Dev Blog 16th November - The Vaults in Our Stars

Well played

 

I work in IT too. I know full well what you are talking about and it is sadly, painful, true.

"The program isn't working. I didn't do anything."

Well, stop clicking no when it asks you if you want to run the program... christ...

 

Yes, but I'm hosting locally.
You should have known that.

 

Back on topic, how common are the vaults, where are they typically found and how many unique Tiled pieces are there? I'm looking forward to a new dungeon crawl, especially with such a rare and powerful treasure as the grand prize. Are there any other ancient treasures waiting for us? New building materials? Furniture? Bragging rights?

This is no ordinary challenge room...

 

Now THAT'S useful info. It could be some bug causes it to slow down and that might lead them in a good direction to find it. However I do have a possible

You have a reasonably high CPU core count? I have to guess know that too you see.

The game(as far as I'm aware) isn't designed to efficiently distribute the work across different cores. I'll load up Sysinternals Process Explorer. I'm looking at 16 threads going on, but most of them minor. Most the work is being done by one thread, on one CPU core. That's while I'm on my ship.

I moved to the Outpost and went 1x zoom just to stress it. Now that one major thread seems rivaled by another. Only problem... they're both using the same CPU core(0) and are now maxing out that CPU core(don't fear I have 7 more). Having to share the maxed out CPU core means that first thread I mentioned is being slowed down. I'm going to guess that other thread is more involved in running object scripts. Well there is more animation going on here too so it could be that. I'm only guessing without digging in further.

Now Starbound IS designed to work across multiple computers. Clients connecting to a server. I don't play multiplayer because my internet is too unreliable to consider it, so I don't have direct experience playing it multiplayer. But consider this reasonable assumption - the server is handing the logic. NPC AI, most your scripts, weather, terrain generation, etc. The client is handling the processing of assets, animation, rendering. And playing on a server divided up that task. Your server is running on the same computer, but probably not on the same CPU core.

Starbound is CPU limited. It barely registers with my GPU and my GPU is dated for sure. Some of these minor threads are on different CPU cores, but the most intensive threads share one. So I'm guessing your use of a local server forces the work to be divided and that results in better FPS. Don't get me wrong, that's a less "efficient" way to do things. But less efficient across two cores might be better in this case than more efficient on one core.

It isn't what I do now. I'm currently wasting my life away working low paying retail. But I haven't forgotten tech support. There are some ill-advised moments when I consider returning.

We're so very off track in this thread, but it is far too late now. The train has left the rails and there is no putting it back.

 

Your lack of faith in people being able to have a normal conversation saddens me slightly.

On a slightly more related but off topic note (probably a Fa), did you know a lot of people still can't figure out avali genders?

 

I agree that people complaining doesn't help, I also said that there was no way for them not to know about the performance issues before 1.0 was released because people were complaining about it which was my direct reply to @lazarus78 post:

Because that's the point of early access, it's not just a service to play the game early. When the pre 1.0 update was pushed to stable players noted a drop in performance that hadn't existed prior to it. 1.0 was pushed out in late July but even in June there were plenty of posts regarding the frame rate on the steam forums.

Looking into an issue doesn't mean it's only them trying to figure it out as I've worked with devs in the past to fix issues I've had with other games they've never encountered on their systems. The mods have been moving through threads about FPS issues and relaying that information to the devs which is what I'd expect at most.

As it stands I'm aware they're working on performance for 1.2 so I'm not up in arms about it.

 

Ah, ok. Of course they knew about the beat performance issues; and they fixed them! The game runs much smoother for most people now. The fact that it doesn't for some indicates that those issues are new or were not recognised as seperate problems before 1.0.

As for mods searching threads and relaying info: As far as I know, the mods are not actually CF employees, and I wouldn't rely on them taking on all this work.

 

It's not a widespread thing, but here and there some of the mods are asking users for additional information regarding their pcs so they can send the information off to the devs.

Also when did the Chucklefish forums switch to XenoForo?

 

It's always been XenForo™ as far as I can recall.

And woah boy it's a good one!

 

Huh, I always felt it was something different at one point. Oh well, just a minor observation.

 

The females are less colorful, right?

 

What's this? Something realistic about the avali?

Nope, can't accept that.

 

This is cool and all, but you NEED to bring back the monster powers. It's a huge problem that's pushing me towards quitting because of how boring they are.

 

(EDIT: !!!WAIT!!! CHECK third POST OF MINE IN THIS THREAD TO FIND PROPER INFORMATION, THIS IS FROM HIGHLY MODDED AND UNSTABLE AND COMPRESSED STARBOUND WITH POSSIBLE MOD INCONSISTENCIES AND LACK OF PROPER USER FILE PERMISSIONS.)

Hello,

"People were complaining about performance issues far before 1.0 was released"

>"Complaining, with no further data given when asked."


I kinda laughed a lot at this. I feel like for some reason the public isn't actually getting any chance to talk about performance at all; and every single time it's brought up you hear: "Complaining, with no further data given when asked."..... Like is that a joke? Cause It truly worries me about a product that is advertised and paid for that doesn't have more people looking into things like performance and the such.

