Here's the setup:
I'm playing with 3 or 4 players, split-screen (offline)... My world has a pretty long "sky-bridge" rail system (long, straight, relatively high rail that circles my entire world). I have powered rails set up to achieve maximum speed throughout. I have a newer model xbox , almost empty harddrive, cleared cache.
Issue:
Often, when someone uses my sky-bridge the game seems to have trouble keeping up with the speed of the rail car. It gets to the point where the world loads too slowly and the rider/cart actually pauses on the rail while the world loads. If two or more people are riding at the same time... forget about it! They'll both be pausing every few seconds making the ride slower than walking... while the game (I'm assuming) struggles to keep up.
Anyone else experience this? What's the point of splitscreen if we can't use rails without massive system lag? Bug?
Thanks
The resources of any computer system are limited; and keep in mind that the XBox is 7-year-old technology. Do you have a 7-year-old PC running with only 512 RAM that can run the PC version of the game without lag? I doubt it. As for your "what's the use" comment - My friend's children and I have enjoyed many hours of playing on local splitscreen without significant lag issues. Since the children are quite young, I feel it is safer for them to not be playing online. We haven't got a huge railroad; but there is a lot to the game other than riding the rails around the world. So, I personally see plenty of use for splitscreen despite some railroad lag.
Of course, an option would be to just play on the PC; but then you would require 4 PC's with minimums of 4 GB RAM and newer processors, all connected with high-speed internet to do that... but it's your nickel.
The resources of any computer system are limited; and keep in mind that the XBox is 7-year-old technology. Do you have a 7-year-old PC running with only 512 RAM that can run the PC version of the game without lag? I doubt it. As for your "what's the use" comment - My friend's children and I have enjoyed many hours of playing on local splitscreen without significant lag issues. Since the children are quite young, I feel it is safer for them to not be playing online. We haven't got a huge railroad; but there is a lot to the game other than riding the rails around the world. So, I personally see plenty of use for splitscreen despite some railroad lag.
Of course, an option would be to just play on the PC; but then you would require 4 PC's with minimums of 4 GB RAM and newer processors, all connected with high-speed internet to do that... but it's your nickel.
A PC has more multi-tasking to do, a hundred more processes in the background, plus an OS running at all times. A 360 has an OS when you turn it on, then when you launch a game it lays dormant, poof, it disappears. The 360 is built with one thing in mind, gaming, that is what it's optimized for. In no way does it compare to a PC with 512 MB RAM, which would be more around 10+ years old, with some family chipset GPU, maybe 1/64th as powerful as 360's GPU.
MCPC recommends so much RAM for system stability, not the game. Most issues involving the memory error are actually from allocating too much RAM to Minecraft. Just as an example, Microsoft's new distro, Windows 7, can require a wopping 1 GB RAM to function properly.
My original post attempted to confirm if the issue I'm having is a bug or not. What I'm getting from your response is: yes, you experience the same issue as me and you don't think it's a bug. Remember, I also pointed out that I experience this lag issue when even one person rides the rail. It's understood that it's your opinion that it's justified for the xbox to lag during splitsceen railriding. I think your comparison of a PC and xbox is apples to oranges. I just want a lag free experience, and it's my opinion that the 360 should be able to do it.
A PC has more multi-tasking to do, a hundred more processes in the background, plus an OS running at all times. A 360 has an OS when you turn it on, then when you launch a game it lays dormant, poof, it disappears. The 360 is built with one thing in mind, gaming, that is what it's optimized for. In no way does it compare to a PC with 512 MB RAM, which would be more around 10+ years old, with some family chipset GPU, maybe 1/64th as powerful as 360's GPU.
MCPC recommends so much RAM for system stability, not the game. Most issues involving the memory error are actually from allocating too much RAM to Minecraft. Just as an example, Microsoft's new distro, Windows 7, can require a wopping 1 GB RAM to function properly.
