txt that's going to be very important.

Can you run the test again? When it crashes, post the last 20 or so entries of the log here?

Thanks, Joel. You're a big help.

[Jack08]

running insane mode and also performing a ....

IR probably froze your game ... LOL

[joelR]

Ok ill try that out when I get home from work. Would it be better to try it out on an unmodified game?

@jack08

Lol. Thats a good point.

[Litcube]

Ok ill try that out when I get home from work. Would it be better to try it out on an unmodified game?

In the end it has to be seamless to any other mod. Still, it'd be helpful to know it's working on your unmodified game. It'll rule out any install issues.