Degrading game responsiveness over time (factory queue in particular)

[CaptainKlutz]

I just finished watching a farms game on his stream where he got this bug- he tried to micro destroyers and they didn't move. https://www.twitch.tv/stellartactician/v/1981770436?sr=a&t=6788s I can't remember the exact time but it's before 1:58:00 pretty sure

[Amygdala]

@captainklutz 01:46:55 - It did look weird

[silentNoob]

@jip said in Degrading game responsiveness over time (factory queue in particular):

In the case of buttons (the unit icons in a build queue are buttons): the interaction triggers when the click is released, not when it is pressed down for the first time. Meaning: if you right click to remove an order and before you're done 'clicking' your mouse leaves the button then you effectively didn't remove the order simply because it didn't register as a click.

I can only imagine that as the game goes on you'll likely want to issue orders faster. And by doing so you may move too fast or click too slow. This is a common 'bug' that is not actually a bug; it's how all buttons work even those in Windows.

With regards to path finding - do you have specific moments when this occurs (replays + timestamps)?

Thank you for the reply, however this does not seem to be the issue. When I noticed a lack of response, I specifically tried to keep my mouse on the button. There is no response of the butten whatsoever. What usually helps is to de-select and re-select the factory. It also is not a fluke, as it happens nearly every game. Presumably it gets worse the more is going on in the game, i.e. the more units there are around.
Will try to record some ingame footage to show that behaviour.

[silentNoob]

Update: The behaviour is actually more bizarre than I expected. I just recorded a game vs AI. A short summary of the key findings:

1. Queue is somtimes unresponsive, even re-selecting factory won't help
2. The behaviour, as said before, is more severe after some time in the game
3. After trying to manipulate an unresponsive queue, somtimes the queue seems to be duplicated / copied multiple times
4. When being copied, not the whole queue is copied, just parts of it
5. Unresponsiveness of the queue appears to be related with units being produced. Somtimes, after a runit rolls off, I can remove or drag & drop items from the queue
6. Drag & drop often works once or twice and then stops working. If so, right-clicking also stops working

Video link with some commentary: https://youtu.be/Jmohdz4ACrU
..sorry for the crappy microphone!

By looking at the behaviour of the queue being duplicated: It appears as if this might be a result of all the failed attempts of right-clicking being somehow added to the queue?!

[Morax]

Yeah, got a game here where my 2 engineers expanding to build hydros just STOPPED for no apparent reason:

https://replay.faforever.com/21242419

Never seen this kind of thing before until recently.

I, too, have been suspicious but no evidence such as presented by the preceding posts. This is a bit alarming as this has not been quite this bad before...

[Jip]

@silentNoob that is something I can work with, I'll look into it

[silentNoob]

@jip said in Degrading game responsiveness over time (factory queue in particular):

@silentNoob that is something I can work with, I'll look into it

Thanks!
I noticed that the issue pops up not only in late game but maybe even from the beginning.

[Jip]

@silentnoob said in Degrading game responsiveness over time (factory queue in particular):

@jip said in Degrading game responsiveness over time (factory queue in particular):

@silentNoob that is something I can work with, I'll look into it

Thanks!
I noticed that the issue pops up not only in late game but maybe even from the beginning.

@silentNoob For my idea, what are the UI mods that you use and can you see if you can reproduce it without any UI mods enabled? And when you do experiment again, can you share the game logs?

I've tried clicking around like you do in your video and I did notice that draggable queues do not work with mobile factories. I also noticed that the responsiveness of the buttons can be a bit clunky at the moment that a unit leaves a factory and / or the queue is otherwise adjusted (by a support factory, for example). However I was unable to reproduce it not working entirely.

Made a bug report on Discord for the mobile factory aspect not working with draggable queues

edit: managed to reproduce the duplicated build queue: it is related to the draggable queue feature

edit: draggable queue appears to be quite buggy

[silentNoob]

@jip Alright, will try without any mods! The only one I have active is advanced target priorities.

[silentNoob]

Sorry @Jip, this took a while but I have an update on the isse (game log and video link attached). Note that this time I did not use any (Ui) mods whatsoever:

• The factory queue stops being responsive if there is a longer period of no factory queue updates, i.e. no units roll off or no unit is added to the queue

• This apparently is not tied to a specific factory but rather to any factory in the game

• The issue is easiest to reproduce if you stall mass, i.e. units roll off very slowly and factory queues are therefore not updated and no units are added to any factory by the player.

• Therefore, this issue should be reproduceable already in early game, which I managed to do after about 8 minutes in a separate game (not in video). Just build a bunch of factories, que in a bunch of different units, stall really hard and try to drag & drop or right click in any factory queue. If queue is not responsive, either add a new unit to a queue or wait for a unit to roll off the factory. This should allow drag & drop / right-clicking again.

• My best guess is that it has to do with how factory queues are handled / polled / updated within the game mechanics

Game Log:
game_21399981.log

Video link:
https://youtu.be/ht7IDmaB1KI

[Jip]

I'll see what I can find, thank you for the elaborate response @silentNoob

[silentNoob]

You are welcome, thanks for investigating!

[A Former User]

This post is deleted!

[Jip]

I've been able to find a reliable reproduction. Investigating the cause today

edit: I've confirmed it is something we did in FAF - I'm unable to reproduce it in the Steam version of the game.

edit: I've confirmed that with or without the drag build feature, the queue can become unresponsive for at least one click after a few seconds.

edit: found one case and managed to fix it. You can the explanation on Github #5761.

edit: the drag queue feature appears to be more stable now too. It appears that it won't work if you try to decrease a unit right after dragging the queue.

The fix is now live on the FAF Develop game type. It took about three hours to investigate and fix. With thanks to @silentNoob for his extensive description and video. @silentNoob could you see if you can still encounter the bug on FAF Develop?

[silentNoob]

I gave it a testrun on FAF Develop and everything seems fine! Thanks a lot for investigating, @Jip !

As far as I can tell so far:

• drag & drop is working
• modifying unit counts within a queue is working
• there is no more random adding of units to the end of the queue after drag & drop

This will be a huge gameplay improvement, at least for me, since I am using factory queue adjustments a lot.

[TestPlay]

I have found that my Tech 2 Land Factory HQ has stalled in my last game with you silentNoob (game #21454134). It happened around the 10th minute mark I think. I decided to just jump straight to Tech 3 when I seen that but then it should not have even stalled in the first place and it took some time for me to spot that it has happened. It could have been costly if I had not seen it and would there be a reason for it happening?

[silentNoob]

@testplay by stalled you mean that it did not produce evene if units were in the queue? I had that very occasionally and it is typically because there is a unit / engie stuck somewhere. Somtimes however (very rarely) it just will not produce any units regardless. Did you try to completely stop it and creat a new queue?

[TestPlay]

Yup I think that there was a unit near the Tech 2 Land Factory HQ but we cannot be overseeing those kinds of things in the actual game itself because you will not know when it will jam up. I did not stop it and to try a new queue because I found that I could tech up instead and bypass anymore stalling.

[Jip]

The fix of the problem described by silentNoob is now live