Related
I have a file with the usual sumifs and vlookups. Nothing complicated computationally!
It has a lot of conditional formatting
As I remove the formulas the wait cursor remains there for shorter and shorter.
When I remove all the formulas and the formatting the file is fine as in I do not get the wait cursor. What is left is a file with no calculations and flat data.
Even with calculations that are just summing I am getting the wait cursor
I have tried excel open and repair. This does not work.
My sumifs have been changed to refer to a finite array as opposed to whole columns (which are also finite for the pedantic! but say these are infinite)
I think what I want to know, is what is known to cause a wait cursor to appear in excel? What can I do to minimize the time that the wait cursor appears?
I have looked on google and am not finding anything useful or relevant to my problem
I am starting to realise that wait cursor seems to always appear for a split second when I insert a column! however with my few sumifs formulas the wait cursor is getting longer and longer. Is it possible for sumifs formulas to calculate quickly but add to the wait cursor time the more sumifs you add?
Old question :
I have an excel file that keeps freezing
It calculates and saves very quickly. it is only 3090kb
Every time I insert a column or add a sheet for example I get the egg timer and if I click it starts to say 'not responding'
It only happens with this file so I don't believe it is my computer or excel version
the file was working fine before. I extended the formulas in about ten tabs (although not that many calcs added) and then it started to freeze
even if I delete every tab so there is just a blank sheet in the file it still freezes
Please help. Thanks
Please do not answer yet, I am still investigating and will get back to this. thank you
EDIT: The WAIT cursor not egg timer
Check if there are any hidden sheets with the data that is slowing it down.
Right click on sheet tab and unhide.
Make this practice to use this Macro or set Row Height to 15 so they don't Wrap. Wraptext in large excel files causes it to slow down to the point of freezing:
activesheet.cells.wraptext = false
#Jasmine - I wasn't suggesting that you are making anything up, nor was I my comment intended to be facetious. My point was that your question sounds self-contradictory to me.
When learning a new coding language, learning which questions to ask and how to phrase and share your problem is a skill in itself.
The fact that your file functions (a.k.a. calculates) 'properly'
until more identical formulas are added, sounds to me like it's no longer calculating properly, so I was unsure what you meant.
As for the `size doesn't matter' comment, it's another valid point about how some people ask questions when mistakenly thinking that file size has any significance. I've encountered and solved thousands of [seemingly unique] issues over the years but the last time I looked at the size of my file would have been back when it would've had to fit on a diskette.
Similarly, I often see questions here where the "asker" includes irrelevant statistics like the number of records in their database, as if you need to code differently for 10 records versus 10,000,000 (which isn't generally true, btw). I can't help but chuckle at some questions where the O.P. spends more time describing the formatting of a cell than the formula it contains (that's causing the issue). But from their point of view, it's significant.
Think of the people reading your question as sitting in your office blindfolded while you explain your problem. If you're asking for (free) help from others who cannot see what you can, with zero previous knowledge, does it not make sense to make a question absolutely as clear as possible -- even if that involves Googling a word to update your terminology that you know is incorrect? (or is the onus on the reader to figure out what you mean?
**Did you click the links I posted for you (above) to learn how to better communicate your problem and edit your question to add more specific examples and more information as requested and described in those links? (or was that a "waste of time" as well?) There were specific questions for you as well.
This site was frustrating for me when I first joined too but the rules and posting etiquette were not made immediately known to me by a stranger with a few seconds to spare. I had a major learning curve and some pretty nasty comments from people since I was breaking rules I wasn't even aware of. I am actually breaking a major rule right now, can you identify it perhaps by familiarizing yourself with the site in the Help Center?
Hint: I'm probably going to get "scolded" for the method I am using to give you this advice as opposed to the short comments and links I would normally post on a question that needs more information so I or others can give an informed answer. Some people don't like posting a question and not getting a custom written set of code promptly written just for them. Some people are grateful for every bit of advice they can get from a stranger, others never come back and find a site more suited to their needs.
Remember, there is a ton of existing information on this site and others because it's very unlikely that whatever problem you're having has been experienced - and solved - by many, many people before you. By researching as much as possible, you learn both about your problem and about which questions get "better" answers than others.
