How well optimized is the game now compared to how it was a year ago?

[Drambit]

I quit playing this game a year ago because I would lose ships and large creations on a regular basis due to fatal glitches, and on top of that the game consumed way, way more resources than it had any business doing. In frames where it should have been taking up maybe 80Mb of video ram, it was taking over a gigabyte, and in general it was a nightmare as far as optimization goes. No game that looks like minecraft should ever drop to 20 fps on good systems while looking at 30 blocks. (To be fair, minecraft itself consumes probably 15 times more resources than it would if it were programmed in C++)

How much better is it now? I would very much like to get back into the game, I love the concept to death, but I can't go back to how it was a year ago.

 

[Bench]

We have just had a period of performance updates and optimizations. While there still might be some bugs, it should act a lot more stable than it was a year ago.

 

[starhaiden]

http://star-made.org/news/starmade-v0-8999-some-serious-optimizations-and-balance-changes
large objects have been optimized a lot.

 

[Crusade]

The game will use crazy amounts of resources if you set it to do so.
Other than that, the recent performance updates bumped me up from 120 fps average (looking at moderate-size entities) to about 230.

 

[MacThule]

The game will use crazy amounts of resources if you set it to do so.

and if you don't allow it crazy amounts of resources, it will get choppy anytime you get near planets, large stations, or any 2-3 large ships together even at low graphics settings.

It still uses a lot of resources, compared even to visually great releases like Starcraft II or Skyrim on very high graphic settings. Either you set Starmade on very low graphics and expect mild chop when things get super busy, or you have to increase the base memory resources you allow the game.

I've allowed it 8G RAM on my newer 12G rig, and it plays awesome on high settings all the time. My older rig can only give it 2G RAM out of 4 though and I have to play on very low settings and still have problems even though this is a rig I still use for competition on in other games.

 

[Groovrider]

Hmm. I'm giving it 2gb ram out of 4 as well and I'm not suffering those issues.

 

[LeifRoss]

I would say it is very well optimized.
On my main rig i average 400-500fps with almost every setting maxxed and millions of blocks worth of ships.

Currently i am on vacation, and brought my ultrabook(work computer optimized for extended batterylife).
Did not expect any games to run on it, however Starmade runs smoothly at 60-70 fps even with my new WIP titan spawned.
(ignoring the server not responding message, considering that a bug)


The game would run smoother if it was coded in C++....
...10 years ago.

With modern JVM technology that argument is void.
Sure, the JVM pre-allocates alot of memory on boot, but this is not because it is wasteful, that memory is allocated so the game will be able to do faster memory access later on. Execution wise the JVM also gets a near native performance.
The difference would perhaps be a 10% increase in execution speed from Java to C++.

The underlying algorithms and program architecture will always be more important to performance than runtime, especially when the difference between VM and native is this small, and i belive the Starmade team has done a excellent job at this.

Source: https://bjpelc.wordpress.com/2015/0...es-c-c-java-javascript-php-python-and-ruby-2/

 

[Drambit]

I would say it is very well optimized.
On my main rig i average 400-500fps with almost every setting maxxed and millions of blocks worth of ships.

Currently i am on vacation, and brought my ultrabook(work computer optimized for extended batterylife).
Did not expect any games to run on it, however Starmade runs smoothly at 60-70 fps even with my new WIP titan spawned.
(ignoring the server not responding message, considering that a bug)


The game would run smoother if it was coded in C++....
...10 years ago.

With modern JVM technology that argument is void.
Sure, the JVM pre-allocates alot of memory on boot, but this is not because it is wasteful, that memory is allocated so the game will be able to do faster memory access later on. Execution wise the JVM also gets a near native performance.
The difference would perhaps be a 10% increase in execution speed from Java to C++.

The underlying algorithms and program architecture will always be more important to performance than runtime, especially when the difference between VM and native is this small, and i belive the Starmade team has done a excellent job at this.

Source: https://bjpelc.wordpress.com/2015/0...es-c-c-java-javascript-php-python-and-ruby-2/

I'm not a programmer but I know Minecraft is very seriously limited by it's Java environment and on high end systems gets usually about 100fps, when it clearly should be getting upwards of 2000.

 

[starhaiden]

In starmade you can place 10,000 blocks at once and your computer won't crash while in minecraft you can't do that.

 

[Keptick]

I'm not a programmer but I know Minecraft is very seriously limited by it's Java environment and on high end systems gets usually about 100fps, when it clearly should be getting upwards of 2000.

That's because minecraft used to have terrible coding (not sure if it still does). If you took a C++ game with equivalent coding the performance wouldn't be any better. Minecraft is a horrible java benchmark, seriously.

And seriously, comparing games like skyrim which are made by multi-million dollar companies to starmade, a single programmer made game, isn't really applicable :p

 

[DraconisDomini]

How does one actually change the amount of resources starmade is allowed to use? I haven't yet worked out how to do this.

 

[Keptick]

How does one actually change the amount of resources starmade is allowed to use? I haven't yet worked out how to do this.

In the first launcher window there's an "option" button in the top right. Click that, a scrolldown menu should appear. Click the "memory setting" option. I suggest that you leave early generation memory at default and only modify the other two values.

 

[DraconisDomini]

In the first launcher window there's an "option" button in the top right. Click that, a scrolldown menu should appear. Click the "memory setting" option. I suggest that you leave early generation memory at default and only modify the other two values.

Thanks, clearly I am blind, don't know I didn't find that before...

 

[Keptick]

Thanks, clearly I am blind, don't know I didn't find that before...

Oh don't worry about it, I was too blind to see the tools tab (top middle in the second launcher window) at first xD.

Edit; just don't forget that you can't go over 1028mb if you're using 32bit java.