Page MenuHomeSchine - Phabricator
Create Task
Maniphest T1938

Starmade | Beams and cannons destroying blocks will cause game stutters
Open, NormalPublic
Actions

Description

This is most prevalent on single player, I do observe it happening on Multiplayer as well, but to lesser extent because the computer running the game isnt taxed with both rendering the game for the player, and running the behind the scenes server calculations.

Thought I may as well make a bug report for it, as after the optimisations something went down hill in performance at least for me. Missile impacts do not generate the same issues for me.

*This may be a low-end computer hardware thing, but alas I cannot test. A few other friends have noticed stutter when firing cannons and beams.

Details

Task Type
Bug
Testing Results
Affected Gamemode(s)
Single and Multi
Reproducible
Yes
Last tested (version)
0.199.217
Category
Engine
First occurrence (version)
0.199.217
Hardware/Software/System
OS-Specific
No
Hardware-Specific
No
Video Card Vendor
uncertain
User/Reporter/Contact
Username on Registry
Napther
Steps to reproduce
  1. Get a sufficiently large ship or turret. Beam I feel shows the issue the most
  1. Fire into an unshielded target or other ship
  1. During the course of blocks being removed, the game frames per second seems to grind to a halt, and jump

(On Multiplayer, if a computer is already under load rendering for example a large faction homebase and 2 undocked ships fighting a short distance away, the moment one loses its shields, I had severe stuttering occur at this point.)

Serverconfig (server.cfg)
<replace this line with the file content>
Clientconfig (settings.cfg)
<replace this line with the file content>

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Napther created this task.Sep 19 2016, 8:54 PM
lancake added a subscriber: lancake.Sep 19 2016, 9:50 PM
lancake claimed this task.

-feedback-

Hm, so it goes downhill the longer you fire it at once?
Sounds like the server (in this case, your SP) can't keep up with the block destruction and is queuing more and more till it bogs down.
You'll notice that on planets with a large enough salvage group.

Could you set up a test environment and check both of them out in the optimized version and the exact same thing in the previous version where it was fine?

Look at memory usage and cpu usage, check your fps differences too.

lancake moved this task from New / Unconfirmed to Feedback on the Issue Navigation board.Sep 19 2016, 9:50 PM
lancake shifted this object from the S1 Public space to the S3 Starmade space.
lancake changed the visibility from "Custom Policy" to "Public (No Login Required)".
lancake changed the edit policy from "Task Author" to "Starmade (Project)".
lancake changed Category from none/unspecified to Engine.
lancake set First occurrence (version) to 0.199.217.
lancake triaged this task as Normal priority.
Napther added a comment.EditedSep 19 2016, 10:12 PM

Can do, At least the new Launcher allows hotswapping much easier and faster. A few patches ago the single player F7 lag statistics on HUD has also been stuttering occasionally, when at one point the game showed no load (A flat line) when in single player indicating that the server was having no issues at all almost all the time.

(Then again, that could be related to the sheer amount of times I alt-tab from the game... Hm. First thing's first though.)

Napther added a comment.Sep 19 2016, 10:56 PM

When testing in current release, the test ship and target half FPS from 45 to 23 while blocks are being destroyed.

CPU Becomes maxed out, Ram sits at 7.5gb in both cases, Single player and Multi player. Stutter is less on Multiplayer with average frames per second of 33.

In the course of my the fire test, it didnt take long on multiplayer for my computer to start having problems with doing anything until starmade was closed.

Will now test prior versions and test on single player to see the load, etc.

Restricted Application removed a project: Issue Navigation. · View Herald TranscriptSep 19 2016, 11:36 PM
Napther added a comment.Sep 19 2016, 11:38 PM

Prior versions feel exactly the same when tested, the CPU caps out almost instantly despite there being relatively few blocks broken.The optimisations are apparently unfelt on my computer, and changing builds so often has caused a number of issues in itself.

Also, current DevBuild .223 has reset my keybindings for the game, might want to make sure that only what is needed is changed?

lancake moved this task from Unclassed to Issue affecting current release on the Starmade board.Sep 20 2016, 11:50 AM
lancake reopened this task as Open.

Whoops...Merged the wrong task.

Restricted Application added a project: Issue Navigation. · View Herald TranscriptSep 20 2016, 11:50 AM
lancake moved this task from Feedback to Open / Validated on the Issue Navigation board.Sep 20 2016, 7:34 PM

Hm, I've been noticing (minor) stuttering with small enough weapon sizes too now.
My fps doesn't really drop, from 200 to 160 which is within expected ranges when killing blocks.

The stuttering does occur although it's more like minor hiccups for me. CPU usage is at 90% and not 100% which is probably the reason why it's minor.

I think this is enough feedback for now, I'll have to compare with other versions and see if it was any different before. Can take a while till I do that though, a bit busy cleaning up other tasks.

Spindizzi added a subscriber: Spindizzi.EditedSep 29 2016, 4:06 PM

This issue can be absolutely crippling in terms of FPS at least on my computer.

I can have a solid 60 or 120 FPS (whatever it's capped at) and a salvager ship running can knock it down to as much as 3 FPS.

Online with a friend, they can get their salvaging ship and go way out of my visual range some 3-5 sectors and start mining and I always know because my FPS starts stuttering.

Seems to have nothing to do with anything but removal of the blocks themselves.

For salvaging at least, seems to be more pronounced on larger asteroids, once the object has fallen under a certain block count, the FPS gradually recovers.

If there's anything you want me to try and test with this issue I'll have a go.

Endal added a subscriber: Endal.Nov 18 2017, 6:52 AM