Anyhow I hope you read fast, this answer might not be here long (I wanted to be clear but without a whole whack of comments back and forth...)
Jasmine, if you're still angry with me, you can "get me back" if you can find the correct Flag button. The answer to my question for you in is there too... (It's not option #2, as lest not intentionally!)
Good luck & happy holidays to all!
I try to do some nodejs profiling using Linux perf_events as described by Brendan Gregg here.
Workflow is following:
run node >0.11.13 with --perf-basic-prof, which creates /tmp/perf-(PID).map file where JavaScript symbol mapping are written.
Capture stacks using perf record -F 99 -p `pgrep -n node` -g -- sleep 30
Fold stacks using stackcollapse-perf.pl script from this repository
Generate svg flame graph using flamegraph.pl script
I get following result (which look really nice at the beginning):
Problem is that there are a lot of [unknown] elements, which I suppose should be my nodejs function calls. I assume that whole process fails somwhere at point 3, where perf data should be folded using mappings generated by node/v8 executed with --perf-basic-prof. /tmp/perf-PID.map file is created and some mapping are written to it during node execution.
How to solve this problem?
I am using CentOS 6.5 x64, and already tried this with node 0.11.13, 0.11.14 (both prebuild, and compiled as well) with no success.
FIrst of all, what "[unknown]" means is the sampler couldn't figure out the name of the function, because it's a system or library function.
If so, that's OK - you don't care, because you're looking for things responsible for time in your code, not system code.
Actually, I'm suggesting this is one of those XY questions.
Even if you get a direct answer to what you asked, it is likely to be of little use.
Here are the reasons why:
1. CPU Profiling is of little use in an I/O bound program
The two towers on the left in your flame graph are doing I/O, so they probably take a lot more wall-time than the big pile on the right.
If this flame graph were derived from wall-time samples, rather than CPU-time samples, it could look more like the second graph below, which tells you where time actually goes:
What was a big juicy-looking pile on the right has shrunk, so it is nowhere near as significant.
On the other hand, the I/O towers are very wide.
Any one of those wide orange stripes, if it's in your code, represents a chance to save a lot of time, if some of the I/O could be avoided.
2. Whether the program is CPU- or I/O-bound, speedup opportunities can easily hide from flame graphs
Suppose there is some function Foo that really is doing something wasteful, that if you knew about it, you could fix.
Suppose in the flame graph, it is a dark red color.
Suppose it is called from numerous places in the code, so it's not all collected in one spot in the flame graph.
Rather it appears in multiple small places shown here by black outlines:
Notice, if all those rectangles were collected, you could see that it accounts for 11% of time, meaning it is worth looking at.
If you could cut its time in half, you could save 5.5% overall.
If what it's doing could actually be avoided entirely, you could save 11% overall.
Each of those little rectangles would shrink down to nothing, and pull the rest of the graph, to its right, with it.
Now I'll show you the method I use. I take a moderate number of random stack samples and examine each one for routines that might be speeded up.
That corresponds to taking samples in the flame graph like so:
The slender vertical lines represent twenty random-time stack samples.
As you can see, three of them are marked with an X.
Those are the ones that go through Foo.
That's about the right number, because 11% times 20 is 2.2.
(Confused? OK, here's a little probability for you. If you flip a coin 20 times, and it has a 11% chance of coming up heads, how many heads would you get? Technically it's a binomial distribution. The most likely number you would get is 2, the next most likely numbers are 1 and 3. (If you only get 1 you keep going until you get 2.) Here's the distribution:)
(The average number of samples you have to take to see Foo twice is 2/0.11 = 18.2 samples.)
Looking at those 20 samples might seem a bit daunting, because they run between 20 and 50 levels deep.
However, you can basically ignore all the code that isn't yours.
Just examine them for your code.
You'll see precisely how you are spending time,
and you'll have a very rough measurement of how much.
Deep stacks are both bad news and good news -
they mean the code may well have lots of room for speedups, and they show you what those are.
Anything you see that you could speed up, if you see it on more than one sample, will give you a healthy speedup, guaranteed.
