Speed up new world generation

[FuturistDreamer]

Is there a chance that they're going to bump up the speed of world generation? I mean, I'm sitting here with a 3950x with 64GB of RAM, SSDs... all the stuff you'd expect in a high-end PC nowadays and when I generate a new world, I get up and walk away because there went 10+ minutes, even though my CPU never breaks 10% utilization, my disk never breaks 5%, memory never spikes and my GPU is bored...

Seriously, if literally nothing is happening, why is this taking so darned long?!? I mean, there's nothing noticeable here that would explain why it took 10 minutes to generate a world when I was running the game on a crappy old PC and still takes 10 minutes on a high powered machine.

[vgifford]

How many blocks does it take to create your map? 100s of thousands? How long do you think it takes to generate data for each block?

[Teresa]

They are working on improving random gen now, and it should make it into a20.

The goal mentioned specifically for world gen is 1 minute per 1k land. So an 8k map should take no more than 8 minutes on a machine that meets the recommended specs. If you exceed the recommended, it should be even faster.

[Lady MacBeth]

You noticed he never mentions the GPU. I would surmise its the same gpu in this machine as it was his old machine. He is probably also not aware that the gpu does 90% of all the map generation crunching. So better gpus will provide slightly better results. This is why my map generation times are still about 11 minutes even after moving from an i5-3570k to a ryzen 3600x. I kept the same gpu after all.

Now of course once if they meet their goals of improving map generation then we will see what thats like. I'm curious to see if my map gen speeds up if I ever find a 3070 in stock.

[JimmyIowa]

It's odd it doesn't utilize more CPU. On my system, rwg utilizes 100% of all 8 cores.

Do you have a CPU affinity set for the exe?

[SiEgE]

Originally posted by FuturistDreamer:

Is there a chance that they're going to bump up the speed of world generation? I mean, I'm sitting here with a 3950x with 64GB of RAM, SSDs... all the stuff you'd expect in a high-end PC nowadays and when I generate a new world, I get up and walk away because there went 10+ minutes, even though my CPU never breaks 10% utilization, my disk never breaks 5%, memory never spikes and my GPU is bored...

Seriously, if literally nothing is happening, why is this taking so darned long?!? I mean, there's nothing noticeable here that would explain why it took 10 minutes to generate a world when I was running the game on a crappy old PC and still takes 10 minutes on a high powered machine.

It uses your GPU for world gen, so if it is not too good - you'll be stuck for up to 40 minutes.
On my videocard(gtx1080) it takes exactly around 10 minutes.

[One Dandy Cube]

In the second Alpha 20 Dev livestream the guy doing random world generation said that the goal is reduce gen times to 1 minute per km. So if you want a 6K map it will take 6 minutes and 8k will take 8 minutes.

[FuturistDreamer]

My GPU is 2060 and as I said, it's bored. It sits at 20%, which is around where it sits when I'm doing nothing (like right now, when I have Steam, but don't even have a browser open). I didn't think it was relevant, as the GPU never spiked even a little bit while it was creating the world, so it didn't seem like they are leveraging the GPU at all. This system doesn't have integrated graphics, so it's not offloading to some integrated piece of junk to cripple the process.

My point is that it is doing nothing, from what I can tell. The amount of time it takes to generate the blocks should be CPU/GPU, or disk time, not clock time. It's not (or really shouldn't be) waiting for 22 seconds to pass on the clock before it does another step. I'm looking at all threads on my CPU (16 cores, 32 threads on a 3950x) and none of them broke 30% at any point in time.

[FuturistDreamer]

Someone asked about affinity: This is a fresh install on a system that I got a couple months ago for development work and just wanted to see what world generation would be like with 16 processor cores and 32-threads. So no affinity is set and honestly, I can't think of why I would do that on a modern system, unless it was a single threaded app and I noticed that multiple apps were defaulting to a particular core and I wanted to avoid that one.

[JimmyIowa]

Originally posted by FuturistDreamer:

Someone asked about affinity: This is a fresh install on a system that I got a couple months ago for development work and just wanted to see what world generation would be like with 16 processor cores and 32-threads. So no affinity is set and honestly, I can't think of why I would do that on a modern system, unless it was a single threaded app and I noticed that multiple apps were defaulting to a particular core and I wanted to avoid that one.

That's fine. I was just thinking of reasons why it may not be fully utilizing your hardware. That was one. I won't try anymore. I think it's clear your situation is a strange outlier. And your OP question has been answered, that yes, they are still working on speeding up RWG.

[ThatsGolden]

just nitrogen, its 10x faster and has much better results and customizability

[vgifford]

Originally posted by Golden:

just nitrogen, its 10x faster and has much better results and customizability

Is it 100% compatible with the current A19.3 version? I believe Nitrogen was created for Alpha 18.

[FuturistDreamer]

NitroGen is great in many ways, but it has a tendency to make poor maps. I wish I could use it to modify existing maps, like adding in the road damage or adjusting the biome. Their handling of wasteland as blast areas (from bombs) is amazing and I love it, but the maps end up being 270 businesses with 120 houses. I mean, where do the people who work in those buildings live?!? I also really like a progression - homes, then small businesses, then larger buildings. Can't do that as easily when you have to search for a house. I tend to find the road maps more realistic in the RWG, but the road condition and the biome distribution better in Nitrogen.

Try Nitrogen though, it's a great tool. It makes maps in 1-3 minutes, mattering on all the options you choose.

[Miss.Squidgy]

Originally posted by vgifford:

Originally posted by Golden:

just nitrogen, its 10x faster and has much better results and customizability

Is it 100% compatible with the current A19.3 version? I believe Nitrogen was created for Alpha 18.

Using it in my world on A19.3, works fine

[vgifford]

Originally posted by Squidgy:

Originally posted by vgifford:

Is it 100% compatible with the current A19.3 version? I believe Nitrogen was created for Alpha 18.

Using it in my world on A19.3, works fine

I was under the impression that it does not contain the new POIs added in Alpha 19. Don't get me wrong, I too would like to try it, I have heard good things. But if its creator is no longer updating it, I don't want to break my game by using a 3rd party program.

[Lady MacBeth]

Originally posted by vgifford:

Originally posted by Squidgy:

Using it in my world on A19.3, works fine

I was under the impression that it does not contain the new POIs added in Alpha 19.

Unless the people who are trying to updated it since the original dev left have included them it doesn't. Though there is a group of people in the official forum trying to keep the project alive. So maybe they have implemented it at this point.