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Bug/Issue Game performance (Lags)

Discussion in 'Starbound Support' started by Cat_Fuzz, Sep 20, 2016.

  1. Iris Blanche

    Iris Blanche Pudding Paradox Forum Moderator

    Starbound runs on OpenGL, DirectX support was removed during early access. 30FPS max sounds to me like some wrong driver settings (e.g. apative vsync with half refresh rate, maybe some sort of frameratelimiter is also running).
    If you can attach a screenshot of your base it could help to track down eventual performance problems.
    What if the game is running fine on their machines? I also don't have much problems on my machine either. If fps drops it not often drops below 50 fps. (with fu sometimes down to 40 fps)
    If you wanna ask what machine i have:
    i7 3770 @ 3,4GHz
    16GB Ram
    MSI Geforce GTX 1060 6GB
    Starbound is installed on a sata3 hdd with 5400RPM (so not the fastest drive lol)
    OS is Win 10 64bit

    ~ Iris ~
     
  2. Gotcha!

    Gotcha! Pangalactic Porcupine

    Adaptive vsync is not an option for me when I check the settings. It might be an nVidia thing I guess? There are some things that I can configure in Radeon Settings for Starbound, but anything I do here leads to nowhere. I've put everything I can to "let the application decide".

    Here's a picture of my base, but please keep in mind that this is not the only place where things run slow. The library mission for one is also dreadful. I also had a lot more automated doors as well as inhabitants. I don't feel removing a bunch of them did do much good, but I did anyway.
    And the biggest issues I have is when my character moves fast vertically. If I move up or down in my base the framerate plummets as fast as my character. And in the last boss world, where you need to drop down to reach the core: Forget about it. A one-second freeze at least and when the next frame decided to render I'm already dead. (Thankfully there are mods that provide flying vehicles.)

    I tried a mod that basically removes all backgrounds (in case the framerate drops were due to loading these backgrounds while moving through layers), but that did nothing.

    One thing that DID improve in 1.2 when compared to 1.0 is the ship world. I have a maxed out crew and had a low framerate in the past, but it's all gone in 1.2. Go figure.
     
  3. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    Once again, you are assuming they know what the issue is. If they can't reproduce it, they literally don't know where to even begin to look. Expecting them to fix anything when they don't know where to look is just short sighted. I mean, honestly, you want them to fix these performance issues, right? How exactly do you expect them to start? Seriously, I want to know what you expect them to do when they don't even know where to begin looking.

    Also, the people adding the content are not the same people who do the programming. So holding back content because of a programming issue (that they cant reproduce, mind you) isn't helping anything or anyone.

    OpenGL wasn't removed, DirectX was.


    And I will continue replying to you since this is relevant to the topic. You seem adamant on pressing the issue, so providing perspective is important. Chucklefish isn't being neglectful here. If they knew what was causing the issues, it would be in their best interest to resolve them, no?
     
  4. Gotcha!

    Gotcha! Pangalactic Porcupine

    I don't assume they know anything; if they did lots of people wouldn't have framerate issues.
    Shoveling more dirt into a ship that's barely afloat as it is doesn't seem like the best thing to do to me.
    Again, you're of no help; whether you care to see it or not, to me you're just acting like some protectorate of Chucklefish, talking people down who're frustrated about Chucklefish' lack of resolve.

    I have low hopes of getting some actual dev help but will wait for it regardless. Meanwhile you can focus your energy elsewhere because I simply have no desire to have these conversations with you.
    You said it yourself, you're not here to help. Then move on.
     
  5. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    The game actually runs fine for the vast majority of people. The added content doesn't "weigh it down" any more, so it won't compound any existing issues.

    So what are you expecting them to do that they haven't done already? You keep making calls for chucklefish to "fix" the game, but that is about it. What are you expecting them to do?

    Imagine, if you will. I tell you my 94 accord car is broken, and nothing else. What is the problem with my car? You should be able to figure it out without knowing anything else about my car, nor even seeing my car, eh? No? Chucklefish is in the same boat. They can't replicate the performance problems some are having, they have nothing to work with outside of vague complaints, thus they cant even begin to fix is. So, again, what do you expect them to do? I honestly want to know.