The reason you need to see it on more than one sample is, if you only see it on one sample, you only know its time isn't zero. If you see it on more than one sample, you still don't know how much time it takes, but you do know it's not small.
Here are the statistics.
Generally speaking it is a bad idea to disagree with a subject matter expert but (with the greatest respect) here we go!
SO urges the answer to do the following:
"Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!"
So the question was, at least my interpretation of it is, why are there [unknown] frames in the perf script output (and how do I turn these [unknown] frames in to meaningful names)?
This question could be about "how to improve the performance of my system?" but I don't see it that way in this particular case. There is a genuine problem here about how the perf record data has been post processed.
The answer to the question is that although the prerequisite set up is correct: the correct node version, the correct argument was present to generate the function names (--perf-basic-prof), the generated perf map file must be owned by root for perf script to produce the expected output.
That's it!
Writing some new scripts today I hit apon this directing me to this SO question.
Here's a couple of additional references:
https://yunong.io/2015/11/23/generating-node-js-flame-graphs/
https://github.com/jrudolph/perf-map-agent/blob/d8bb58676d3d15eeaaf3ab3f201067e321c77560/bin/create-java-perf-map.sh#L22
[ non-root files can sometimes be forced ] http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-perf-users/msg02588.html
First I want to apologize for my approximate English, as I'm French. I'm currently making a real-time game in java, using LWJGL.
I have some questions regarding game loops:
I'm running the rendering routine in a thread. Is it a good idea? Usually, the rendering routine is fairly slow and should not slow down the world update (tick) routine, which is way more important. So I guess using a thread here seems like a good idea (minus the complications from using a thread).
In the world update routine, I'm updating a list of entities with the current time. Each entity can then compute their own deltaTime, corresponding to the last time they were updated. This differs from the usual update loop, which updates every entity in the list with the same deltaTime. This seemed appropriate because of the threaded rendering. Is it a good idea? Should I use the second method instead? If so, is the threaded rendering still needed? If so, do I have to add a maximum deltaTime?
In general, is it a good idea to have a maximum deltaTime?
Thanks for your time!
Is it a good idea? Separate threads are fairly advanced stuff, I see no reason to do multithreading to begin with. All the mobile games I have worked on so far have not needed multiple threads, even though they are 'real-time'. Hardcore PC and console games are where multithreading really starts to come into play. Here is a link to a recent talk on the subject if interested : http://archive.assembly.org/2011/seminars/adventures-in-multithreaded-gameplay-coding.
Sounds like this could cause some strange things if the physics are not handled in one go. Not sure about this. Colliding an object that has already been updated to another position with an object that comes another time, for example, correcting this sort of situation may become problematic? Fast moving collisions may need to be subdivided, which may be why you have the separate update thread, but why not have them all calculated as happening at the same time?
'Variable timestep' and 'Fixed timestep' are the options available for rendering. Most games at the moment seem to choose a 30 fps fixed timestep. The rendering has to be kept under the limits so no catching up should be needed.
One problem with variable timestep is you are forced to pass deltaTime to all time-dependent areas. Fixed timestep is handy as you can assume you are running at say 30 fps, and use that value everywhere. It is a preferred method at the moment as far as I know.
Though this question is a few years old…
AFAIK,
Rendering is usually done in separated processor — GPU, so they're already a separated thread. But, drawing command must be processed by graphics driver (which is running in CPU) before dispatched to GPU, and this processing may be saved by being multi-threaded. Anyway in this case, you're responsible to manage synchronization between logics and rendering thread.
Generally speaking, games are all about interactions between objects, and it's very hard to divide state-graph into fully separated divisions. As a result, whole game state usually becomes single graph, and this graph cannot be updated while being rendered. In this case, you have no benefit by being multi-threaded.
If you can keep a separated immutable data for rendering, than you may gain some benefit from rendering in separated thread. But otherwise, I don't recommend it.
In addition, you should consider GC if you truly want a realtime game. GC related performance issues usually the biggest obstacles to make realtime stuffs.
I am in the process of developping a game, and after two months of work (not full time mind you), I have come to realise that our specs for the game are lacking a lot of details. I am not a professional game developper, this is only a hobby.
