Dev .262, Game unplayable

[Snowtiger256]

The game is unplayable for me in dev .262, due to the introduction of a new stabilizer connection method.

Reactor and stabilizers are connected via a Power Stream, a shaft of power similar to a logic connection "wire" that is supposed to be wrangled into shapes using "Stabilizer Stream nodes". This functionality does not work yet at all. Not only that but the New power system that was working just fine before, has now been totally crippled, due to the addition of this new functionality.

In addition to this, the visualization of the Power Stream causes a major FPS drop, due to it being a giant shaft of "Awesome POWAHH!!" (meaning that its really big and beautifully textured, as well as TOTALLY POINTLESS!) that apparently isn't at all toggleable. When I was previously able to get about 20-30 FPS pretty steadily in any case, now I'm capped at 5FPS at all times.

I would have been happy with the new power system as it was before this thing got added and they broke completely. Now it seems like the almighty Cat-god's end-of-the-year christmas present will be like getting a battery-operated gift without batteries included.

In case you don't get me right, YES, I am seriously disappointed about this turn of events.

 

[Ithirahad]

Uhm, this is a dev build, and there's probably some bug with the energy streams that is taking down performance... which will be fixed. That looks to be a fairly simple shader and relatively low-poly 'tubes,' and shouldn't be a problem for anyone's hardware on its own assuming everything is working properly.

In any case, you wouldn't want to disable the 'pipe' effect. Those things are apparently weak points on ships now. Hit them, and the ship... uhm, takes a power penalty or something?

 

[Snowtiger256]

After a few sessions of testing, I found out that a small shaft (about one block in diameter) doesn't affect my performance that much, but if it gets larger than that, my FPS drops considerably.

And I was talking about the visual effect only, like with logic wiring, there may still be a connection if the visual effect is disabled...

 

[Ithirahad]

After a few sessions of testing, I found out that a small shaft (about one block in diameter) doesn't affect my performance that much, but if it gets larger than that, my FPS drops considerably.

And I was talking about the visual effect only, like with logic wiring, there may still be a connection if the visual effect is disabled...

Yes, but you're generally going to want to be able to see the connection. Otherwise you'll end up randomly losing power in combat and wonder why.

 

[Snowtiger256]

I jut tested dev .263, FPS is still getting killed completely if I scale up power systems to practical levels. I feel like if this continues, the players with potato computers are gonna be gone, due to the game being basically unplayable as it is. It's a shame because I really like SM, and don't want it to end up as a game you need a 3000€ gaming rig to run...

 

[Brokengauge]

The dev builds are notoriously buggy. I mean, they're the DEV builds, not meant for release. Sometimes they leave things intentionally messed up for testing.

I would just suggest sticking with the release and pre-release builds when the dev builds nuke your system.

My main PC not included, I've got a couple of potatoes I keep SM updated on. Neither can run it well anymore, but I'm holding out hope lol.

 

[schema]

We are currently trying to figure out what exactly is causing those drops on some systems. I'll be uploading a new dev build in ~20 min which will have 2 new options in the bottom of the ingame advanced graphics options. Please try those first each individually, and then both together. If you could tell me if any of those options helps, it would help, because it lets me determine if it's indeed the shader or something with the mesh, or a whole different problem altogether.

 

[Snowtiger256]

No luck whatsoever. Tried with both options on, both options off, and individually, FPS went down to 1 as soon as I spawned in anything with a practically scaled reactor setup, and stayed there until I despawned the test ship. I was doing this in a practically empty sector (the test sector had only two entities, the test ship I used for the test and another test build with a smaller reactor that seems to be small enough not to cause problems). As soon as I despawned the test ship, FPS came back up and everything was working well again.

This suggest that it definitely is something else than the shaders or mesh. I'll include a log file below so you can take a look at it and see if there's something there to help you find out what the problem is. I've already submitted a bug report on this, just in case it's something else. I took a look eat the log file and the symptoms seem to match the bug report I submitted, according to what I see in the log file.

 

[schema]

Ok I think I found the issue. Since the mesh and shader are really not that demanding I was exploring other possibilities.

Turns out it was a misconfigured physics setting on those connections. Since they are physical for weapons, they have to be added to the "physics world". Even though they are set to not give a response to physical objects, because of the misconfiguration they were still processed. Since this kind of processing wasn't meant to be happening, it caused additional lag because of an unoptimized physics operation that ran on pretty much every block the tubes touch (and each other)

I'll have this fixed asap.

 

[Snowtiger256]

Thank you, for myself and all the people who run stuff on potatoes as a necessity. I'm sorry about being irate and crass in the OP, but that's my initial way of responding to stress and disappointment.

I wish you all happy holidays and a good new year, and I hope SM will be better after all the updates are ready to launch.

 

[schema]

Should be fixed now

Happy holidays to you all