Significant FPS and performance drop with .15997

[timethatswasted]

So just updated to the newest version and am experiencing a large FPS drop along with objects loading extremely slow or not at all.

In .157 I was able to run the 256 bit textures averaging over 1000 FPS in open space, and 200+ when building/viewing large structures ( in the 700m size range ) in Single Player large objects (except for planets) would load almost instantly.

For .15997 I tried turning shadows off, lighting down to 16 bits and using 64 bit textures... still the best I can get now is 40 FPS when viewing large objects and about 100 in open space..

all of my drivers and java are up to date of course.

Is anyone else experience anything similar to this?

rough specs of my PC:

intel i7 3.50 quad core
16 GB ram ( 8 reserved to java and 6 dedicated to starmade)
1 GB GTX460 SE graphics card


*edit*

I tried facing down some pirates, 5 small pirate ships + weapons fire = 3 FPS...
If I go near a planet I drop to 1 FPS...
Loaded up version .157 and my PC handles it like a champ. 750m 1.3 million block station load instantly and my FPS doesn't drop below 150...

With .159 I was getting around 60 FPS for large objects and 200 FPS while in combat. Not nearly as good as .157, but still pretty good. But that is with 256 bit textures and no shadows.

With .15997 I can't ever break 100 FPS in open space using 64 bit textures and no shadows.

*edit*

 

[Zeno9141]

How far do your other settings go? Debris does an insane impact on frames, and so do the new lighting thingies.

1000 frames per second is a bit ridiculous though. I can hardly believe that. >_>

 

[OdraNoel]

Unfortunately, i must confirm that i too am getting very serious performance issues with the last update. my performance has also dropped a bit while flying around normal space, very annoying, and i should not get any lag with my system, but that isn't exactly my game breaking issue. but my biggest issue seems to be with the new fragments.

shooting a single weapon and breaking one block at a time seems to be fine. but when ever i use a weapon that breaks multiple blocks at a time (multiple lasers, missiles ect) i get extreme lag spikes. starmade literally freezes completely for a few seconds then continues just fine with all the new fragments floating all around the area i just bombed. this makes combat literally impossible. as when ever i shoot a ship my system locks up for a few seconds, and the enemy just fights through the lag like nothing cuz its the computer....just to be clear the issue seems to be with the initial creation of the fragments, as once they are made they float around me just fine. or at least at the slightly reduced FPS i am getting with this update. but the major lag spikes /freezes seem to only happen when breaking multiple blocks at a time.

iv tried changing all the settings like lighting, bump maps, shadows ECT to either off or lowest settings, but my performance seems to pretty much be the same regardless of high or low settings.

for reference my system is

intel i7 3770 quad
8 gig ramm
AMD R9 270, 2 gig.

Edit: punctuation

 

[Zeno9141]

...The lag from shooting stuff might come from having debris on. It's a client-side setting.

 

[OdraNoel]

...The lag from shooting stuff might come from having debris on. It's a client-side setting.

i realize this. but i shouldn't really be getting any performance issues at all with my PC. my CPU is usually chilling at around 30 -40 % use. so i know its not my cpu capping out. and i didn't really have any performance issues before this last update.

however, how do i turn off segments for now? i could not find the option in the launcher, only the option for segments view distance.

 

[Zeno9141]

Segments? I assume you mean debris? I think there is an option for that in the launcher in Advanced Options. Not sure about that though. (Do note, the debris is REALLY intensive for your computer. Took away about 40-50 frames on mine.)

 

[timethatswasted]

How far do your other settings go? Debris does an insane impact on frames, and so do the new lighting thingies.

1000 frames per second is a bit ridiculous though. I can hardly believe that. >_>

I'll post some pictures of the FPS changes per version off the same objects once I have time to sit down and do it. I was getting 1000 FPS in open space when there was nothing in range to see.

Segments? I assume you mean debris? I think there is an option for that in the launcher in Advanced Options. Not sure about that though. (Do note, the debris is REALLY intensive for your computer. Took away about 40-50 frames on mine.)

There is a setting for "max segments drawn" as far as I understand it, it determines how much of an object visually loads.

Zeno aside from the FPS drop with debris have you had any changes otherwise?

I had seen a mushroom fleet video were they had a large station loaded, shadows on ultra and spamming debris and it didn't seem like they were having much of an FPS drop at all.

I'm just trying to get a feel if this is an issue mostly on my end that I need to figure out or if there is a larger problem at hand =D

 

[SkylordLuke]

wierd,i have fps boost,extra 3-5 frames :D haahahah

• intel dual core 3.06Ghz
• 4 gig ram (1 gig dedicated to starmade)
• 1 GB asusHD6450

(garbage pc compared to new ones if you ask me,
but this horse still runs this game great )
with 128 bit texture pack
256 bit lighting
5k segments
3+ mil blocks ship

and i found out that turning off universe or system rotation in server.cfg helps a lot!
(removes stuttering if you suffer from it,fps +5..well works for me)
UNIVERSE_DAY_IN_MS = -1

 

[timethatswasted]

wierd,i have fps boost,extra 3-5 frames :D haahahah

• intel dual core 3.06Ghz
• 4 gig ram (1 gig dedicated to starmade)
• 1 GB asusHD6450

(garbage pc compared to new ones if you ask me,
but this horse still runs this game great )
with 128 bit texture pack
256 bit lighting
5k segments
3+ mil blocks ship

and i found out that turning off universe or system rotation in server.cfg helps a lot!
(removes stuttering if you suffer from it,fps +5..well works for me)
UNIVERSE_DAY_IN_MS = -1

Well that pretty much answers my question =D

I'll try reinstalling java and rolling back my drivers to see if it does anything. Maybe something is corrupted.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

however, how do i turn off segments for now? i could not find the option in the launcher, only the option for segments view distance.

