MTG slowdown since 1.8.2 build 2917

[discjacker]

Prior to updating to patch 1.8.2 with the release of the Scars set MTG Studio ran perfectly since the patch it now takes upwards of 20 seconds to change the selected card in the collection window. For instance if I switch from Cloud of Faeries to Frantic Search when I am updating the quantity column the software lags for around 20 seconds each switch. My collection is currently just over 100k cards but in the prior versions it has not had this lag when updating quantity. If I attempt to use the "+/-" keys to update quantity it takes about 20 seconds per key stroke same for the add to your collection button.

Has anybody else experienced these difficulties?

I just went back and tried my 1.8.1 Install and it takes approximately 1 second between switching the selected cards with the same collection.

Thanks

[gaddlord]

Dude - are you Rockefeller's nephew? 100K+ cards!
The 1.8.2 Scars patch is nothing more than an updated card pool database. There is no change the program logic.

I suggest you send me your 100K collection zipped to gaddlord@mtgstudio.com and I can check where the slowness occurs.

I am working just now on a new file format for the Collection v3.0 which should be considerably faster.

[discjacker]

I understand what your saying completely. I should have uninstalled and reinstalled 1.8.2 before I posted anyway so let me try that first if the lag still occurs I will then send you my collection file.

[discjacker]

No success, this time I completely removed the 1.8.2 and 1.8.2.1 version and patch then reinstalled just the 1.8.2 program.

Same lag, once I add a card then switch to another row there is a 30-40 second lag where the program seems to freeze. In this case I imported the collection that it found in the 1.8.1 install at start-up.

So I uninstalled and then reinstalled it again and when it asked me if I wanted to import the collection from 1.8.1 I said no. I swapped too the Collection from Pool window and it had the old collection loaded, which seemed odd because I had said no when prompted to import.

In any case now I am ready to send you the collection file and see if you can duplicate the problem. Let me reiterate that in version 1.8.1 it runs perfectly fine, with little to no lag.

Thanks for your time and thanks for the wonderful program.

[Schwanke]

I have no idea if this helps or confuses the issue but for the record back in 2.8.1 (1, not 2) I had that exact same problem and all of my collections were under 50 cards.

I just assumed it was my machine being stupid because it is 5 years old. I also had not reinstalled in over a year so I suspected I was getting the windows old age meltdown symptoms. (This is XP, not even vista)

1.8.2 seemed to FIX the problem, somewhat but I could still feel it a little and I got a virus right around the time of switching to .3 beta so I had to reinstall and now its pretty fast atleast as I would expect for a lame machine like mine lol.

Btw, might want to check if any other programs are doing it. I noticed firefox was doing it too. When I reinstalled everything, everything was normal so I suspect either the virus I had had hooked itself into something in the OS that ran when something basic like rendering buttons happened or something or some basic OS file got corrupted and it was slow on something similar.

What I am saying is even if it only happens with studio it may not be studio, it may be something in the OS like a driver issue having to do with rendering or task switching or something. Maybe the OS part of whatever code does the database calls is getting dirty. Did you do anything like update any drivers around the same time? Or install any other software? Just ideas to look at.

*EDIT*
Reinstall=reinstall windows. XP pretty much needs to be reinstalled every 6 months to a year if you run a lot of shareware cuz of registery and driver confusion from random software. Atleast thats my experience.

[gaddlord]

Thanks to the sumitted 100K+ file I was able to reproduce it.
My suspicion proved right. Upon adding a card to the collection a check is performed whether the card is already present if you have 100 000 cards, upto 100 000 checks are performed if the card is not present in the collection so far.

In the new MTG Studio 1.9 I have replaced in currently used internal database for card pool, collection, decks and prices. Adding a card to your migrated to 1.9 collection took only 300 milliseconds compared to the 18 seconds in 1.8.X on Virtual Machive with Windows XP running under Mac OS 10.6.4 with Core Duo 2.93 Ghz and 4GB RAM.

Which means that the performace has been improved 3600 times or with 360000%.

I guess you simply have to wait for the new 1.9.

It will use almost 2 times less memory, the card pool database size will be more than 2 times less and the speed of all operations will ne improved.
+ there will be no direct dependency from Microsoft Database Access Components.