    I am not a "protectorate of Chucklefish", I simply want people to understand things better and not unreasonably blame anyone for things.

    Ensuring people have a better understanding of what is going on, and how things work is important to prevent people from getting the wrong idea. Chucklefish adding more game content doesn't take away, nor harm their desire to resolve performance issues. Those tasks are handled by different people.
     
  6. Gotcha!

    Gotcha! Pangalactic Porcupine

    I find this doubtful, really. There's a difference between fine and somewhat acceptible. I've been enduring this low framerate for a while now, I can imagine other people do as well. I'm not alone with these problems.
    I know perfectly fine what's going on: The game is poorly optimized. When I walk towards the open gate towards the final boss and the game turns into a slideshow it's clear to me that things are not in order.
    I'm expecting them to read my frustration and hopefully do something about it. Meanwhile I'm ignoring you from now on because you're only adding to it. Have a great day.
     
  7. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    I say it again. If they can't reproduce the problem on their end, there is little hope of them resolving the issue at all. They literally need to see where the game is having problems in order to begin resolving them. And you clearly are not understanding this. And calling on them to fix the problem doesn't provide any new insight into what is actually causing the problem.

    I understand you are frustrated. But you lack perspective.
     
  8. Starhelp

    Starhelp Intergalactic Tourist

    Hey just a tip you can go in your (WINDOWS) battery settings and set it to high performance also you can set priority in task manager.
     
  9. Marcus101RR

    Marcus101RR Void-Bound Voyager

  10. TheBlackSun

    TheBlackSun Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I'll chime in here, as well. I've been having very poor performance ever since the dreaded update that caused the FPS drops for everyone else, too - and that's been quite a while ago by now. A friend of mine recently decided to give Starbound a go.

    I've had the same issue playing back on my long-gone dedicated server with a few friends, and now, getting back to it on another server, it's still an issue. I've stopped playing Starbound after the update dropped my frames from the hundreds down to 5 or 10 on my ship, where it appears to be at its worst ever since. I can't play Starbound without dedicated server anymore, either - because when playing singleplayer, the FPS are too low. I can't upgrade my ship any larger, not even when playing on the server, because I can't use the space anyways without basically freezing myself in place by 1 FPS. Howly cow.

    After taking such a long break from the game, I'm surprised that Chucklefish still didn't manage to fix it. Saying "they can't reproduce it" is the easy way to go about it, for sure. Yes, being unable to reproduce such things can be a legitimate reason why the fix is taking longer than you'd expect.

    BUT. Being unable to reproduce this, after TEN WHOLE MONTHS? That's just short of one whole year, mind you. In that time, heck, even in half of that time, you should be able to get your hands on one of the problematic systems to reproduce and test. Unless you, A), just don't care enough, since it's likely a statistically low number; we're the minority. Or B ), and I'm pretty sure on this, you realize that since the problematic update, this issue is somewhere in the core code of Starbound, and reworking this code requires many other things, if not everything else, to be reworked as well. An update that would fix this issue would probably bump the version right up to 2.0, and it's simply questionable if there's enough financial return (i.e. increase in sales after) in spending your time doing that for a statistical minority (that already paid for the game and won't pay again). Harsh, I know.

    I don't exactly know what they're up to nowadays, but if I may take a guess, they don't intend to basically re-create the whole game from scratch for free. Until a spokesperson from Chucklefish can give us any feedback to what's going on and why they weren't able to reproduce it by now, that's what my educated guess has to be. There won't be a fix, period.

    I happen to like Stardew, Starbound and by extension, the Chucklefish team quite a lot, but I'm trying to be realistic here. I work in software development. I know the ropes myself.


    So, bottom line: Claiming that Chucklefish has just not been able to reproduce the issue after almost one whole year implies they have no idea what they're doing. Who knows, I'm not up to date with them, maybe they did reproduce it and know exactly what's it gonna cost to fix. And that it's just not financially feasible to do. That seems to be more likely, and at least understandable even if disappointing, to me.
     
    Gotcha! likes this.
  11. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    Everyone? Who is this "everyone" you speak of?

    what have you tried to resolve this on your end? sounds similar to the Steam integration issue, so just disabeling that would often resolve this.

    Yes, it is extremely valid.

