Modding Discussion Can someone make a mod that optimizes/remove the rain?

When I play Starbound I have almost no frame rate problems at all, that is, at least when is is not raining. I can usually get about 30+ fps, but the rain will lower it to an almost unplayable 10 frames. I would be grateful if anybody with modding skills could limit , remove, or find some way to optimize the current rain system. Thanks

 

The current modding API doesn't allow for much, the best we could try is changing the rain graphics to be fully transparent, though I don't know if that would help.

 

I'd say it's worth a shot, however, that depends on how my computer is reacting to the rain. If the reason is that can't handle the sheer amount of objects on the screen then it might work, however, there's also the possibility I have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

That what I was wondering.

It's possible that the reason is because of the many textures, but it's more likely to be the entities in general.
Give it a go if you like, and tell us if it works. (I would try but rain doesn't lag me out)

 

Hmm, from what I have found, rain doesn't appear have a texture, and is instead hard-coded into the game, because the assets/weather doesn't have any texture in it.

 

Took me about 3 seconds to find the textures.

Assets/Particles/rain

 

Yeah, now I found it no problem, honestly my eyes skipped over the particles folder. Anyway I did succeed in making two thirds of the rain textures transparent (leaving one visible as a control so I'd know if it was raining) and it didn't seem to effect my performance significantly at all. Oh well, I guess I'll stick to deserts and moons until some of the optimization updates come out.

 

Ahh well, It was worth a try.

Off Topic: The only reason I knew about the particles folder was because I keep opening it up instead of the Projectiles folder.

 

It's most likely the entities themselves, try this. Go to > Starbound\assets\weather\rain

Open both files in your text editor of choice. (Make backups for each on your desktop).
Find this line in both files : "density" : 150, << Change that to whatever you want, 0 being off completely.. Lemme know if this helps at all.
Backup will be 210.

 

Sounds like you're on to something, Dilwoah. I'll try that out tomorrow, see if it works for me.

 

I'm testing this out now.

Update 1: I am now in-game and waiting for rain.

 

Did you turn it completely off, or leave it at like 20 or something? Because if you turned it to 0 you might be there awhile xD

 

Turning the rain texture transparent won't help. You will essentially draw as many pixels as you did before only that when you apply the color to the scene it won't effect anything, but you will still touch the same amount of pixel data on screen.
This is a common fillrate problem and it comes down to the number of times textures are drawn times the area they cover. Since every pixel "could" contain a really small amount of color you can't discard the information (you can but you would still need to check if the pixel contains color and if it should be drawn and loose that performance anyway) changing the particle count is the right way to do it. With the warning that more particle heavy effects are out there, waiting.

 

This is correct. However the method I posted should reduce the amount of rain spawned.

 

@Dilwoah Your method seems to work.

 

Awesome. I'm working on some other tweaks right now, such as those annoying lightning spikes in the apex labs that lag me to hell.

I'll post a compiled "FPS increase" package once I'm done.

 

Okay, don't forget about disabling snow aswell.

 

Well. Unfortunately there's no way to reduce the amount of strain on the system caused by certain things like the teslaspikes in apex labs.

But rain and snow I can do for you.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/rain-and-snow-reducer-disabler.49526/

 

Hmm, would you be interested in joining together and creating optimizations for the game?

 

I'm already working on that, but if you'd like to compare findings I'd appreciate it.