People with slow Computers

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Random question that appears semi related and thus not worth making a new thread, I've been having issues testing large ships against each other. Then testing them individually against waves of isanths the function fine. If I spawn 1 as a trade guild ship and the other as a pirate to have them duke it out as a trial run the server frequently becomes entirely unresponsive. I was wondering if anyone had any idea what the likely performance bottleneck was there.

Singleplayer
i7 920 @ 2.66GHz
12GB RAM, 3GB devoted for stamade
AMD HD6950 GPU, 2GB VRAM

Any settings that could be changed to help these fights work better would be appreciated. Or if there is any hardware advise that would be appreciated as well.

 

[RedDragonflyxx]

I'm running on a pre-built laptop ("desktop replacement") because I needed a bit of mobility. It runs Starmade fine, the only lag is when loading in at the start and the planet generation (I may note that I can't see the difference between 20FPS and 60FPS) Starmade runs at about 25FPS max everything for me unless there is a super-capitol in gravity. I might consider turning AA samples down if the FPS ever bugs me. I'd recommend MSI Afterburner to see if your GPU is being maxed out.

Specs:
CPU: i7-4700MQ
GPU: Nvidia GTX 770m
RAM: 11GB (10.9 GB useable) *according to windows, I had some 3 year old cards*
HDD: 931 GB 5400RPM boot disc, 465 GB *same as RAM, for video recordings of Starmade*
Link: http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT70-2OC-...screen/dp/B00CU9GLUM/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Spoiler: Specs

 

[Cudgeon Kurosaki]

With the new update with the raytrace lighting, the most powerful computer in my house is now outdated. Or at least I think that is what's causing the problem. I can't run the game on my normal settings anymore, and I can't go near any large objects with my lowered setting. I might have compromise all quality that I once had (Highest settings), or buy a new graphics card. Or a new everything.

 

[GayBacon]

Nice, I can run StarMade on my shitty Acer netbook now.

 

[lman94]

well, I have a 1200% new laptop and a I can't play starmade at all simply because I have an Intel processor with built in graphics. my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M graphics card dosen't matter because starmade and Intel don't like each other. so count your blessings, at least it loads.
(and yes, I tried updating my drivers. didn't work. even had to role back because of an unstable build.)

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Intel HD5000 user here with no dedicated GPU and I'm able to play on a surface pro 3 tablet. Barely able due to performance restrictions and the fact that SM heats this thing up like a mother, but it will run, and smoothly on low settings right up till it starts to melt. Seems strange that a brand new laptop with a dedicated card would cause that issue when a tablet with onboard Intel will run it.

 

[NeonSturm]

go blame mother blue (intel)

 

[Grimson]

Is it an established fact that the game runs slower on Intel than it does on AMD?

 

[schema]

a performace update is on the way. Formost it will make dynamic shadows by at least 50% faster. But also rendering at low settings should be faster. I'll implement a per vertex lighting (instead of per pixel) also which will improve fps for people with rendering problems by a lot (that wont come with the next update though)

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I have 64 bit java and I can run portal 2 and KSP on max settings without any problem (NFS most wanted not, but that has to do with the game engine). For some reason 2D texture compression and antialias (no real big surprise there, but a lot of saddness though, as starmade looks so amazing with it turned on). I have the highest res dynamic background and texture pack, max segments at 1500, shadows at ultra with 264 raytrace steps and 128 chunks in queue (that actually needs to be really high to avoid long lag). I actually still need to see high high I can put the max segments drawn option. I am going to put autosave lower because it always messes up what I'm doing (but that is due to a bug).

This game needs just a couple more optimisations like the shadow optimisations and I will be more than able to run the game with antialias (but not bloom, that just makes the game look worse).

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Ok, I can't edit.
What should have been the edit:
I just figured out that shadows cause the biggest performace problems. Avoid them, and you might just be able to use the way better antialias.

 

[Sabor]

My rig is as follows

AMD Phenom II 955 Quad Core 3.2ghz
4GB Of RAM
HD7850

A bit dated, but plays most things perfectly fine (Such as BF4, Shadow of Mordor, with High or Very High graphics)

Starmade's framerate is perfect. But my issues come from loading blocks. In Minecraft, they load just fine, especially with Optifine installed, no hitches or skips or stutters. In Starmade? I get 100% CPU usage while they load, and complete lock ups, freezes, and they load rather slowly. I've seen videos on youtube of people playing just fine and seeing the planet load its segments and they don't hitch at all.
I've also got Starmade installed onto my SSD.

Because of this it's in an absolutely unplayable state for me. I've tried lowering the planet sizes, the segment count to < 200, upping the 64bit version of Java I'm using to use 4GB of RAM though it never comes close. It's just agony.

Once it's all fully loaded (Which takes a while if it's a planet especially) the game returns to running at 120FPS, what I have it locked at, and doesn't budge. But it's completely unplayable until then for a few minutes. And of course if you switch sectors it's back to square 1 with it. I don't recall this happening when I first gave Starmade a try, which according to a forum post elsewhere was in May of 2013.

 

[unelsson]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2 GB RAM
Geforce 8600 GT

Multiplayer runs okay on dedicated server, but single player drops down to fps 1-5 and ping 1000-6000. I constantly get warnings that server is under high load, and can't keep up. My computer is certainly not brand new, but even so, games like Skyrim, Left for Dead 2, Assasin's Creed 2, Minecraft and even Kerbal Space Program run decent on medium settings. CPU usage climbs to 100% on both cores. Problems are worst when loading new regions and I presume also during coillision detection. My ships only get to grow around 10-20 blocks size because I can't really play further until the whole game freezes to less than 1 fps - on minimum settings both on server and client. I'm writing cause I don't see too many people saying the same. Hopefully there will be optimizations in future updates!