    What do you expect? It to magically appear before them? The elapsed time is irrelevant.

    Assuming anyone offered to part with their system. Are you offering?

    Yes, you are in the minority, but it is in their better interest to resolve it.

    Possible as well. Which may be part of why the next update is taking a while.

    I doubt it.

    That already did recreate the game engine from scratch. I doubt that is related.

    If the issue only crops up under a specific environment, then the reason why they cant reproduce it would be simple. None of their systems meet the requirements for the issue to appear.

    Stardew was not made by Chucklefish, so not sure how that factors in here.

    If you work in software, then you should know that many of your statements are kinda silly, like the 10 month bit. Bugs can go overlooked for years. I fixed a 20 year old bug in one of my work's programs.


    Not in the least given what they actually made. And even if it were the case, what then? What should happen if the case is they honestly don't know what they are doing? They are an indie developer after all.

    Hablon's Razor applies here.
     
  12. TheBlackSun

    TheBlackSun Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Oh, I dunno, maybe the 11 pages here and the other I think at least two topics about the same issue. "Everyone with that same issue". And statistically we may be a minority, but that doesn't change the fact that poor optimization is the most likely culprit of it, and heaving powerhouse systems capable of crunching the issue with sheer power [or a not so unlucky combination of hardware] isn't a solution, it's merely a workaround. One that might quickly become very expensive for everyone else but the devs, and be simply not a viable option for many of us. It's still a 2D game, and I expect my uber-futuristic fetishist hardware system to be capable of running it at at least stable 60 FPS. And, maybe even lower end systems that can run other games like it perfectly fine.

    Everything I could think of myself, including changing options, installing mods, using GPU driver control panels, to stuff mentioned on here like disabling unrelated services. Nothing had any impact while looking playable. Oh yeah, and I don't even have Steam or any other overlay-capable software running that might interfere.

    Except it isn't. If it is not apparent, you investigate. And I mean properly. It's not my job to get the game running like it's supposed to, it's theirs. And...

    Suggesting it's OUR job to provide OUR private hardware for them to do THEIR job, really? Why don't you let them use your Team Foundation Server then, for storing their code on when developing? Why don't you supply them with mice and keyboards directly? Because they buy that stuff for themselves. Hardware and licenses alike. Hardware to code, and test on. We've given specs time and time again, even some off-the-shelves laptop systems AFAIK, and they're making money developing games because we buy them from them cuz they're good. Getting a cheap old laptop of off of ebay or something should be acceptable, unless, well, what I already said in my last post.

    Oh, it definitely is. No matter what. But the cost of actually doing it might still just outweigh that interest.

    Well, here's hopin', at least. But they've been rather vague about the whole thing, I can't remember anyone of their team actually getting involved personally and clearing the table for facts about what they're actually doing. We all know what they intend to do, hopefully. But that's no news.

    They did? Lately, or are you referring to v1.0, which introduced the issue to begin with? They did that for the planned release, and to have a base for the new features we got since then. Taking that now and redoing it again is quite different, since in beta, it's all in flux anyways. For full releases, you have more solid basecode. Changing stuff around from then on out causes many more problems, especially if you need to recreate the same functionality that added up until that day in a different way, all over. As a project gets bigger, so does the time needed to recreate everything. And working for the final release of a solid basecode you intend to sell is one thing - having the same workload and then some just for a mostly "free" update of that same product, basically developing it twice, is not. As long as it "works for most people"...

    Which brings me back to the point: They have had almost 1 year of time now to pin down the easiest, or cheapest, or most likely desktop build or off-the-shelf laptop Starbound has confirmed issues on, and either rented one, or bought one to test. For them, it's just like you deciding to buy a new mouse. They make money doing that stuff. It's part of developing software.

    Bugs can be overlooked, yes. That implies you don't know about them, and nobody ever told you about them either. Once a sufficient amount of people complain though, there's no excuse to not spend your time and money on trying to find and fix it. Including spending money to get a different test system. As long as, which was my original point, the return of investment is high enough, which is questionable.

    That would sure be kinda sad. For what quality their work has, aside from that one issue, well make that two, corrupting universes / playerfiles as well... but apart from these two, the game in itself is rock solid. Lots of quality stuff to do. Suggests they indeed do know what they're doing.

