FPS Troubles

[theulsterwarrior13]

So I recently downloaded Starmade and been very excited. It seems a lot of fun. The only problem I have is that I can't fly. Whenever I try to move, my ship spirals out of control. After some research, I've learnt that it's a problem with my FPS. My FPS ranges from seven to twelve on average. Reading some forums, people say that they have over 400. Could I have some help on how to improve my FPS?

 

[Fenix246]

My answer would be the most hated, and that is buying new hardware. I would suggest buying dedicated graphics card. You can also try to decrease the game\'s details before you launch it, but I\'m afraid it won\'t help much.

 

[z1967]

Fenix is right. If your usual FPS is 7-12, its time to upgrade your hardware. If your up for a challenge, I would go to http://www.logicalincrements.com/ and explore your options there. THere are also tons of tutorials on Youtube and in the instruction manuals that can explain how to effectively build a good computer.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

The problem is that the code to handle ship turning is bad. What happens is the ship starts turning towards the cursor, then the game draws a frame, and by the time the game has drawn a frame the ship has turned too far. After that the ship starts turning in the opposite direction even faster, and the same thing happens again, until you\'re in a \"infinite speed wobble of brokeness\" turning rapidly in opposite directions and/or spinning out of control. Basically, player input and ship handling is tied to frame rate when it shouldn\'t be.

The solution is to either increase your frame rate to work around the game\'s bad code; or reduce your ship\'s turning speed (e.g. by making it larger) to work around the game\'s bad code. Another solution is to set \"TURNING_DIMENSION_SCALE\" setting in the server\'s configuration to something lower to work around the game\'s bad code.

Also note that as far as I can tell the code to convert ships/stations/shops/planets (\"segments of blocks\") into 3D meshes for the video card is also bad; and fails to merge adjacent polygons into a single polygon where possible, and also doesn\'t do more than basic hidden surface removal. The end result of this is that the game pushes much more work onto the video card than necessary.

For example, for a 10*10*10 cube of hardened hulls with a 3*3*3 hollow area in the middle, the game asks the video card to draw (10*10) * 6 polygons for the exterior plus (3*3)*6 polygons for the interior (681 polygons total). However (with better code) if you\'re outside the cube the game could combine all the exterior textures for each face so that there\'s only one larger polygon per face (6 total) and not bother with the interior at all; and if you\'re inside the cube (in the hollow bubble) the game could combine all the interior textures for each face and not bother with the exterior at all. Of course this applies to vertices as well as polygons - they\'d both be (potentially) several orders of magnitude worse than they could be; which means that you need a much more powerful video card to cope with all of the polygons/vertices that the game (unnecessarily) throws at it.

Basically, the game\'s code is bad and the game\'s code is bad and the game\'s code is bad (and the game\'s code is buggy too). This is why the game is alpha.

The problem has nothing to do with crappy hardware (the crappy hardware just makes the game\'s bad code seem worse).

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

what IS your computer? Can you give us some specs? Maybe then we can help you single out parts for upgrades or give you some advice on how to improve what you already have?



Yes, game is buggy but I can turn a ship nearly 4 million blocks in size with no noticeable lag. I can actually crash it into planets with no lag. And my name isn\'t Gates and I don\'t own NASA. Just a relatively cheap gaming rig.



And for Qweesdy: convert THIS into 6 polygons.



It\'s not always a clear cut case of a cube..

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

@GROOV3ST3R: When you\'re flying a ship, the ship itself normally isn\'t drawn (as the camera is normally at the front looking forward and everything is behind the camera). It\'s everything in front of you that causes frame rate problems when flying (asteroids, planets, other ships, etc).The game can turn a 4 million block ship properly because it\'s large and turns slowly. You get a 1-block ship (single ship\'s core and nothing else) and try to fly towards that 4 million block ship and it\'s extremely likely you\'ll see the same \"out of control turning\" bug that lots of people have already reported the first time you attempt to turn in any direction.

For that ship; all along the side there are runs of 4 or 5 blocks in a line where the side and top/bottom of the blocks are visible. Instead of being 4+4 or 5+5 individual polygons they could be 2 polygons. On the top (and bottom) there are larger flat curved areas that are problably 25 blocks or more (areas of maybe 25 polygons that could/should be 1 polygon). Even for the black horizontal strip through the middle (with the randomly placed lights) there are a large number of places where there\'s 2 or more lights or 2 or more black hulls that are adjacent, and each of these could become one polygon rather than 2 or more.

Basically, even for that ship, the number of vertices and polygons could be reduced significantly (perhaps one third or less). Of course that\'s not including the interior of the ship (I have no way of guessing how many interior polygons the game draws for no reason whatsoever).

It\'s not always a clear cut case of a cube. My cube example was only an example (chosen because the maths is easier). Worst case would be a checker-pattern - in that case you couldn\'t improve the mesh at all. Of course most ships/stations/planets/asteroids aren\'t checker-patterns, and for almost all things the meshes could be improved significantly, and all of us (except the morons that think they\'re getting 2000 frames per second where their video driver is smart enough to know that the monitor can only display 60 frames per second anyway and doesn\'t draw most of those frames at all) could be getting between 2 and 100 times as many frames per second (depending on what we\'re looking at).