 

[SmilingDemon]

unelsson ... your system is by the look and specs of it not able to run SP Starmade. The Server alone may use up all the 2GB of your RAM to run without even starting the Game Client. Sorry to tell you that. Try to stick with multiplayer instead.
Are you running a 64bit operating system ? if so make sure you use a 64bit java to run Starmade.

 

[unelsson]

Thanks for the reply. I updated ram to 4gb, got it working dual channel and proper clock speed, overclocked gpu and clocked cpu to proper speed (was running a bit underclocked). Multiplayer fpsnow most of the time 40-80, but huge stations still cause fps drop below 10. I also got single player running without constant error messages, but I didn't have time to test it proper.

Updating java and gpu drivers also had some effect, but not too much as they weren't so outdated in the beginning.

 

[Asboogers]

I to am using an AMD card (Radeon HD 6450 just over 3 years old now...) and i average at about 60-70 fps with shaders off and textures on realistic (Everything else on default).
I have 8GB of ram and i find i usually start dropping frames like mad (6-7 fps) when i have some other kind of program up like a video.
So it seems to be more dependant on the amount of ram (or at least video ram) avalible at any given time.
(Also make sure you have the most up to date driver possible, leaving your driver outdated means you miss out of a considerable number of optimisations and video memory leak fixes).

Hey, does the game lag when near planets? I was considering buying that graphics card specifically for StarMade (a GMA 3100 just won't cut it) and I wanted to know if it was worth $40.

My current specs:

Intel Core2Duo 2.33GHz (?)
2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (upgrading to 8GB in the future)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 (?)

 

[RedDragonflyxx]

Hey, does the game lag when near planets? I was considering buying that graphics card specifically for StarMade (a GMA 3100 just won't cut it) and I wanted to know if it was worth $40.

My current specs:

Intel Core2Duo 2.33GHz (?)
2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (upgrading to 8GB in the future)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 (?)

Umm... I'd get a mid-range dedicated GPU and an SSD as well as that RAM, unless you're on a 32bit system. CPU shouldn't be too much of an issue as long as its less than 5 years old. The planet lag isn't going away any time soon though no matter what (short of a crazy RAID0 setup with dual GPUs and a modern CPU and 4GB of RAM dedicated to the game/an optimization pass in the code)

 

[RabidBat]

The game is made in Java. That there I think is the real problem.

It's mixed for me, I have an i5 3570k overclocked, 1gb GTX650, 8GB DDR 3 on an ASRock Z77 Extreme 6 mobo. and sometimes I am running at 500-600 fps with settings fairly high, then at random it can drop to 5 fps. Especially when mining a large planet and especially online and especially when you have several players mining large planets at the same time. So even if you have a half decent machine it can be the server dropping your frame rate, the game doesn't seem to be very optimized when it comes to network code. play on 50 player servers where the ping spikes and the frame rate drops soon as it gets over 10 players and they do things, like play the game.

So you can lower the graphics, buy a new computer and GPU and still this game will slow down big time on you. People say it's client side in game, server won;t drop your frame rates, just give you lag blah blah blah, and that is normally true for most games but Starmade? When the server is empty and I'm alone the game runs smooth as silk like I am playing offline. So if the game runs fine for you in SP and gets to 5fps online then hold off on the computer upgrading until the game gets better optimization in the net code.

Again I think it is Java, every game made with it I have played has issues like these, yet I play similar Voxel games made with Unity and don't get any of them. Like 7 days to die, I can trigger a nukes worth of TNT and the game doesn't miss a beat, destroy the same amount of blocks like that in Starmade and the entire server goes down.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Again I think it is Java, every game made with it I have played has issues like these, yet I play similar Voxel games made with Unity and don't get any of them.

Spoiler: Nitpicking

Java is a programming language. How it performs depends on what JVM and version you use.
Unity is an engine, not a programming language.(from what I know)

Optimizations are on the way though.

 

[Mike the Reaper 86]

Disclaimer: contains some satirical language.

Greetings all, I have been playing this game for a little while now and I can see it has amazing potential.

I pretty much have the same old story as everyone else, my computer keeps a steady 60 fps while I'm out in the void, but goes to crud when I encounter any object larger than a Honda Civic. Working on my 40 meter ship cuts my fps in half. Approaching a moderate size planet drops me to an unbearable six frames per second, it gets even worse if there's one of those pirate space stations in the neighboring sector (and of course there always is). I've taken some of the suggestions up at the top of this thread (but not all of them. come on, I want the game to look at least a little good). I always make sure to close all background programs to save precious RAM. And yes, I am using the 64 bit version of Java, so we can skip that stage of the intelligence test. As for the Starmade memory settings:

Maximal memory: 2048 MB
Initial memory: 1024 MB
Early generation memory: 256

In spite of my best efforts and graphical sacrifices, The fps near planets and stations is still lousy. Seems my best option is to upgrade my machine. Now, my computer is shall we say, more than two weeks old (a relic in computing terms). I'm looking to either upgrade or replace it, but before I go wasting my money, I thought I would defer to you nice people first. Where do you think the biggest bottleneck is in terms of performance?

Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1045T Hex Core Processor 2.70 GHz (having six physical cores sounds impressive, until you realize each of those cores has slightly less computing power than a calculator from the 1980s)
RAM: 8.00 GB
Operating system: Windows 7 64-bit (and that's NOT about to change)
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5450
Total available graphics memory: 4083 MB (there are more specs here but you can surely look them up yourself)
Hard drive capacity: One terabyte, minus whatever is allocated to the OS (pretty big in here)
Hard drive speed: (Heck if I know)
Screen refresh rate: 60 fps (so I don't need better frame rate than that)

I suspect it's either the CPU or RAM, but I'm not sure. What do you think?