I agree that the PC may be doing more in the background. Some of that, however, depends on what specific OS it is running and what other internet-related functions the user has running in the background. I agree, the 360 is designed for just gaming, sort of (it does also run Netflix and Facebook). However, tapping into Live must also eat up some of the RAM available, wouldn't it? Of course, this is wild speculation - but maybe, Live is the real memory pig and just maybe it's racking up the kms by rail on the Leaderboard is causing all that lag in this specific case. Perhaps system resources is one underlying reason why 4J decided to disable the Leaderboards when a world is uploaded in Creative?)
I think, so far, 4J have done a great job just getting Minecraft to run relatively smoothly most of time and it still doesn't negate the overall usefulness of local splitscreen mode.
My original post attempted to confirm if the issue I'm having is a bug or not. What I'm getting from your response is: yes, you experience the same issue as me and you don't think it's a bug. Remember, I also pointed out that I experience this lag issue when even one person rides the rail. It's understood that it's your opinion that it's justified for the xbox to lag during splitsceen railriding. I think your comparison of a PC and xbox is apples to oranges. I just want a lag free experience, and it's my opinion that the 360 should be able to do it.
No, I said I don't have a huge rail system, so I've not experienced the same "bug." Have I experienced bouts of lag? Yes I have. I've also experienced lag on the XBox running other games and I've also experience lag running games and other applications on the PC. It happens - unless you want to invest big money in a super-sized gaming PC (and that's times 4 - for the 4 players using local splitscreen on the XBox).
ETA: One thing you could try, depending on what you mean when you say you're playing offline. If that means that you've just unchecked the "online game" option - I would perhaps try completely disconnecting the XBox from the internet either by disconnecting from your LAN or temporarily disabling the WiFi connection. My XBox is older, so it doesn't have built in WiFi, so I don't know for sure if the WiFi equipped ones have an option to disable the connection or not. If not, you may have to temporarily disable your network for the test). Then, run the railroad and see whether or not the lag issue improves. If it does, some of the issue may be the speed of your internet connection to LIVE (which you are still connected to even though you uncheck the online game option).
Thank you for the suggestion. I have indeed tried my long rail system in both local splitsceen while connected to xboxlive and completely disconnected from the internet. The results from both are identicle.
I agree that the PC may be doing more in the background. Some of that, however, depends on what specific OS it is running and what other internet-related functions the user has running in the background. I agree, the 360 is designed for just gaming, sort of (it does also run Netflix and Facebook). However, tapping into Live must also eat up some of the RAM available, wouldn't it? Of course, this is wild speculation - but maybe, Live is the real memory pig and just maybe it's racking up the kms by rail on the Leaderboard is causing all that lag in this specific case. Perhaps system resources is one underlying reason why 4J decided to disable the Leaderboards when a world is uploaded in Creative?)
I think, so far, 4J have done a great job just getting Minecraft to run relatively smoothly most of time and it still doesn't negate the overall usefulness of local splitscreen mode.
Well, you have a point, but it's going to require a bit of space for a PC to be online as well. I doubt the leaderboard is the real problem though. I don't know this for a fact, but I would assume your leaderboards update when your statistics autosave. It just doesn't really make sense for your leaderboard stats to be uploaded constantly. Then again, the way 4J chose to handle chunk loading doesn't make a lot of sense either. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of benefits, but I think that's the real resource hog here.
EDIT: Yes, the 360 can do other things, but it was designed for gaming specifically. Movies or other apps are no problem for the equivalent of a mid-range gaming PC.
There's one small point that seems to be missing in this conversation though. If they were going to port the game for X360, wouldn't it be a perfectly reasonable assumption that it would have been optimized to run on the console without problems?
Comparisons to PC shouldn't even have to be made because there's a ton of variables in everybody's PC systems. (RAM, graphics cards, processors, etc). It's expected to affect everybody's game play differently.
Xbox is pretty straight forward and they already knew the specs of the system that they had to work with right from the starting gate.
