PVP unplayability, a thought about Flash Player 10.1 changes

[guy_fawkes]

So,
as probably most of you have noted, the PVP fights encounter a lot of issues lately..
like 60% or more of the games i play end up in the CPU taking over because my opponent time out...

that's quite annoying so i tried to think about some possible causes..
i noted that flash movies act in a different way than before when they are put in background.

i tried to open the game and waited for it to load,but  when switched bach to another window the loading seemed to "stall" till the window was focused again...
pretty lame...

also i think that the normal player experience in PVP is to play, then maybe switch for a while on a forum or on a chat to do other things, then go back to play when they hear the sound of cards played... (that's the way i play normally!)

i found this artice and it's pretty interesting:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/03/timing-it-right.html
i qoute an interesting part about Flash 10.1 changes when the flash movie is put in background :

In Flash Player 10.1 SWFs on hidden tabs are limited resource wise. Whereas they would run at full speed in Flash Player 10.0 and before (note though that we NEVER rendered, we only continued to run ActionScript, audio decoding and video decoding), we now throttle the Flash Player when a SWF instance is not visible. Doing this change was not easy as I had to add many exceptions to avoid breaking old content. Here is a list of some of the new rules:

Visible:

    * SWF frame rates are limited and aligned to jiffies, i.e. 60 frames a second. (Note that Flash Playe 10.1 Beta 3 still has an upper limit of 120 which will be changed before the final release)
    * timers (AS2 Interval and AS3 Timers) are limited and aligned to jiffies.
    * local connections are limited and aligned to jiffies. That means a full round trip from one SWF to another will take at least 33 milliseconds. Some reports we get say it can be up to 40ms.
    * video is NOT aligned to jiffies and can play at any frame rate. This increases video playback fidelity.

Invisible:

    * SWF frame rate is clocked down to 2 frames/sec. No rendering occurs unless the SWF becomes visible again.
    * timers (AS2 Interval and AS3 Timers) are clocked down to 2 a second.
    * local connections are clocked down to 2 a second.
    * video is decoded (not rendered or displayed) using idle CPU time only.
    * For backwards compatibility reasons we override the 2 frames/sec frame rate to 8 frames/sec when audio is playing.

i am leavig the word now to the developers, maybe this behavour conflicts with the way pvp communication is implemented.

good luck

[Dragoon]

Yes, I noticed this "pausing" when I was playing the AI while multitasking.  Before, I could play my turn, hit space bar, go do something else on another tab, then come back in a little bit and play my turn again.  But now, when you leave the tab or window the game is in, it "pauses" and waits for you to come back to the tab/window.  This really kills playing while multitasking.  And it may be the culprit to the desyncs too like you said.  I know at the least, most people play while also chatting in the elements chat room.  Interesting find guy_fawkes . . .

[Demagog]

Ya, the freezing does suck... I have to zoom out really far so I can multitask. I'd kinda like to see a program built for Elements, meaning it's not browser related. That way it's not dependent on flash. I think that would require a drastic rework of the code though, so unless we have someone that doesn't mind doing a lot of work, I doubt it will ever happen.

[guy_fawkes]

there's for sure a workaround that does not need a total rework of the actual structure...
it must be in the communication used in the pvp...

[wizelsnarf]

I was just about to make a post about how annoying this is.

So there is no way to let flash keep running in another window? Anybody have any ideas? It is REALLY frustrating. Grinding is painful now. I practically have to be reading a magazine or do some other non electronic activity to make it bearable.

Let me know if you stumble on a work around... Thanks!