Time Module and the Game Clock

[Moonunit921]

I'm having a problem with the game clock not advancing, or advancing at a staggered rate. I'd like to use the time module to advance the game clock if possible - can this be done, and if so, how? Any suggestions?

[Acrodania]

There are a couple of threads on the NWN forums on fixing this issue. Basically what the game engine is telling you is that you are overloading the heartbeat system....

Do a search on the forums, it will be more effective than using a plugin (timin-wise) and you already have enough load on your script engine if this is happening. The fix is simple to implement and is only a few lines of code that equal no script load hardly at all.

Luck!!

[Moonunit921]

Heh, we've already gone through the Bioforums, and tried that fix. We figure it's something with the host (it's not the mod for sure) and thought that forcing the game clock to advance might be a solution.

[FunkySwerve]

It's not the host, it's severe module overload. The only real long-term solution is to clean up your mod scripts. It's not fun, or easy, but you will definitely learn from it. Forcing the update just places more load on an already overloaded mod.
Funky

[Moonunit921]

What had me thinking it wasn't the mod is that it works fine on two other servers. Maybe the machine in question can't handle the overhead, thus causing the clock to be low-priority-skipped?

[dougnoel]

[Moonunit921]

PRC 2.2c - HB scripts built in. Changing to 3.0d too, and it only gets worse I'm told. I have a pseudoHB saveloc using NWNX, NESS planned for impelentation, and that's it. Other than that, there's no HB in the mod.

Two systems are close - 1.8GHz P4 512mb RAM. The other is my development machine which is a 2.4Ghz Athlon w/1.25 Gb RAM. It's the two similar systems that's stumping me. Could be the amount of players on, I guess.

[Acrodania]

[Moonunit921]

System resources, CPU 1-2% tops (empty), spikes up to about 20% every couple of minutes for a sec or two. Profiler gets ruthlessly torn apart by FluffyAmoeba on a regular basis to track down any lag culprits. There are some things I can do to reduce overhead, like static creatures removed and stuff, and I'm hoping that NESS will fix that.

Drifting slightly OT

I have the line

SetTime(GetTimeHour(), GetTimeMinute(), GetTimeSecond(), GetTimeMillisecond());

in the heartbeat script to force the game clock to work, but it still doesn't go on the host system. And I checked, all that's on the HB right now is PRC stuff - forest gnome hiding in forests check, daylight adaption check, and crafting progress check. Standard stuff.

[odenien]

Is the host machine a linux machine? There is a major problem keeping up with the clock on that platform. We use locals on the mod in the heartbeat script to store the time, with a check to verify it has not started malfunctioning.

[Moonunit921]

Nope, Windows XP, German version (which is really wierd when viewing the desktop through a client, and I don't speak German )