There's one small point that seems to be missing in this conversation though. If they were going to port the game for X360, wouldn't it be a perfectly reasonable assumption that it would have been optimized to run on the console without problems?
Comparisons to PC shouldn't even have to be made because there's a ton of variables in everybody's PC systems. (RAM, graphics cards, processors, etc). It's expected to affect everybody's game play differently.
Xbox is pretty straight forward and they already knew the specs of the system that they had to work with right from the starting gate.
There is still only so much they can do. I think they've been saying that we're at a point where some of the features of the game would have to slide. The world size is one thing they decided to limit... and we all know the number of complaints they've received about that. What about eliminating railroads? They can lag even without splitscreen. What about eliminating the mining graphics? These lag on me all the time and even result in blocks reappearing. What about eliminating the growth ticks for the trees? What about elminating farming? or how about reducing the drop limit from 200 to 50?
The XBox has only so much in processing resources - speed and RAM and that has to be allocated amongst everything that the game is doing plus whatever Live uses. It's not just about complaining and leaning harder on 4J. They might be able to make small gains with coding some things differently, but they can't magically make the XBox deliver more than it was designed to... and it was designed more than 7 years ago. Minecraft as a game is far more complex and demanding on a system than many people expect. As I think it was 4J who said, it may look simple due to the style of the graphics; but it's far from being a simple game.
It's all about choices. Yes, splitscreen could go, but 4J stated that even eliminating it would have little effect on their being able to increase world size. That probably means that splitscreen in an of itself isn't as RAM intensive as it might appear. Eliminating splitscreen comes with a "price" - it means that for 4 players to play together in the same household, 4 systems would have to be bought and those systems would have to be connected online. Although people in households where only 1 person plays don't see the need for splitscreen, I can almost guarantee that it's a very important feature for families with younger children.
I'm playing with 3 or 4 players, split-screen (offline)... My world has a pretty long "sky-bridge" rail system (long, straight, relatively high rail that circles my entire world). I have powered rails set up to achieve maximum speed throughout. I have a newer model xbox , almost empty harddrive, cleared cache.
Issue:
Often, when someone uses my sky-bridge the game seems to have trouble keeping up with the speed of the rail car. It gets to the point where the world loads too slowly and the rider/cart actually pauses on the rail while the world loads. If two or more people are riding at the same time... forget about it! They'll both be pausing every few seconds making the ride slower than walking... while the game (I'm assuming) struggles to keep up.
Anyone else experience this? What's the point of splitscreen if we can't use rails without massive system lag? Bug?
Thanks
Of course, an option would be to just play on the PC; but then you would require 4 PC's with minimums of 4 GB RAM and newer processors, all connected with high-speed internet to do that... but it's your nickel.
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Retired StaffA PC has more multi-tasking to do, a hundred more processes in the background, plus an OS running at all times. A 360 has an OS when you turn it on, then when you launch a game it lays dormant, poof, it disappears. The 360 is built with one thing in mind, gaming, that is what it's optimized for. In no way does it compare to a PC with 512 MB RAM, which would be more around 10+ years old, with some family chipset GPU, maybe 1/64th as powerful as 360's GPU.
MCPC recommends so much RAM for system stability, not the game. Most issues involving the memory error are actually from allocating too much RAM to Minecraft. Just as an example, Microsoft's new distro, Windows 7, can require a wopping 1 GB RAM to function properly.
My original post attempted to confirm if the issue I'm having is a bug or not. What I'm getting from your response is: yes, you experience the same issue as me and you don't think it's a bug. Remember, I also pointed out that I experience this lag issue when even one person rides the rail. It's understood that it's your opinion that it's justified for the xbox to lag during splitsceen railriding. I think your comparison of a PC and xbox is apples to oranges. I just want a lag free experience, and it's my opinion that the 360 should be able to do it.