[discjacker]

Excellent...nice to know what was causing the problem. I will continue to use 1.8.1 since it runs with little lag. Still have 4 5000 count boxes to add + some 40 or so sealed boxes from over the years.

[gaddlord]

4 5000 count boxes to add

Good for you. Are you running a shop on your own or it just happens that you are but far the richest Magic collector I know (and believe me I know thousands).

Initially when I designed MTG Studio collection is was thinking of supporting around 10K rows since this is the number I thought will barely be reachable.

You currently have 15K+ rows!. I will have to admit it, never even imagined that MTG Studio will handle it.

The new 1.9 will also have the hidden benefit that the collection file will be around 10 times smaller. Which means that your 8 MB file should be less than 1MB in size in the future.

[discjacker]

Private collector I have been collecting since the beginning though not always playing, but I manage to pick of 2-4 boxes of each set and just store them until I want to use them. I have also absorbed many collections along the way from friends who have retired from playing or collecting. This summer I finally took the time too add them all to MTG Studio. At one point about half way through I accidentally started an older install (1.7) after using 1.8 for a week and added about 5000 cards to the collection. Once I noticed the mistake I had to recount every card that had already been sorted to double check the quantity. That was a major pain. This is a project that I have wanted to get through for many years and thanks to your software I am nearly at that point.

[Keiser]

Something you may want to do once you have your collection complete in MTGStudio is sort by quantity, then cut down some of the commons to a playset or two. Since I also put every single card in penny sleeves it'll free up some sleeves for me.

I mean who really needs 18 Hand of Emrakuls from ROE or 12 Bog Rats from "The Dark" set? What I'm going to do is take all the extras I don't need and sell them in one big lot on eBay, maybe get $30-50 for a bunch of commons. Already have a booster box full of extras. Of course uncommons and rares I will always keep no matter how many I have.

[Schwanke]

I didnt want to say anything cuz I thought it might come out rude but 10k cards is nothing really to someone who counts 'everything'. I've already bought a 5000 lot, a 3500 lot, several couple hundred lots and I have about 8 booster boxes in other cards I havnt gone through yet except to pull out rares. Figure a booster is 15x36=540cards. 10k cards is only 20 booster boxes. Ive seen people on mtg salvation that buy 6 booster cases on a regular basis to pull rares.

Now granted most people I think who pull rares are trying to sell them and so may find ways to dump the commons instead of entering them into a database but if your like me you'll want everything in the database so you can list them easy.

I was thinking for example of those 5000 lot 4k are commons I was going to do some listings by color maybe or edition and then say out of all of the lists 10 for a quarter includes shipping or something. Then people can get exactly what they want and I make a penny a card for my time lol.

Btw, in a slight comparison I have 20,000 baseball cards sitting in my basement from when I was a kid. Worthless now probably but its not hard at all to get a large collection of collectable cards. They tend to pile up when you have a large skew between valuable and common. And this was on a 14 to 16 year old's budget with a small allowance plus gifts.

And to the original topic lol, ill just chalk up my whackyness as crap [CENSORED] computer lol.

LOL it censored me and I used the polite version lol.

[gaddlord]

I mean 10000 rows not 10 000 cards.
One row means one unique reprint of a card. So far there are not more than 28 000 unique reprints WotC has ever printed.
Multiply by two for foil/non-foil.
So in general there should not be a need to have more than 50K rows in the collection.

[Schwanke]

Well I do seperate rows for each type because I have multiple conditions as well as multiple locations. Like I have the ones I got with my 5K batch which have 2 to 3 corners that are slightly abused. I have the ones I got with the 3.5K batch where they have about 1 corner abused. Then I have the mint straight from booster to sleeves. Then I have the heavily played which are pretty much worthless but I'm anal and would put everything in eventually.

So I'll have about 3 to 4 rows atleast per common that I have one in all four versions.

Now granted I wont have every common ever made and 4 versions of each atleast but it greatly incresses it then the standard 1 per common. Uncommons and rares of course less likely but still possible to some degree.

Its unlikely I will ever break your limit because I will start selling before I start getting that high but thought I would mention for the sake of statistics.

Nice to know your software is good enough for that situation though eh? Thats like saying "You built the space shuttle using just MY screwdriver?"

Thanks!