Closed Lag and slow gameplay

Hi there! I downloaded Starbound about 2 weeks ago and I love the game, but the same problem keeps on bothering me. Whenever I'm at a big place in the game (the outpost for example) or when there's a lot going on in the game (a lot of enemies at the same time or a big dungeon for example), the game gets laggy and slow, the framerate drops by quite a lot and enemies stop moving and when they start moving again, the damage I did to them when they were standing still, hits them in one go instead of different hits. The game doesn't crash or anything, it just gets slow and the frames per second gets low and as soon as I get to my ship or a more uneventful place, it all gets back to normal. My computer should be able to handle games like Starbound without any problem. I just want to help report bugs and problems like this to make the game just a tiny bit better! Thanks in advance!

EDIT: This is the second time I post this, now marked as Bug/Issue because I noticed that a lot of people are experiencing the same problem. Maybe we can get this thread to stand out so more people see this, let me know if you have the same problem, so that the awesome people at Chucklefish can fix this problem!

Link to previous post: http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/lagging-and-slow-gameplay.104613/#post-2751646

 

Yep. There's been plenty of posts concerning this. And yep, got the very same problem; lots of lag in crowded places and large structures(i.e. dungeons, outpost).

 

I think it may be relevant to list system specs and version run at the time.

AMD Athlon X4 @ 4 GHz (liquid cooled)
16 GB RAM
R7 260X / 2 GB VRAM
Everything is on a 250GB SSD.

I run fine everywhere except the outpost and mission dungeons. The Floran one I just did wasn't as laggy as the others but still pretty noticeable as soon as more than a few enemies were on screen.
I think it's mainly to do with particle effects and enemies. Maybe it's not multi-threaded or taking advantage of more than 1 core? I know a lot of games suffer from that despite having multi-core machines for years now.

 

I have the problem since yesterday, too. It turned out to be really bad, since I have 5 tenants in my "hometown". But the Outpost was first I'm also hosting the server, maybe my system is not good enough? Because my friend didn't notice any laggs..
It's really annoying... any idea what I can do?
My system:
i5 2500 @3,30GHz
8 GB RAM
GTX 970

Thank you

(sorry for my bad english..)

 

I, too, am getting serious framerate hits in prebuilt locations such as the Outpost and Missions. I have a colony of 43 people, at 2x zoom, at 1440p DSR on my main rig, and that runs flawlessly. The outpost, however, runs at an inconsistent 25-30 frames per second, occasionally dipping to 15, and rarely hitting 40. GTX 980 ti, i7 4770k @ 4.2ghz, 32gb DDR3. Installed on an SSD. My secondary rig, mostly used by my sister for LAN, has the same problem. GTX 770, i5 3350p @ 3.1ghz, 16gb DDR3. Also uses an SSD. Finally, my Macbook Air 2015, with a pathetic Intel HD 6000, i5 @ 1.6ghz, and 4gb DDR3 with a normal hard drive, runs at buttery smooth 60 frames on the Outpost.

All of these are in Singleplayer, with no server running, although the issue persists in multiplayer as well. On both of my main rigs, Windows 7 task manager is showing almost 90% cpu usage on all (8) cores during these lag spikes, sometimes hitting 100%. Starbound is the only application using more than 1%, so it isn't any background apps.

 

Thanks! I will try this out but I hope this problem gets better with updates though..

 

Next one is the story update, then optimization.

 

So story update, does that mean more main quests and stuff like that? Sorry but I'm new to the game, I also still don't have a clue what the different 'Giraffe' names are, like 'Stable Giraffe' or 'Glad Giraffe'

 

I have an update about the performance. I disabled Windows Updates today (by completely stopping the service, not by disabling in control panel) and somehow the lag in Starbound is completely gone. It was for something completely unrelated, I had given up trying to fix it. I loaded up startbound a few hours after turning it off, and the outpost is giving me a touch over 200 frames per second. The Erchius Outpost framerate was so high that I actually had to enable vsync because the screen tearing was unbearable, jumping between 300 and 400 frames. I turned Windows Update Service back on, to see if that really was my solution, and was immediately lagging again, with framerates hitting single digits in the Outpost.

I really, REALLY don't recommend you disable the update service if you don't know what you are doing. Disabling the wrong service can make Windows fail to boot next time you restart your machine, and the updates do bring much needed security fixes that everyone should install. However, if you want to see if it works for you, type Services in the Windows search bar, and scroll all the way to the bottom. Windows Update should be close to the bottom. Right click it, and under Startup Type select Deactivated. Restart your computer for changes to take effect, but make sure you only disable that one. You can seriously mess up Windows if you do something you shouldn't.

 

I fixed that for you.

 

^ Nice avatar. I'll give the Windows Update thing a shot seeing as I don't use anti-virus or really care about window's updates anyway lol (I tend to wipe my 250 GB SSD Clean with a fresh install when it's full, just backing up what I need.)

edit: Disabling Windows Update does make my system feel more responsive - and the outpost was MUCH more
bearable - it didn't get rid of the lag completely but it was definitely a nice boost.

I'm curious, are people using DirectX or OpenGL? Some people claim one or the other gives them a boost to
FPS as well.

 

Glad to hear disabling Windows update worked for someone else too! Proves it isn't just my system.

I use both OpenGL and DirectX for testing. They run about the same on my system, but for general playing I tend to use DirectX so I can inject ENB into the game. Though I don't do that while testing, for the sake of accurate performance measuring.

 

This is still ridiculous. The FPS issue has been a thing since I've been playing the game, and that was basically since the games release. The FPS should be expected to be fixed before other things, and very quickly, so that the rest of the game can be effectively tested and feedback sent about the other problems. This FPS thing slows down and makes the game pretty much unplayable by plenty of people. And personally i don't even feel like testing parts of the game with resolution lowered to ridiculous settings while zoomed in to the point of only being able to see my character and like 2 feet to any direction of them.

 

If you bother with keeping up with development, they are working on performance issues.

 

I have a ahigh spec computer, bought the game waiting for them to fix the lag.

 

i have played this game since launch and it was never this bad i played it like in april and it was not laggy at all till now