What I would like to receive help or advices for is this: What are the major components that you find in games, that have to be developped or already exists as librairies? The objective of this question is for me to be able to specify more game aspects.
Currently, we had specified pretty much only how we would work on the visual, completely forgetting everything about game logic (AI, Entities interactions, Quest logic (how do we decide whether or not a quest is completed)).
So far, I have found those points:
Physics (collision detection, actual forces, etc.)
AI (pathfinding, objectives, etc.)
Model management
Animation management
Scene management
Combat management
Inventory management
Camera (make sure not to render everything that is in the scene)
Heightmaps
Entities communication (Player with NPC, enemy, other players, etc)
Game state
Game state save system
In order to reduce the scope of this queston, I'd like it if you could specifically discuss aspects related to developping an RPG type of game. I will also point out that I am using XNA to develop this game, but I have almost no grasp of all the classes available yet (pretty much only using the Game component with some classes that are related to it such as GameTime, SpriteBatch, GraphicDeviceManager) but not much more.
You have a decent list, but you are missing storage (save load), text (text is important in RPGs : Unicode, font rendering), probably a macro system for text (something that replaces tokens like {player} with the player characters name), and most important of all content generation tools (map editor, chara editor, dialog editor) because RPGs need content (or auto generation tools if you need ). By the way have links to your work?
I do this exact stuff for a living so if you need more pointers perhaps I can help.
I don't know if this is any help, but I have been reading articles from http://www.gamasutra.com/ for many years.
I don't have a perfect set of tools from the beginning, but your list covers most of the usual trouble for RUNNING the game. But have you found out what each one of the items stands for? How much have you made already? "Inventory Management" sounds very heavy, but some games just need a simple "array" of objects. Takes an hour to program + some graphical integration (if you have your GUI Management done already).
How to start planning
When I develop games in my spare time, I usually get an idea because another game lacks this function/option. Then I start up what ever development tool I am currently using and try to see if I can make a prototype showing this idea. It's not always about fancy graphics, but most often it's more about finding out how to solve a certain problem. Green and red boxes will help you most of the way, but otherwise, use Google Images and do a quick search for prototype graphics. But remember that these images are probably copyrighted, so only use them for internal test purposes and to explain to your graphic artists what type of game/graphic you want to make.
Secondly, you'll find that you need to find/build tools to create the "maps/missions/quests" too. Today many develop their own "object script" where they can easily add new content/path to a game.
Many of the ideas we (my friends and I) have been testing started with a certain prototype of the interface, to see if its possible to generate that sort of screen output first. Then we build a quick'n'dirty map/level-editor that can supply us with test maps.
No game logic at this point, still figuring out if the game-engine in general is running.
My first game-algorithm problem
Back when I was in my teens I had a Commodore 64 and I was wondering, how do they sort 10 numbers in order for a Highscore? It took me quite a while to find a "scalable" way of doing this, but I learned a lot about programming too.
The second problem I found
How do I make a tank/cannon fire a bullet in the correct direction when I fly my helicopter around the screen?
I sat down and drew quick sketches of the actual problem, looked at the bullet lines, tried some theories of my own and found something that seemed to be working (by dividing and multiplying positions etc.) later on in school I discovered this to be more or less Pythagoras. LOL!
Years and many game attempts later
I played "Dune" and the later C&C + the new game Warcraft (v1/v2) - I remember it started to annoyed me how the lame AI worked. The path finding algorithms were frustrating for the player, I thought. They moved in direction of target position and then found a wall, but if the way was to complex, the object just stopped. Argh!
So I first sat with large amounts of paper, then I tried to draw certain scenarios where an "object" (tank/ork/soldier) would go from A to B and then suddenly there was a "structure" (building/other object) in the pathway - what then?
I learned about A-star pathfinding (after solving it first on my own in a similar way, then later reading about the reason for this working). A very "cpu heavy" way of finding a path, but I learned a lot from the process of "cracking this nut". These thoughts have helped me a lot developing other game algortimes over time.
So what I am saying is: I think you'll have to think more of:
How is the game to be played?
What does the user experience look like?
Why would the user want to come back to the game?
What requirements are needed? Broadband? 19" monitor with 1280x1024?
An RPG, yes - but will it be multi-user or single?
