Android clients hanging with 7 and 8 players

dshewmaker

Hello,

We have a game that runs great at 2-6 players on android tablets. Their is one client running on Windows 7 So a total of 7 players runs fine. When we move it up to 8 total then one of the tablets player game object stops responding after about 30 seconds, but it is random. The other players continue working fine. When we move up to 9 total then it doesn't take long at all for really odd things to happen.

One thing I don't understand is that some tablets hang, while others just can't move the player and see the other players moving fine.

Any ideas on what is happening at that threshold?

This is at a different location and I cannot replicate it yet. I am thinking there is some wireless issue contributing, but is there anything I can do with Photon to adjust?

Thanks for any tips!

Dennis

dontonka

Hello Shewmaker,

My 2 cents.

I have a similar problem, but not really random behavior, which I will need to address soon. When I play with 6 players all good, but when I get to 7 and 8 players, my older mobile device doesn't hold (eg: iPhone4S), framerate drop too much and it become chunky.. I need to figure out where is the botlleneck exactly, but definitely it seems related to the fact that a new player in the room means that the game need to process all the message coming from this new player every second (in my case msg rate is 10 message per second per player), and this consume CPU.

So my problem is a CPU problem, too much CPU, framerate drop and player cannot move anymore almost, too chunky. Your problem might be similar. Have a look at how many message are sent when you have 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 players and check how it does growth, same for CPU consumption. Definitely, if your device is not powerful enough, more player might require too much resources, which will make drop your game framerate, and ultimately make it not responsive.

- Is the tablet being frozen is always the master client?
- Is the problem always occurring on the same tablet?
- Is the tablet being frozen less powerfull (in terms of hardware) then the others?

Cheers,
Don T.

dshewmaker

Hi Don,

Thanks for your 2 cents!

- Is the tablet being frozen is always the master client?

The master client is actually a windows machine. It never freezes.

- Is the problem always occurring on the same tablet?

No, different tablets every time.

- Is the tablet being frozen less powerfull (in terms of hardware) then the others?

All tablets are exactly the same model and OS version.

I am going to try and replicate it, but I haven't been able to in the past. The biggest difference is the wireless network is using a different router model. I am just wondering if there is a wireless setting that is causing this only on this network. There are no obvious errors with the wireless traffic.

Dennis

dontonka

Ok cool Dennis.

So when the tablet hangs, the game is totally frozen? I mean if you would print out a gameobject which would simply be showing the game framerate (which i do for example in dev build to check the framerate in some situation), this gameobject is also frozen? If it is, it's most likely something going on eating all the CPU and your framerates drop completely.

I never heard of any Photon thresold that could cause that, even the 500 msg/per room/per second, i don't even think that this is enforced right now..

Don T.