Doesn't have to be an open source game, but it might as well be No Man's Sky if nobody can voice questions or opinions.. Sad days..

 

People can and have voiced their questions and opinions, and many are heard. Unfortunately, most tend to provide little information regarding what prompted the issue, their system specs, and other information that the developers/modders need in order to bugfix.
As a modder, I can testify to people complaining about an issue by simply saying "Here's an issue that happened, this is a description of the problem" and nothing else. No log, no specs, often not even a simple recollection of how it happened in the first place.
Conversations end up often going like:
"Here's a problem. Fix it."
"How do I recreate it?"
"I dunno... Fix it!"
"Can you post a log?"
"How?"
"*Explains*"
"TLR. Fix it."
or
"*Posts log. Not enough information beyond showing an error occurred.*"
"What other mods do you have? What were you trying to do? Etc."
"too many mods. Trying to play your mod. Fix it."

 

I've actually been working on it recently, and I haven't seen anyone who seemed to have true knowledge of NVIDIA specific driver tweaking with nvidia inspector and what the things actually mean. Another thing that helps to note is I compressed my PNG's (quite easily, was fun too), and so the game utilizes my SSD better to compromise for my slower CPU. That example is irrelevant but I can say that you need to be sure to change NVIDIA inspector settings regarding vsync in both starbound as well as steam.exe, and general tab as well.


I think it's extremely childish to respond with something like "little information" because to me it almost seems like there is not a single person playing this game who knows about computers? Or am I just not seeing any of the real tests being done? I simply got this game a few days ago and now have uncovered my own FPS boost that I have yet to see anywhere else.... And it is also using knowledge that I almost feel is commonplace among gamers and overclocking enthusiasts.

It's a little scary when I see things like your post being upvoted so much, and yet nobody has input into why these things are happening.. Do people feel comfortable with 20 fps? (edit: The real question is why the heck aren't you looking into performance right now? I have been for the past 15 hours...)


I could explain the details as to my conclusion but that would require me spending time to record exact data.

Let's just say NVIDIA SILK smoothness, as well as max-pre-rendered frames, coupled with Vsync forced with steam and starbound set to NVIDIA Fast Sync, and upping my FPS limit on both steam and other various windows apps, you can unlock your fps.... It's quite simple and I was wondering why there is no guide out there. Or am I blind?

It's not 60 fps because to get 60 fps I would have to have direct access to the source code and see how the engine is written, and fix it from there. But I can't do that. So I get 58-100 fps now. Depending on what I'm doing. (2x zoom)

 

Maybe its nothing, but I find it kinda interesting that people that are more computer savvy are mostly not the ones posting about problems, but rather people who are probably not so savvy. So maybe the reason why no one is really looking into it is because those that know how, are not the ones with the issues.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe that is just short sighted of me. Ill go with that.

 

That isn't quite true that no one has any input. The topic has been talked about before this(MANY times and topic fatigue sets in). I suggested the image optimization... in this very thread. Well more like I brought it up again figuring it had been missed. Also in THIS THREAD I went into CPU core usage. I've suggested other things in the past, such as virtual memory/pagefile usage(I recommend to disable if you have sufficient RAM and ESPECIALLY if you are using an SSD). As for assets loading slowing you down, if you have the RAM to spare, you could even run SB off a RAMdisk(I've done that previously for some games).

See not everyone has performance issues. It isn't like this is universal, and that's the problem. There ARE things the devs could do to improve the performance in general, but that doesn't speak to those who SHOULD have smooth play but don't. The reason isn't known and they haven't been able to reproduce the problem on their end. Most those who do have this problem aren't willing to provide the critical information. System specs, software environment, LOGS, etc. You need to be able to reproduce a situation sometimes. That really narrows down the search.

And as for what you're speaking about, I have no idea because I don't experience 20FPS or whatever. I have smooth 60FPS game play and my system is dated. It was never "amazing" either. While I do have an SSD now, for some reason I haven't bothered to reinstall Starbound on it. I'm using NVIDIA cards too, but I haven't looked into the things you mention(and don't really feel the need to personally). But if you want to elaborate, that could help other people out. Actually I'm going to recommend separate thread for that.

Now Jareix Cryvix is absolutely correct. People want you to help them, but are absolutely unwilling to help you help them. Anyone who's done technical support etc would understand this well. They refuse to provide any information at all. They aren't interested in considering how anything works. They just KNOW that you're supposed to have magical insight. Not just regular people using mods either, but some people asking for "help" in the mod forum for their own mods... and don't provide a scrap of info that would help you help them. These are the people who should know better, right?

So people like us get annoyed at hearing how things should be "looked into" etc. How? Specifics please. And see how you did provide at least a hint of information(without getting into much detail), but only AFTER your assertions where challenged? That probably wasn't deliberate/planned on your part, you just didn't think to say that in the first place. It seems to be a weird quirk of human nature, but that quirk makes this sort of thing far more difficult than it should be(occasionally impossible). Provide the information you have up front and things work smoother.