hexagon5un
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MCPE-120971 seems to be the most relevant for chunk loading. The report is not specific to the Switch, and dates back to 1.16, though, so I'm not sure that it's the same root cause. The symptoms fit, though, and I don't have the code to look at. 🙂
I have opened MCPE-156497 for the block-breaking lag post 1.18.30 on the Switch, which I have experienced to be significantly different/worse than pre 1.18.30.
On Nintendo Switch, single player.
Chunks load so slowly that they can be caught with a boat on water, and travel with an elytra beyond 6 chunks or so is pointless.
My observations with the elytra are post-1.18.30, but there were definitely chunk loading issues with boat beforehand, not sure if into 1.17 or not.
In a boat, you can just sit and wait it out. With the elytra, you just slowly sink to the ground at the chunk border unless you shoot a rocket straight up to keep altitude.
Been playing for a week now on 18.33, Switch, single-player, ~190 MB world.
Where before the game would freeze when opening a chest or player inventory, now it displays the VU-meter-bars waiting thing, and you can continue to move, but it can take a minute or longer for the dialog to open.
Block-breaking lag has been extremely variable – much of the time it's OK, and then sometimes you have 10 seconds or more of staring through the world, or waiting for it to update. Oddly enough, shadows seem to render almost instantly that the block is broken or placed, and water seems to flow appropriately as well.
Chunk loading is consistently very slow. I don't have a benchmark on Switch for this, because I (finally) got elytra during 18.32, but I can't really use them because as soon as I fly more than ~8 chunks, the new chunks take ~10-15 s to load in, at which time the character is stuck at the border, slowly losing altitude. I did notice slow chunk loads in a boat prior to the whole 18.3x issues, though, so maybe this isn't new. But elytra are essentially unusable because the world cannot keep up.
Played another three-hour session on 1.18.32, Switch, now nearly 180 MB world, single player. It froze a few times for around 20 seconds and many times for around 5 seconds – I didn't time it or count accurately this time.
Looking at the changelog, it says "Addressed chunk loading and freezing issues on Nintendo Switch (MCPE-154110)" and I can't say that's wrong. It doesn't say "fixed", but merely "addressed". That's true. The problem was reduced, although it still exists.
Does this mean that this ticket should be closed as resolved? A 90% fix was implemented, but the core symptoms still persist. If this ticket is closed, should we open another ticket for the remaining intermittent stalls? (Honest question. I really don't know the dev culture here.)
There is also new significant block lag that didn't exist before 1.18.30, and it's unpleasant. You break a block and it still persists for a few seconds. It's in your inventory and you can walk through it, but it's like the rendering hasn't caught up. I don't know enough about the game code to guess if this is related or not. Probably should be on another ticket.
If I were coming to the game fresh, I would say that it's laggy, buggy, and freezes occasionally. I would probably want my money back. Having played before 1.18.30 when it worked really well, and having been run through the past three weeks of complete unplayability, I'd say it's improved over 1.18.30/31.
Much improved, but I would not call it "fixed". (~170 MB world, single-player, Switch) Still, definite progress has been made! 🙂
I played for ~4 hours last night and it hung 7 times. One time for 4 minutes, one time for 2 minutes. The others were ~20 sec, which is still game-ending if it happens at the wrong time, but not entirely frustrating as it was under 1.18.30 and .31.
Still, I don't trust the game enough to run it without making a backup copy of the world before playing. Imagine you're in a cave when the 20 sec of paralysis sets in.
Under 1.18.30, the world continued on as the player froze. Under 1.18.31, the world appeared to stop with the player, which is good for single-player, but can't possibly work out for multi, right? Under 1.18.32, the old behavior of the world moving on reappeared – the time that it froze for 4 minutes, the sun had set and it had gotten dark by the time my character could move again.
The problem appears to be stochastic, and whatever fix is in has dramatically reduced the frequency of occurrence, but it still happens.
I would not call this fixed. Triaged, band-aided? My gut says that the root cause is still there. (Or it's another problem with exactly the same symptoms...)
Can confirm not fixed on Nintendo Switch.
Updated to 1.18.31 manually.
Started playing in my ~170 MB main world at 9:34. It went OK for three minutes, then locked up for 30s. Then I could more for ~5 sec before it locked up again for around a minute, followed by another minute and a half, before I had enough time to get my character back inside and post this.
I was playing about 10 min. elapsed, of which it was frozen for about 4 min.
I didn't bother testing it out on smaller worlds, because this behavior is exactly the same as in 1.18.30.
Mojang folks, are you testing on Switch with a large enough game save? I don't know how to get the worlds off of a Switch to send to you, but if there's a way, I'd volunteer.
Is there some logging level we can turn on to provide helpful feedback?
Tested with different world save sizes, and everything is fine at 8 MB, but basically unplayable beyond 80 MB.
Last night, I went exploring and when I had the first real freeze (>20 sec of paralysis) the game save size was at 12.1 MB.
The smaller worlds are not consistently horrible – you can play for 30 min without a lockup, whereas > 100 MB, it happens every couple minutes or even more frequently. My 160 MB world is out literally more than it's in – the events are more frequent and last longer. It seems to be probablistic, and strongly increasing in save file size.
If you switch out to the Switch home screen, everything is running as usual. It doesn't appear to be that the console is OOM.
Switch, single player, local.
Since the game has been essentially broken for all Switch players with large worlds, it would be nice to have had an emergency rollback. As of now, those players are simply unable to play for the last week. This isn't a small glitch, but rather completely ruins the game experience.
My son was playing on our Switch today, and had no troubles. He is in a new/small world of about 6 MB, whereas mine where I was having the worst problems is >150 MB.
I loaded up my big world again afterwards, and it still has the freezing/stalling problem. I tried an old save world of around 80 MB, testing for size, and that also has the problem.
Then I played about 15 minutes, without any lockups, on a brand-new world. (3 MB or so). I'm going to put in some more time tonight, but at least preliminarily it appears to have to do with the size of the save file.
Don't know if it matters, but my larger, old worlds were started just at the end of 1.17, so they have some old chunks in them. I'll see if I can find a small, old save file just to test this variable.
Can confirm. Lags/stalls for 20-30s every couple minutes.
Seems to be correlated with both autosaves and opening chests. But not exclusive to either.
There seem to also be little micro-stalls that happen a lot more frequently, i.e. normal movement has become intermittently choppy. I'm not sure if these are the same thing, of if I've just become hypersensitive.
Playing locally, single-player, Nintendo Switch.
Can also confirm that when you get two skeletons shooting at you for 20s, you wake up dead, but that's neither here nor there. Getting periodically paralyzed makes doing everything dangerous.
Just got back to playing, updated to 1.19 on Switch. Same freezing problem still persists. Froze for a minute or two, came back to hear a rain of pillager arrows and die.
For others out there, remember to make a copy of your world before you start playing or after you do anything that you really want to keep. Because you may die randomly.