Do we need a fast network/server setup or do we need to develop a strong AI for the NPCs?
And much more...
I am not sure this is what you asked for, but I hope you can use it somehow?
There are hundreds of components needed to make a game, from time management to audio. You'll probably need to roll your own GUI, as native OS controls are very non-gamey. You will probably also need all kinds of tools to generate your worlds, exporters to convert models and textures into something suitable for your game etc.
I would strongly recommend that you start with one of the many free or cheap game engines that are out there. Loads of them come with the source code, so you can learn how they have been put together as you go.
When you think you are ready, you can start to replace parts of the engine you are using to better suit your needs.
I agree with Robert Gould's post , especially about tools and I'd also add
Scripting
Memory Management
Network - especially replication of game object states and match-making
oh and don't forget Localisation - particularly for text strings
Effects and effect timers (could be magical effects, could just be stuff like being stunned.)
Character professions, skills, spells (if that kind of game).
World creation tools, to make it easy for non-programmer builders.
Think about whether or not you want PvP. If so, you need to really think about how you're going to do your combat system and any limits you want on who can attack whom.
Equipment, "treasure", values of things and how you want to do the economy.
This is an older question, but IMHO now there is a better answer: use Unity (or something akin to it). It gives you 90% of what you need to make a game up front, so you can jump in and focus directly on the part you care about, which is the gameplay. When you run aground because there's something it doesn't do out of the box, you can usually find a resource in the Asset Store for free or cheap that will save you a lot of work.
I would also add that if you're not working on your game full-time, be mindful of the complexity and the time-frame of the task. If you'll try to integrate so many different frameworks into your RPG game, you can easily end up with several years worth of work; maybe it would be more advisable to start small and only develop the "core" of your game first and not bother about physics, for example. You could still add it in the second version.
I find the concept of the programmable, tiling, keyboard-focuessed window manager ion3 very appealing, but I think it takes some time to customize it to your needs until you can really evaluate this totally different UI-concept.
Therefore, I would like to read reviews of people who tried it for a longer time as environment for programming (in particular using emacs/gcc).
(The policies of the ion3-author concerning linux-distros are not easy to follow for me, but this should not be the point here...)
I use ion3 daily. It's a wonderful window manager. The tiling interface really enables you maximize real estate. Once you get it setup to your liking, it is much more efficient to navigate via the keyboard. Even moving applications between tiles isn't that hard once you get used to the tag/attach key sequence.
With ion3, Vimperator and the various shells I have open during the day -- I barely use the rodent.
The author's opinions aside -- a good resource for configuring/extending Ion to your liking can be found at:
Configuring and Extending Ion3 with Lua
I've been using Ion daily for nearly two years now. Good things:
Easy to use from the keyboard.
Handles multiple screens (Xinerama) very well (once you have the mod_xinerama plugin), especially as in my case the screens are different sizes.
Very predictable where windows will appear.
Splitting, resizing and moving windows is very easy.
Multiple, independent workspaces on each screen.
Very fast and reliable.
Bad things:
Too many different shortcuts. e.g. there are separate keys for moving to the next tab, next frame, next screen, and next workspace.
Applications that use lots of small windows together work really badly (e.g. the Gimp) because it maximises all of them on top of each other initially.
Sub-dialogs can cause trouble. Sometimes they open in a separate tab when you want them in the same tab, or sometimes the open in the same tab and take the focus when you want to continue interacting with the main window.
These things can probably be changed in the config files, but I haven't got around to it yet. Also, the actual C code is easy to read, and on the few occasions where I've wanted to fix something it has been very easy. I don't feel tempted to go back to a non-tiling WM, anyway.
I've used it off and on for the last few years, I think its a great window manager, but I keep crawling back to kde3 whatever I use.
Its however difficult to put into quantifiable terms why this happens, but its right up there with the gnome-vs-kde battle. Neither side can understand the other.
I would also just love to have kicker + ion3, but they don't gel awfully well.
Moving applications between tiles ( something I tend to do lots ) also is a bit inefficient ( too addicted to the mouse )
( Kicker + Evilwm is a good combination, but evilwm just can't handle stacking in a user-friendly way )