I agree that the PC may be doing more in the background. Some of that, however, depends on what specific OS it is running and what other internet-related functions the user has running in the background. I agree, the 360 is designed for just gaming, sort of (it does also run Netflix and Facebook). However, tapping into Live must also eat up some of the RAM available, wouldn't it? Of course, this is wild speculation - but maybe, Live is the real memory pig and just maybe it's racking up the kms by rail on the Leaderboard is causing all that lag in this specific case. Perhaps system resources is one underlying reason why 4J decided to disable the Leaderboards when a world is uploaded in Creative?)
I think, so far, 4J have done a great job just getting Minecraft to run relatively smoothly most of time and it still doesn't negate the overall usefulness of local splitscreen mode.
No, I said I don't have a huge rail system, so I've not experienced the same "bug." Have I experienced bouts of lag? Yes I have. I've also experienced lag on the XBox running other games and I've also experience lag running games and other applications on the PC. It happens - unless you want to invest big money in a super-sized gaming PC (and that's times 4 - for the 4 players using local splitscreen on the XBox).
ETA: One thing you could try, depending on what you mean when you say you're playing offline. If that means that you've just unchecked the "online game" option - I would perhaps try completely disconnecting the XBox from the internet either by disconnecting from your LAN or temporarily disabling the WiFi connection. My XBox is older, so it doesn't have built in WiFi, so I don't know for sure if the WiFi equipped ones have an option to disable the connection or not. If not, you may have to temporarily disable your network for the test). Then, run the railroad and see whether or not the lag issue improves. If it does, some of the issue may be the speed of your internet connection to LIVE (which you are still connected to even though you uncheck the online game option).
Thank you for the suggestion. I have indeed tried my long rail system in both local splitsceen while connected to xboxlive and completely disconnected from the internet. The results from both are identicle.
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Retired StaffWell, you have a point, but it's going to require a bit of space for a PC to be online as well. I doubt the leaderboard is the real problem though. I don't know this for a fact, but I would assume your leaderboards update when your statistics autosave. It just doesn't really make sense for your leaderboard stats to be uploaded constantly. Then again, the way 4J chose to handle chunk loading doesn't make a lot of sense either. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of benefits, but I think that's the real resource hog here.
EDIT: Yes, the 360 can do other things, but it was designed for gaming specifically. Movies or other apps are no problem for the equivalent of a mid-range gaming PC.
Comparisons to PC shouldn't even have to be made because there's a ton of variables in everybody's PC systems. (RAM, graphics cards, processors, etc). It's expected to affect everybody's game play differently.
Xbox is pretty straight forward and they already knew the specs of the system that they had to work with right from the starting gate.
There is still only so much they can do. I think they've been saying that we're at a point where some of the features of the game would have to slide. The world size is one thing they decided to limit... and we all know the number of complaints they've received about that. What about eliminating railroads? They can lag even without splitscreen. What about eliminating the mining graphics? These lag on me all the time and even result in blocks reappearing. What about eliminating the growth ticks for the trees? What about elminating farming? or how about reducing the drop limit from 200 to 50?
The XBox has only so much in processing resources - speed and RAM and that has to be allocated amongst everything that the game is doing plus whatever Live uses. It's not just about complaining and leaning harder on 4J. They might be able to make small gains with coding some things differently, but they can't magically make the XBox deliver more than it was designed to... and it was designed more than 7 years ago. Minecraft as a game is far more complex and demanding on a system than many people expect. As I think it was 4J who said, it may look simple due to the style of the graphics; but it's far from being a simple game.
It's all about choices. Yes, splitscreen could go, but 4J stated that even eliminating it would have little effect on their being able to increase world size. That probably means that splitscreen in an of itself isn't as RAM intensive as it might appear. Eliminating splitscreen comes with a "price" - it means that for 4 players to play together in the same household, 4 systems would have to be bought and those systems would have to be connected online. Although people in households where only 1 person plays don't see the need for splitscreen, I can almost guarantee that it's a very important feature for families with younger children.