CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpygameclient-server
paul farcas
paul farcas

Reputation: 31

Python pygame Client/Server runs slow

I found a basic space invaders pygame on Youtube and I want to modify it in order that, as of right now, the server is doing all the processing and drawing, and the client only sends keyboard input(all run on localhost). The problem is that the game is no longer that responsive after I implemented this mechanism. It appears to be about 1 second delay after I press a key to when the ship is actually moving (when starting the game from pycharm, when it starts from cmd it's much worse).

I don't have any idea why this is happening because there isn't really anything heavy to process and I could really use your help.

I also monitored the Ethernet traffic in wireshark and there seems to be sent about 60-70 packets each second.

Here is the github link with all the necesary things: https://github.com/PaaulFarcas/C-S-Game

Upvotes: 3

Views: 306

Answers (1)

Kingsley
Kingsley

Reputation: 14924

I would expect this code in the main loop is the issue:

    recv = conn.recv(661)
    keys = pickle.loads(recv)

The socket function conn.recv() will block until 661 bytes are received, or there is some socket event (like being closed). So your program is blocking every iteration of the main loop waiting for the data to arrive.

You could try using socket.setblocking( False ) as per the manual.

However I prefer to use the select module (manual link), as I like the better level of control it gives. Basically you can use it to know if any data has arrived on the socket (or if there's an error). This gives you a simple select-read-buffer type logic loop:

procedure receiveSocketData
    Use select on the socket, with an immediate timeout.
    Did select indicate any data arrived on my socket?
        Read the data, appending it to a Rx-buffer
        Does the Rx-buffer contain enough for a whole packet?
            take the packet-chunk from the head of the Rx-buffer
            decode & return it
        Else
            Keep the Rx-Buffer somewhere safe
            return None
    Did any errors happen on my socket
        clear Rx-Buffer
        close socket
        return error

I guess using an unknown-sized packet, you could try to un-pickle it, and return OK when successful... this is quite inefficient though. I would use a fixed size packet and the struct module to pack and unpack it in network-byte-order.

Upvotes: 2

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