(r252) Event dialogs are opening with a delay on Windows 10

Problem Description

When running C2 in Windows 10, event dialogs are opening with a significant delay.

After restarting Windows 10, the lag disappears, but after several hours/days it becomes more and more noticeable and could reach 4-5 seconds.

The issue seems to be related to icons and the delay depends on the number of objects in the project. In blank or small project there is almost no lag.

Setting "Icon Mode=Don't show unique icons" removes the lag completely. However, not having unique icons in the editor makes development extremely difficult, especially in a big project with hundreds of objects and long object names.

Switching Icon Caching on or off doesn't seem to make any difference, the lag in both cases is the same.

Please see this video, from 0:43

https://youtu.be/8thpozIBnUU?t=43s

Attach a Capx

https://www.dropbox.com/s/541c7mrvrydgt ... .capx?dl=0

This capx doesn't really matter as the performance is bad in all projects, especially big ones.

Description of Capx

Capx with some test objects and events from the video above.

Steps to Reproduce Bug

Edit or add new event/action.

Observed Result

Delay for up to 4-5s when clicking "Add event" or "Add action", or double-clicking existing event.

Expected Result

No delay.

Affected Browsers

N/A, editor issue.

Operating System and Service Pack

Windows 10 Home, Version 10.0.16299 Build 16299

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU 2.50GHz, 2712 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

RAM 8GB, 256GB SSD

Video Intel(R) HD Graphics 620

Construct 2 Version ID

r252, r251 and earlier versions

Setting "Icon Mode=Don't show unique icons" removes the lag completely.

Then I'm not sure we can do anything about this. That mode is designed to avoid Windows-related icon issues such as this one. If you want unique icons and you have thousands of objects in your project, then when the dialog is opened it has to add thousands of icons to the dialog, and that is what makes it take a long time to open. (The calls are all entirely Windows API functions, so it spends the entire time in Windows code which we don't control.) Basically we already invented the "Don't show unique icons" mode to work around this.

Hi Ashley,

I believe this is the same issue as other people reported in those 2 closed posts.

You wrote there that these issues should be properly logged as bugs, so I'm doing exactly that. I tried to include all details that could be useful.

I don't have "thousands" of objects in my project. The test capx I attached to this bug report has only 92 objects.

The project which I'm referring to as "big" is actually not that big. It's 15Mb in size, has 1500 events and 188 objects (not 370 as I mentioned in the video, I counted them wrong). I believe Construct 2 should definitely be able to handle it.

And this same projects works well without any lags on two much older laptops, including 8 years old Celeron with 4Gb Ram, running Windows 7.

Setting "Icon Mode=Don't show unique icons" removes the lag completely. However, not having unique icons in the editor makes development extremely difficult, especially in a big project with hundreds of objects and long object names.

Switching Icon Caching on or off doesn't seem to make any difference, the lag in both cases is the same.

this is a very interesting fact but i still do not understand why some PCs have this problem and my 2 notebooks with W10 no. I have an old dualcore with 3GB of RAM and W10 32bit and a new i5quadocre with 8GB and W10 64bit, and on both I have never had this kind of problems that we talk about so much lately.

When running C2 in Windows 10, event dialogs are opening with a significant delay.

*When running [ANYTHING] in Windows 10, [EVERYTHING] has a significant delay.

^There you go.

I switched to a new laptop model in my workplace. I should be happy since the hardware is much much faster but lo and behold: Windows 10.

Tried a few of the recommended settings and it would become much much faster temporarily but back into a slug the next day. Now tasks that would normally take me 2 minutes have become 10 with added delays of opening an application with random lags in between.

Running C2 flawlessly now at home with my 2011 model, W7 laptop.

—

It's possible that this problem may be related to recent windows updates (from the past couple of months).

Do you have automatic updates enabled on both your laptops and do you install all recommended updates?

What is the exact Windows version and build number?

Also, do you run Windows for many days or reboot regularly?

MPPlantOfficial

Can we please keep this post on-topic? Several similar posts were closed and I don't want this to happen again.

I don't have any issues with other applications performance on this laptop, only with C2.

—

It's possible that this problem may be related to recent windows updates (from the past couple of months).

Do you have automatic updates enabled on both your laptops and do you install all recommended updates?

What is the exact Windows version and build number?

Also, do you run Windows for many days or reboot regularly?

W10 home build 15063, i don't use updates and usually i I leave the computer switchedON all day and switchedOFF at night when i sleep.

but was not it a problem with icons or updates?

W10 home build 15063, i don't use updates

I read someone else's comment that he too doesn't have these problems on windows build 15063.

So looks like the older windows 10 versions are not affected.

> W10 home build 15063, i don't use updates

>

I read someone else's comment that he too doesn't have these problems on windows build 15063.

