Game slows down after time!

[Jharsh]

I have been playing one town now for a week and it's up to 146 citizens. It also is running VERY slow, as in it's a slideshow. I just don't understand the cause of this as memory useage has been staying under 900mb and cpu useage is well under 25%. So this game is not cuasing any more stress to my system than notepad does yet it bogs down rather quickly. This is a major problem I feel that the devs need to address in a future patch. It kinda removes what little fun there is when you can no longer build because the game is running so slowly.

[KaosReigns]

There is a few causes for this. Mind posting your system specs? That is usually the reason for laggy performance. (Minecraft has a tendancy to "slow" down or lag also)

There are a few tweaks you can do, if your CPU will allow it.

In C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\towns there is a file called

towns.cmd

This is a command script. Inside of this script is basically the amount of ram Towns is allowed to use at the min and max levels. If you adjust these numbers to reflect the ram you actually have and want used, it can help.

java -Djava.library.path=lib/native/ -Djna.library.path=lib/native/ -Xms1024M -Xmx1024M -Xss2048k -jar lib/xaos.jar

http://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/java/java-xmx-xms-memory-heap-size-control
Here is a link to some information about the heap sizes and what they can effect.

This is what I did for minecraft because of the known memory leak issue when hosting a server.

[Jharsh]

My system specs really don't matter given it's not stressing the system at all. But because I know the fans would hammer me for not posting. Core i5 750 2.66ghz (true quad core, none of that hyperthreading bs), with 4gb ddr3 ram. Radeon HD5770 1gb and windows 7 home pre 64-bit.

I changed the file and no change in the game. It's likely either bad coding or the fact it's using java (most likely).

[Haenzee]

have you tryed changeing the game speed?

[lucmalheiro]

+1. I have 120 citizens and had to stop playing. It become too slow. To me it take 50% of CPU. I think the game uses only one core. I have a duo core, you have a quad, so you get 25%.

[Jharsh]

Originally posted by lucmalheiro:

+1. I have 120 citizens and had to stop playing. It become too slow. To me it take 50% of CPU. I think the game uses only one core. I have a duo core, you have a quad, so you get 25%.

But the most one core is ever stressed is to about 30%, the rest about 10. That one core is the core that always sees the most use in just about everything. I too thought it might just be using just one core, but that's just not the case.

I guess till they fix this mess of a game I'll shelve it and wait. It's too good of a game to write off altogether, but is simply unplayable at this time unless you keep your population small, which I never do in any game.

I'd post a screenshot of my resource monitor, but one can't do that here.

[Cyborgt]

Yeah, I get the same problem and i'm only at ~80 townies. My computer is a little older so it gets a bit more stressed by the game but it's still at least 30% short of capping out at all times. I guess we'll just have to see what happens with the game.

[Jharsh]

I have been testing what actually lags the game, and I think I am close to finding that out (after playing 9 hours last night). I started a new map with 200 citizens and there was no lag, so I started to build a town. I now have a town with 9 buildings and am down to just over 140 citizens (most of the casualties were victims of the broken priority system working them to death and not letting them eat). I just installed 14 personal rooms and will expand that to 400 before adding more. The last thing I need to add will be roads, so I feel they are the source of lag. For now I am just placing white stone in place of roads, so it still looks nice.

[76561198069409126]

Maybe you should save, and build only roads to see if that is the problem.

[Cyborgt]

Originally posted by Jharsh:

I have been testing what actually lags the game, and I think I am close to finding that out (after playing 9 hours last night). I started a new map with 200 citizens and there was no lag, so I started to build a town. I now have a town with 9 buildings and am down to just over 140 citizens (most of the casualties were victims of the broken priority system working them to death and not letting them eat). I just installed 14 personal rooms and will expand that to 400 before adding more. The last thing I need to add will be roads, so I feel they are the source of lag. For now I am just placing white stone in place of roads, so it still looks nice.

Wow, if roads are the problem then that's a pretty significant problem. Roads are one of the only things you can use to help prevent starvation as you go deeper into the dungeon. They have a very significant effect on how quickly your townies can do anything. I hope you're either wrong or they fix it quickly.

[Jharsh]

I will once I get about 400 personal rooms built, just to rule them out. 400 will not take that long. Not with 140+ citizens to build.

Now I did have a period of bad lag then I mined nearly 3000 stone of the 1st dungeon level. But it lasted only about a minute and was not really that bad, more like lag spikes. and again cpu useage on the gene never went above 22%(about 27% on one core) in all 9 hours of game play. So any lag is not my system, but poor coding or java limitations.

[76561198069409126]

There was a streamer that had a lot of constant lag with only around 60 people in town. He killed all the stacks of cows and it didn't help, but I noticed that he had a lot of roads (everything was covered with roads), so I really hope that is the problem, because generally it is easy to remove and fix (just speed up townies)

[Jharsh]

I could fire up towns and destroy the roads in my old town. See if that fixes it...... brb

[Jharsh]

I THINK it's working. I have about 25% of the roads destroyed and the framerate has vastly improved. Now granted this is a large town, covering about 30% of the map and room for about 300 villagers, with lots of roads (thousands of tiles). My hand says I must stop for now. I'll try removing more roads later.

[76561198069409126]

Nice, when you have time delete more to see will it improve, to be sure that roads are the problem, so I can post it in there bug section (or maybe send me your save games if you dont have time).

[Mr.Roboto]

im at 123 citizens, starting to get unplayable lag spikes. i was playing yesterday relatively smoothly but when i loaded towns up today im now going through a cycle of freeze for one second run smoothe for two seconds, rinse repeat. its made play unbearable. im not sure whats changed from last night to this morning...

i have no roads and ive completely cleared the first 2 dungeon levels and the surface of monsters/loot..

**EDIT**

I forgot about my underground mines and they had amassed quite a bit, ive started putting it all in more barrels and the lag is easing a bit. if that doesnt fix the problem i will post in this thread again.