There is an option to turn off the destroyed blocks animation in the "options" menu (the in-game one, there is no option on the launcher to do this)

I am experiencing the same fps drops that timethatswasted is getting as well. I used to get 60fps while looking at my 25k mass ship (a small ship) but with this latest version I get 25-30 max fps while looking at it. All my graphics settings are unchanged or reduced, and shadows are completely deactivated.
I think the performance drop has to do with the new lighting.

It's sad, really. The game has been on a downward spiral performance-wise ever since the update that added procedural backgrounds (whatever that was)

 

[timethatswasted]

There is an option to turn off the destroyed blocks animation in the "options" menu (the in-game one, there is no option on the launcher to do this)

I am experiencing the same fps drops that timethatswasted is getting as well. I used to get 60fps while looking at my 25k mass ship (a small ship) but with this latest version I get 25-30 max fps while looking at it. All my graphics settings are unchanged or reduced, and shadows are completely deactivated.
I think the performance drop has to do with the new lighting.

It's sad, really. The game has been on a downward spiral performance-wise ever since the update that added procedural backgrounds (whatever that was)

I would disagree that the overall all preformance of the game has decreased. It is just this last patch that has caused big problems.

If procedural backgrounds are causing you lag you can turn then off via the options in the launcher.

 

[der_scheme]

Open the memory settings in the starter and make sure SM is getting enough of it.

 

[timethatswasted]

Open the memory settings in the starter and make sure SM is getting enough of it.

8 GB dedicated to java and 6 GB reserved to Starmade.

So that's not the issue on my end.

It should be noted for others though that by default java only allocates 2 GB or so for itself depending on your operating system. Simply increasing the memory for Starmade doesn't do anything unless you increase the memory allocated for java.

You can find lots of tutorials online about how to do so =D

 

[Lancake]

I find it weird that you are experiencing a huge fps decrease. I'm pretty much maxed out although i did turn off the new shadows (i hate the draw distance they have). Performance has increased for me compared to pre 0.15 versions. Everything loads faster (almost instant) and memory use has decreased for the same ships.
I'm using Java 8 update 5, latest nvidia stable drivers and 4gb allocated. Also got an i5 cpu, maybe i7 has problems with hyperthreading.

 

[CyberTao]

Its not weird at all really. I mean it happened back in the 0.14 update as well.
Probably related to Starmade's Alpha-ness and non-optimization for certain hardware, if I had to guess. But I'm not techy so I don't know.

 

[Lancake]

Its not weird at all really. I mean it happened back in the 0.14 update as well.
Probably related to Starmade's Alpha-ness and non-optimization for certain hardware, if I had to guess. But I'm not techy so I don't know.

For me 0.14 was probably the worst. I had a cpu bottleneck that kept my i5 3570K running at 90% all the time. Every time I put a system block down it jumped up to 100% and it would run at 1 fps for several seconds. Got fixed somewhere in 0.15+ and now it runs very good.

 

[CyberTao]

For me 0.14 was probably the worst. I had a cpu bottleneck that kept my i5 3570K running at 90% all the time. Every time I put a system block down it jumped up to 100% and it would run at 1 fps for several seconds. Got fixed somewhere in 0.15+ and now it runs very good.

Same, was just saying this might be something like that, only some people are affected and it'll probably get fixed once the features causing the problem get basic optimizing done.

 

[Lancake]

Same, was just saying this might be something like that, only some people are affected and it'll probably get fixed once the features causing the problem get basic optimizing done.

Indeed, it sucks but we all know this is alpha and there is only guy that is working on the game code. We can't expect every update to be flawless although the bug tracker/testing the dev build is a good way to filter out issues and bugs (unfortunately performance issues are hard to find, we only have a few testers).

 

[timethatswasted]

So after playing around with some stuff I was able to greatly improve my FPS.

I'm running Windows 8 and had the most recent beta version of 64 bit Java 8.

Long story short I had to delete the 32bit version of java still on my PC for starmade to stop being so weird.

I can now run full 256 bit textures with no problem. Shadows and lighting still do not work at all sadly, but the game is playable =D

When I turn Shadows on my FPS drops to 20, reguarless of what shadow quality I am using. However, my CPU usage never goes above 40% and my RAM usage is around 512MB so it's not as if my system is struggling to keep up.

 

[Red Demon]

Well I have been having a problem with my FPS going from 120-0 when destroying blocks. I found out what was causing it. I'm not sure if it will help ya out. But the: Use OpenAL (Turn off on sound problems) has to be on. I don't know why but I have to have it on when I use my weapons. I also have VSink and anti- what ever it is that limits FPS at 0 or disabled.

My PC specs are

Win7 x64 Bit
Intel i3 Duel Core
6GB RAM
GeForce GT 640 with 1GB of VRam

Generally my PC has no problems running high end games with ultra Settings. Like Warframe. Amazing game that one is. I run it with max stats and still have 120FPS. So This game shouldn't really give my PC any guff. So I'll continue to enjoy this awesome game and explore more bugs.

So yeah. I hope this helps someone out.