[WoW] Keymap performance issue?

I don't think this is directly related to WoW.

Make a keymap for now call it timers.

Then put a key in there, we'll call it masterkey.

Then add keys 1-10 with that naming convention on the following criteria.
Advanced - map key is off by default.
step 1 don't advance to step 2 for 1.5 seconds
step 2 turn off the key.

Then call all 10 keys from the masterkey.


Now, in your main rotation add the masterkey from timers.

In game, run the rotation however you normally do. For me this resulted in a FPS loss around 20 frames. Pretty significant. Though mileage will vary based on concurrent instances. Mine was worse at 5 than it was at 2.

Now disable the timers keymap and try again. The FPS loss should be gone.


I'm interested to see if anyone else has the same results.


Edit: Probably worth noting that my CPU and RAM resources never went above 50% during this test.

[bob]

If you send 10 keys to the window at the same time, then yep, the game might suck eggs and have a massive FPS drop. You will find the same thing happens if you use a large book to press many keys on your keyboard at the same time.

Don't do that... It is stupid and the game, if it does not boot you, will generally only process the first key in the queue anyway, and the rest get dumped eventually.

Although maybe I'm misunderstanding something and perhaps you should share your config with this setup so I can make sure I didn't get anything wrong.

If you read the post through you'll see that the keys are all inactive by default.

Nothing is actually going to the client. That's why it strikes me as an isboxer issue because the masterkey is basically told to call all 10 keys in its keymap which are all inactive.

[bob]

I did read through the first post, and I reckon you have created a loop somewhere, which is not described in your first post. I even went so far as to create the config as you have described, and nothing happens, because all the mapped keys are disabled.

Which is why I suggested you share your config with this setup. Not necessarily because I misunderstood something, but I figured I'd give you the benefit of doubt, and maybe it was me.

You didn't say that in the reply. Anyway, when I turn the entire keymap off the FPS drop is gone.

The map is exactly as I described. This may be a dumb question but how fast are you clicking? Are you pushing a button or scrolling the mouse? I'm asking as I think maybe we're just physically sending input to the client at different speeds which may be contributing to this difference.

Clocking my input comes in about 2/3rds a second on my wheel.

On the config I don't see what that has to do with the topic. The problem is in the keymap quite clearly. If I take the keymap out everything works fine.

[bob]

What does it have to do with your config? Errm, you've just called out you believe it is to do with the Key Map, which is part of your config.

Sometimes I don't necessarily want to send people down a false trail of investigation with Key Maps and Mapped Keys, without seeing what the whole picture is. You missed out describing your whole rotation setup. Sometimes what people write, isn't necessarily what they have configured, which is why the config sharing process exists. Simply, it's easier and usually faster to find most issues if we can see what you have configured. I don't care about your account names and character names. You can anonymise them (ISBoxer will ask you if you want to when you do the Copy Profile to Clipboard).

If you don't actually want help determining whether there is an issue in your config, but rather wanted to know if it happens for others, then let me reiterate that; nope, doesn't happen here doing what you described.

Should this setup cause an FPS drop? - No it shouldn't.
Should any mapped key setup cause an FPS drop? - No; although doing a lot of videofx work destroying and creation, along with some window focus actions, as well as audio actions might cause a brief drop while everything syncs up, but that said, I tend to do a heap of this, and only notice a 3-4 FPS drop for a second or two.
What might cause an FPS drop like this? - Usually because you have a loop, where a mapped key ends up recursively calling back into itself, or a higher part of its chain.

The only reason why I didn't want to share the config was that I didn't think it was necessary. The keymap isn't recursively calling on itself or anything like that.

I wound up fixing it by staggering the key calls. Masterkey now has 10 steps for the 10 key calls. As one would imagine that did fix the FPS drop. I guess the axiom is also for the client. Spamming a huge number of keys simultaneously tends to crunch the processor. As it turns out this was 1 * 5 * 10 every half second? Something around there.

[bob]

Glad you got that sorted. Not that it should have been happening if things were disabled as originally described, but then that seemed a odd setup anyway. I had to assume that part of what was missing was the turn these on instruction.

The other thing to watch out for is when you call your masterkey, that you aren't calling it on Window: All w/ Current, and then have your 1 to 10 mapped keys also calling on Window: All w/ Current, because then it would be 5² * 10 , or even 5³ * 10 if you really manage to get something out of kilter. Although ISBoxer should warn you if you set this kind of thing up, but it wont always catch it if you are using virtualisation.

The way I use it is to turn things on and off. For example Arcane Mage burst periods where I want him to use a different rotation for 10 seconds and then switch back to his normal rotation. I turn it on by the cooldowns key in combat and then 10 seconds later it turns off in the timer keymap.

I suspect that when the key is inactive something is still being processed. A check to see if it is inactive maybe? So doing that 50 times every half second may have caused me to drop frames. Maybe a bug but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

Edit: I don't use virtualization for this keymap.

Edit2: I just checked. The call to the timers keymap only goes to the current window and the individual calls in the keys themselves go to the slots they're supposed to go to.

[bob]

When a mapped key is "inactive" it is actually unloaded, so there is nothing to process.
Yes your master mapped key will still do something. It will say, "execute this mapped key", and then it will go, oh, nope, that mapped key is not loaded. Skip that, move on. The impact that would have is negligible.


As an aside, based on what you have said, and I may have misunderstood it, but, Mapped Keys should not disable themselves. Mainly because you are executing a step, of the same mapped key you want to disable, and that will sometimes have weird behaviours.

Usually when you get into timers and cooldowns, you need to get a bit more into long chains, where you have a 3 level call chain, and the lower level disables the middle of the chain so it no longer calls the lower level. This removes the unpredictability that comes with disabling something you are currently executing.

There are a bunch of posts on this kind of setup around. I don't have links to them all right now, but this is the main one I learnt from:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6140&p=28442&hilit=timer#p28442
I also attempted to cover it later in this thread. http://www.isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 280#p35280