I'm sure I'm not the only one, but lately the server speeds are just unbearably slow. Many, many times the screensaver takes ages to download the newest sheep, and most times I cannot even go to the sheep server page because it will not load, or it takes 10 minutes or more to load completely. I am currently trying to grab some sheep directly off the server page, and it has taken over 5 minutes to download the sheep I am currently grabbing. It's coming over at roughly 30 kb/sec. I consider myself patient, and I am still getting totally frustrated with the server speeds. I am sure the speeds would turn off many who would otherwise be enjoying this screensaver. I am still having issues with the screensaver freezing every few seconds also, and there seems to be no news on if and when this problem might get fixed. It has been going on for over a year now, and I don't even run it very much any more because the freezing kills the entire effect.
I still love this screensaver, but the way things have been going, if i am getting frustrated, I wonder how many new users just give up almost immediately.
there's something unusual
there's something unusual about your graphics card or drivers or operating system and we don't have the resources to fix it since we can't reproduce it (i am assuming you've tried the latest prerelease and gone through all the instructions about dxdiag and gpu-z etc). you talk about it going on for over a year but the new versions haven't been available that long so possibly you are confused. anyway, i don't know of anyone else who has that problem on a single screen. so i don't think this has any impact on adoption by the new users. i'm sorry it doesn't work for you. have you tried it on another computer, or getting a new graphics card? i'll bet that would fix your problem.
now about the server speed yes it is slow. it's very busy. about a week ago i rewrote some of the code to be more efficient and it's actually a lot better than it was. usually if you retry a few times you can get any page within a couple of minutes, if not on the first try. i just tried and i can pull up pages for sheep in about 3 seconds right now. also for about 2 hours 6-8am EST the server is not so busy and you can probably download stuff without any trouble.
but really, very few users access the server pages or download sheep manually. most users don't even know they exist. the client downloads automatically, and as far as i know it works fine for 99%+. if it's not working for you then let me know what you see when you press F2 (after you install the latest prerelease).
Thank you for your response.
Thank you for your response. My graphics card is one of the newest offered by Nvidia, I got it just a few months ago (GTX 275). I haven't tried the latest prerelease yet, so I'll give that a go. Also, I might try running it on a friend's computer, just to see if the freezing happens or not. Thanks.
Spot, just to let you know,
Spot, just to let you know, I've finally had some time to play around with the latest beta, and the screensaver is finally running nice and smooth, no freezing! Now I can actually sit back and enjoy the screensaver. Whatever was causing my stuttering is gone with the newest beta. Also, the sheep are coming over much better now. Also, I like the new settings available in the latest beta. The sheep have never looked better!