[0.12.3] [kovarex] Intermittent stuttering when placing objects.

[billw]

I get varying amounts of slow down while placing entities, in SP and MP (but worse in MP).
By stuttering I mean the entire game (sometimes including the placement cursor) will freeze for anything from 100ms to a second on certain types of item placement, especially the items that "connect" to others, e.g. walls, belts, pipes. The freeze seems to come at the point where the item does the connecting not when it appears on the ground. Floor placement seems to be totally fine.

When game is first loaded it is fine, but the stuttering gradually creeps in. In MP the autosave seems to sometimes remove the stuttering completely (it comes back gradually), other times it causes the stuttering to appear.

A screenshot I took back in 0.12.2 while placing objects with stuttering (it was still happening then):


As you can see frame time is massive, but the time doesn't show up in any of the subsections.

PC specs:
i7, 16GB RAM, nVidia 970, Win 7 x64, SSD HD, dual screen (game: 1920x1080, other: 1920x1200), no other performance problems on my computer.

Save game download:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/972 ... save24.zip
Mods to go with the save game:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/972 ... s110815.7z

I would be willing to accept the conclusion that this can't be taken too seriously because I use a lot of mods, but for the fact that your profiler clearly shows the time ISN'T going into mod processing, it is disappearing somewhere else. I went through and checked every one of the mods I use for stupid code in the on_entity_placed events and there wasn't any, I also tried disabling every one of them and it didn't help.

/edit Just to clarify more it is the entire simulation that is freezing, not just a slower render frame rate. e.g. If I hold run while the freezing is occurring I move really slowly, whereas if simulation still runs at a constant speed I should move the same speed as normal but just at a lower fps.

[Adil]

I've also noticed the holdups. Mod selection is different. Not much to report. Sometimes they happen, sometimes entities are placed without them.

[kovarex]

Ok, the problem is caused by the mod Natural-Evolution_3.0.12.

• It changes (when the evolution gets to it's max) the max_expansion_distance to 50 (default value is 7).
• There is a code in Factorio, that checks, wheter it should deny or allow chunks as expansion candidates when player builds something.
• The code faultly checked all chunks in the distance of max(max_expansion_distacne, min_player_base_distance), while it is enough to check chunks in min_player_base_distance radius.
• This means, that when the player is building something, it needs to check the surroundings of 100X100 chunks around it (instead of 14X14) whether (10000 versus 196), so it obviously takes much longer time

The solution is, that the game checks only in the min_player_base_distance for the checking, so now When I load the save with the mods after the change, the building is smooth again.

Solved for 0.12.4

[billw]

Wow thanks!