So looks like the older windows 10 versions are not affected.

ideal would be if you could try the difference with an old version of W10

EDIT also take a look here

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 46c?auth=1

My guess is it's after a particular windows 10 update that things got slower. Maybe we can pinpoint which one? Here's a lest of them:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4058258

The other topics on similar performance issues seemed to stem from late December. Anyways, here's a list of users that posted their win10 build version and said they were/were not affected. I appended the date of the update, or date range when the exact build wasn't specified.

For anyone who wants to find the exact build of your windows 10, open up notepad and click on help->about.

Affected:

dop2000

16299 (10/17/17 - 1/31/18, but i assume the latest)

--- also mentioned on another thread that after the 1/3/18 update things felt slower.

BackendFreak

15063.850 (1/3/18)

Unaffected:

R0J0hound

10586.633 (10/11/16)

RetroInsight

15063 (4/5/17 - 1/17/18)

NN81

15063 ..

So far the update in question is sometime after April 2017. Maybe the change log could give some revelation of why things are now slower. At the very least I may get an idea when to stop getting win10 updates.

— NN81

What's the exact build number you're using?

The fact you say it is faster when "Don't show unique icons" is set proves that it is in Windows. In this mode, we bypass the code that asks Windows to create icons. We can't ask Windows to do it any quicker. If a dialog is slow to open even with just a few objects, and it's faster with "Don't show unique icons", Windows is somehow being really slow even just to add a few icons. I cannot think of anything we can reasonably do about this, but fortunately we have already implemented the workaround, which is the "Don't show unique icons" mode.

The other thread was mainly about (or at least became about) the fact a recent Windows update appeared to slow down the dialogs even with "Don't show unique icons" mode selected. The ultimate resolution was to update that mode to bypass Windows even more. The fix doesn't work for other icon modes, since every icon is different, so we really have to make a call for every icon.

Identifying the Windows Update that causes this would be interesting, but even knowing exactly which one causes it doesn't necessarily mean we'll be able to do anything about it. Personally I suspect it's the Meltdown/Spectre patches - the timing and performance impact all line up. I guess it could be something else though, but I haven't seen any other headline-grabbing performance-reducing patches recently...

I suppose it makes sense that the Meltdown/Spectre patches are the cause of the slowdown. It looks like the patches rolled out January 3, although one of the big forum topics about things being slow was around the 31 or December before the patches, unless they did some unofficial patch work in a previous update.

Anyways, there seems to be a registry key that can disable the patches for testing purposes. That could be something to test for someone affected by the slowdown.

Ashley

I think both my bug reports about Windows 10 performance are related, or have some common cause.

This delay with event dialogs also depends on windows uptime and/or the number of times C2 was launched.

That test where I opened/closed C2 many times for an hour - event dialogs became very slow after it too.

How come the same Windows API that creates icons works fast after reboot and becomes extremely slow an hour later after C2 application was launched a hundred times?

In that bat-file I don't just start Construct2.exe application, I open a test C2 project with ~90 objects.

So here is an uneducated speculation - maybe all these icons from every C2 session are cached or indexed or something like that, and this cache/index never gets reset?

R0J0hound

Thanks for the tip, I disabled the patches in registry, will see if this helps.

Update: I disabled Meltdown/Spectre updates as described here and tested again with versions r252 and r239.

For each version I rebooted Windows and ran that bat-file for an hour, and in both cases C2 slowed down considerably.

I didn't notice any improvement.

About a year ago I remember having an issue with my downloads folder on Win10. It had about 5000 images and opening the folder would be slow and subsequently scrolling the folder would have an occasional freeze too.

Now that problem is gone. I can open a folder with 50.000 images instantly and scroll it without any kind of hiccups. The icons are lazy loading on the visible area while scrolling the folder. What if some of the icon loading has been changed and now the API C2 uses is actually meant for lazy and not eager loading of the icons?

Also there's this: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... a12?auth=1

dop2000 can you see if you experience odd behavior with the icon cache? The performance degradation over time may be related to this.

This may be worth a shot too: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/increase- ... in-windows

My guess is it's after a particular windows 10 update that things got slower. Maybe we can pinpoint which one? Here's a lest of them:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4058258

The other topics on similar performance issues seemed to stem from late December. Anyways, here's a list of users that posted their win10 build version and said they were/were not affected. I appended the date of the update, or date range when the exact build wasn't specified.

For anyone who wants to find the exact build of your windows 10, open up notepad and click on help->about.

Affected:

dop2000

16299 (10/17/17 - 1/31/18, but i assume the latest)

--- also mentioned on another thread that after the 1/3/18 update things felt slower.

BackendFreak

15063.850 (1/3/18)

Unaffected:

R0J0hound

10586.633 (10/11/16)

RetroInsight

15063 (4/5/17 - 1/17/18)

NN81

15063 ..

So far the update in question is sometime after April 2017. Maybe the change log could give some revelation of why things are now slower. At the very least I may get an idea when to stop getting win10 updates.

— NN81

What's the exact build number you're using?

hi, im using the Version 1703 (OS build 15063.726 - 11/14/2017)