    Hanlon's? Yeah, it does.

    And again: I really do mean no harm by saying all of this. I like those guys and their stuff. But that's just how the business end of things looks like.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2017
    Gotcha! likes this.
  13. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    A few flawed arguments here.

    1. 11 pages, sure, but are all of them about the same issue? Nope.
    2. I never suggested burte forcing it was a solution. Ive played the game on various sets of hardware ranging from minimum requirements to well over recommended, all without issue. Anecdotal at best, sure, but it does show the game runs just fine in most situations.
    3. 2D or 3D is irrelevant when most of the calculations are done behind the scenes. Even being 2D, Starbound is a lot more demanding than you probably think. It isn't graphically demanding, but it has a lot of other systems it deals with beyond the graphics. I am not saying it is the most demanding game out there, mind you. Only that the argument of "it's 2D" is moot.


    Who's to say they haven't? The elapsed time is irrelevant unless they were purposly putting it off or ignoring the issue, which there is no evidence to suggest that being the case. Absence of progress doesn't mean they haven't been working on it.


    You are assuming the issue is simply a matter of hardware only. There is no apparent link between systems of people having performance issues, which suggests is is not specifically hardware related.

    This really applies to anything. No software is perfect, so expecting any developer to put in effort when it would be pure expense for them is kinda silly. They would be chasing down bugs for years on end, so a line needs to be drawn somewhere.


    You assume too much here. If there is no common link between people with issues, they couldnt hope to narrow down things to a specific make or model hardware. There could be user configuration involved that they could never realistically replicate. As Ive said, I personally have run the game onder many diifferent hardware setups with no real issues. I would love to get my hands on a system with issues so I could pike around, but I have yet to find any setup with issues.


    Again, fixating on the hardware alone.


    Exactly. They have shown they do know what they are doing, and even then, can't pinpoint the cause of these lag issues. So it obviously is not a simple issue to deal with.


    And I am not trying to attack you, or yell you down or anything like that. My goal is trying to keep things in perspective. If Chucklefish were ignoring the issue, then yeah, that would be problematic, but from everything I have seen in the years I have been around here, Chucklefish doesn't seem like that kind of a company. I don't believe they would knowingly ignore such things and purposely leave people hanging with a, for them, broken and unplayable game.

    So I hope there is no bad blood here. You have a valid issue and I honestly hope it gets resolved.
     
  14. whereaminow51

    whereaminow51 Void-Bound Voyager

    Has the LAGG or Framerate or the Invisible walls due to slow loading while running in the world. The Lagg response from monsters who get hit, and die 15 seconds after being killed, money being dropped from 5 to 20 seconds after monster does die.


    Egads I had been enjoying this game, right now I am on terraria, atleast it doesn't lagg.

    I want to play starbound again, but they need to fix this.

    It sure isn't my computer since the last couple of updates runned pretty smothly. Not any more.
     
  15. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    Not surprising. That hardware is quite weak.
     
  16. lazarus78

    lazarus78 The Waste of Time

    I don't quite understand. If you know the hardware was weak, why did you bother posting here? Clearly any lag issues would be hardware related. Pretty clear cut, so it is irrelevant in this thread.
     
  17. Jilly Bob the Third

    Jilly Bob the Third Star Wrangler

    I deleted the posts
     
  18. GaryTheBeer

    GaryTheBeer Space Hobo

    This may help some people - at least in the single player mode, as I haven't ventured into multiplayer. I exited Steam via the system tray icon and then started Starbound from the \Steam\steamapps\common\Starbound\win64 manually (although you could also use a shortcut on your desktop if you have one). My game was lagging horribly prior to this and was unplayable. After I shut down Steam, all areas of the game were once again playable with no lag at all.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
  19. Jilly Bob the Third

    Jilly Bob the Third Star Wrangler

    Background processes eat up memory and CPU usage
     
  20. GaryTheBeer

    GaryTheBeer Space Hobo

    Not sure if this was directed at me, but if so, I play many high end games without exiting Steam, and have no problem with lag in those games - even with other processes and applications running at the same time. This was a specific fix that caused Starbound to work without lagging.
     

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