SEQ3 vs. SEQ2

[Leetlewon]

Up until last week, I had SEQ 2.5.3 operating for quite some time, using an old libEQ.a and some patches here and there. It segfaulted occasionally and I couldn't see PC's unless they were pretty close to me, but it did seem to resolve zones quickly, and even when it didn't, it gave me an good indication that there were unknown mobs of some sort around me. My main use for SEQ is to avoid getting killed when I run a low end unsowed character across a higher level zone, and to watch for adds when I'm fighting.

The May (was it the 8th?) patches screwed SEQ 2 up totally, and rather than try to fix this new problem, I decided it was time to upgrade. So, now I'm running SEQ 3. I also upgraded from RH 6.2 to 7.3.

The problem is... SEQ3 seems quite a bit slower now, both at resolving mob identities and showing their locations. I turned on "show unknown spawns", which helped a little, but I still seem to find that I can't run across a zone anymore and trust SEQ to avoid dangerous mobs. Even when it's displaying unknown spawns, I can run up on a mob that doesn't show up anywhere on SEQ. Attempting to target this mob on SEQ gives me nothing, not even "unknown". Also, if I'm fighting in a crowded zone, it does no good to look to see if adds are headed my way. Mob movements seem to update much more slowly, so that something that appears to be a long ways off can suddenly pop up on my back.

Is this normal for SEQ3? It's possible that my Linux box is too slow to handle the new OS, and this is the problem (dual P233).

[high_jeeves]

I really hope you are talking about SEQ 3 and 4... SEQ 2 hasnt been used in well over a year...

If I had to guess on the performance, I'd say it could be memory issue.. how much RAM in that machine? The new SEQ seems to have a larger footprint than the older one...

--Jeeves

[Alwayslost]

I'm running the May 12 commit on a Celeron 400 with 128Mb ram... runs Nice. (On Mandrake 8.2)

Dual 233s should be enough...

But, there have been lots of people that have complained about RH 7.3, and many that scrubbed and went to RH 7.2 with much success. Maybe that is the path for you...

[Leetlewon]

Uhm... sorry I probably have it wrong. The new version I'm running is the latest CVS. The old one was pretty old. I'd have to double check that it wasn't 2.53, but it might be. I think I skipped 3. Prior to this week, I haven't done a CVS update for about a year. I skipped everything that was put out with broken decode and just manually patched and recompiled my old version of SEQ.

Anyway, to answer your question, the RH box has 144megs of RAM. I'll check utilization (can't right now), but I don't think I'm running out of RAM.

[high_jeeves]

Yeah.. 144MB should be plenty... I ran on a dual 200 w/128MB for a while, and while it was no speed demon, it ran fine... You might want to try AlwaysLost's suggestion... Alot of people have been having problems with RH7.3 (wow.. a RedHat release with problems when it first comes out! What are the chances? :) )...

Might want to give RH7.2 or Mandrake 8.2 a try...

--Jeeves

[Leetlewon]

Well that blows.. I initially picked up 7.2 and the guy at the register asked me if I wanted 7.3 since they just got it in yesterday. If this is the problem, it means wiping those partitions and reinstalling everything again - a process which takes all night on that box.

[high_jeeves]

Other options are to go through your config with a fine tooth comb.. remove unessecary services, daemons, etc... switch from KDE/Gnome to a more basic window manager (since, if I had to guess, you will find that SEQ uses 10-20% of your processorx, X is using the rest).. Turn off anti-aliased fonts, etc. if they are on...

--Jeeves

[Alwayslost]

8.2 was no walk in the park either, but I was (and still am) VERY new with Linux, I had a few problems with the RPMs and I have a gimp box that I have to nurse to life to get it going...

X on 8.2 is making SEQ a bit choppy at times, I wish I had defaulted to KDE instead of Gnome, KDE runs smoother.

But, since the majority of my issues have been due to HW probs I stuck with 8.2 out of stubbornness.

So my .02 for those that are new to Linux and reading this... get RH 7.2 (Unless you want a sink or swim challenge)

[Leetlewon]

Yea I know several things I can do to devote more resources to SEQ *if* you think that's the problem.

The big difference that I notice, in changing versions of SEQ is that a zone used to resolve all at once... I'd be running along with all unknown NPC's, then SEQ would freeze for a couple seconds and suddenly every mob in the zone would be resolved (or SEQ would segfault). With the new SEQ, first a few mobs will resolve... then a few more.... then a few more... like its slowly painting a picture of the zone.

Is this normal?

[Alwayslost]

I don't think so, sometimes it takes a few sec (or minutes) to populate the screen but when it does.. Wham! all on and visible.

[high_jeeves]

Yes.. SEQ is now multi-threaded, so before decoding would happen all at once in the same thread as everything else (hence the pause, then the full decode). Now, it decodes in one thread and paints the map in the other, so you see partial decoding.

--Jeeves

[high_jeeves]

I think the difference between what you two are seeing is the difference between a mutlithreaded app on a uni-processor system and a dual-processor system... Alwayslosts machine is still effectively blocking the other thread..

--Jeeves

[sakshale]

Things have been getting ugly on my system. I have 384Meg of RAM, but have actually seen myself run out of memory recently. I ended up killing my test apache server to free up some ram.

Run "top" on your system, use the "M" command to sort on memory utilization, and see what is to be seen.

I plan to add another 256 this weekend so I can turn apache back on.

[Leetlewon]

RAM is certainly cheap, but you shoudn't need that much... eating up 384 megs indicates a problem that will probably be able to gobble up another 256 megs easily.

[Alwayslost]

Ok, noob Linux user question...

Run "ToP"... "M" command????

:confused:

[high_jeeves]

go to your console.. type "top" now type "M"

--Jeeves

[Alwayslost]

Damn... so simple... No wonder I didn't get it.

:rolleyes:


Thanks

[Leetlewon]

try it... type top (/usr/bin/top), hit return, you'll see a real time listing of processes on the system. Type M to sort by memory. Type h to see all available commands.

CPU0 states: 97.3% idle
CPU1 states: 99.2% idle
Mem: 142556K av, 128472K used, 14084K free

%MEM COMMAND
8.6 X
8.0 rhn-applet
7.6 nautilus
6.6 python
5.3 showeq
5.3 showeq
5.3 showeq
4.9 xfs
3.7 panel
3.0 gnome-terminal
2.8 gnome-session
2.7 tasklist_applet
2.6 deskguide_apple
2.5 sawfish

[S_B_R]

I have a silly question but no one has asked it yet... Leetlewon, Which CVS did you check out? linux or showeq?

[Leetlewon]

showeq CVS

[S_B_R]

The reason I ask is there are 2 different tress in the showeq CVS. One with linux as the root, which has showeq source up to version 3.1.2. The other has showeq as the root, which contains the code up to the present version 4.2.3... If you checked out the linux tree then you don't have the most up to date code....


Also I run showeq on a 233MHz Cyrix with 128meg of ram. I don't have any problems with showeq... Except while it's running X takes up more than half of the cpu...