View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0017204Stars Beyond ReachGraphical BugJun 24, 2015 4:20 pm
Reporterjerith Assigned Totigersfan  
Status resolvedResolutionfixed 
Product Version0.877 (Citybuilding Smoothness) 
Fixed in Version0.898 (Beauty and the Bugs) 
Summary0017204: Black screen during autosave
DescriptionIf I have autosave enabled (with compression, if that makes any difference), the screen goes black for a few hundred milliseconds between turns while the saving happens. This is a bit disconcerting, considering the rest of the interturn happens with game visible.
TagsNo tags attached.

Relationships

has duplicate 0017314 resolvedChris_McElligottPark black screen coming up evrey turn 

Activities

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 8, 2015 8:26 pm

administrator   ~0042100

I believe that this is working as intended, but it is something that needs to be adjusted for sure.

jerith

Jun 8, 2015 8:50 pm

reporter   ~0042116

The black screen is fine during a manual save, because you're in the save menu which is all black anyway. The game->black->game transition for autosave gives the (incorrect) impression that something's wrong.

Also, the abrupt changes in luminosity can be painful when one is playing one...more...turn... in bed with the lights off at 2am. Hypothetically, of course. A responsible adult would never do anything so detrimental to the following day's productivity. ^.^

Cinth

Jun 8, 2015 9:01 pm

manager   ~0042121

The "save Compression" setting says this takes longer than uncompressed saves. Try taking that option off and seeing if it still happens.

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 8, 2015 9:04 pm

administrator   ~0042122

Well, the reason it's doing this is because it's running in a background thread so that it doesn't look like the game died, but at the same time it needs to make sure you can't touch the game at all because doing that in the middle of a save would Break Many Things.

So having it basically freeze the main game graphics and throw up a "saving..." sort of message is ideally what would happen. The saving message could actually be animated or whatever, but all regular game input and rendering would just be frozen on whatever the last render pass was. I have the capability to design that in to the render pipeline, but it will take some fiddling. That will actually be a useful thing to have in several circumstances, loading of savegames among them.

jerith

Jun 8, 2015 9:16 pm

reporter   ~0042124

It does, possibly for a slightly shorter time. It's a little hard to judge the difference, but in both cases I'd guess 600ms to 900ms. The resolution of my temporal perception for this kind of thing (comparing sub-2s intervals separated by tens to hundreds of seconds) is around 150-250ms.

(Why yes, I've done enough rough timing comparisons (usually watching logs fly past) that I know this about myself. I'm not sure whether to be worried, scared, or amused by that.)

jerith

Jun 8, 2015 9:17 pm

reporter   ~0042125

Ah, and Chris provided an excellent explanation while I was doing all the other things I did before replying here. Thanks. :-)

Chris_McElligottPark

Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm

administrator   ~0042447

Thanks!

* During the time when the game is autosaving, previously the game was blipping to black in order to prevent you from corrupting your autosave via editing something during the middle of the savegame.
** After much finagling with the engine, it now instead draws whatever frame it was previously showing you until it finishes the save. This prevents the jolting out to a black screen, while also keeping it so that you can't corrupt the savegame itself.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Jun 8, 2015 7:25 pm jerith New Issue
Jun 8, 2015 8:26 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0042100
Jun 8, 2015 8:50 pm jerith Note Added: 0042116
Jun 8, 2015 9:01 pm Cinth Note Added: 0042121
Jun 8, 2015 9:04 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0042122
Jun 8, 2015 9:16 pm jerith Note Added: 0042124
Jun 8, 2015 9:17 pm jerith Note Added: 0042125
Jun 23, 2015 8:08 pm Chris_McElligottPark Relationship added has duplicate 0017314
Jun 23, 2015 8:08 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To => keith.lamothe
Jun 23, 2015 8:08 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status new => assigned
Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm Chris_McElligottPark Note Added: 0042447
Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm Chris_McElligottPark Status assigned => resolved
Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm Chris_McElligottPark Fixed in Version => 0.898 (Beauty and the Bugs)
Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm Chris_McElligottPark Resolution open => fixed
Jun 24, 2015 4:20 pm Chris_McElligottPark Assigned To keith.lamothe => tigersfan