Late game FPS drop

[inkball]

Hi guys,

I experience FPS drop in late games (below, 40, spiking down to 10 ish). I'm monitoring my cpu/gpu/ram and no bottleneck there. Is the game capping something somewhere ? I switched from 144hz to 60, got better still a bit sluggish

Got i7-7700k, gtx980, 32gb ram ddr4

Thanks in advance,

edit due to lack of details: I'm averaging 30-40fps, CPU at around 40%, GPU around 15%, ram around 35%

[OxCD]

41 minutes ago, inkball said:

Hi guys,

I experience FPS drop in late games (below, 40, spiking down to 10 ish). I'm monitoring my cpu/gpu/ram and no bottleneck there. Is the game capping something somewhere ? I switched from 144hz to 60, got better still a bit sluggish

Got i7-7700k, gtx980, 32gb ram ddr4

Thanks in advance,

edit due to lack of details: I'm averaging 30-40fps, CPU at around 40%, GPU around 15%, ram around 35%

It's game performance related. That's not especially depending on the machine, moreover with your configuration. That's probably not your PC which is lagging, that's the game itself.

Go over 3000, 4000 or more cycles, plenty of dupes, and you will see what IS the Oni lag... that's known as the "end game", when you play at less than 10fps and when each auto-save take nearly 10 minutes. So you quit...

I think it relies a lot on process game design, so only devs could do something on how the game is exploiting (or not) PC ressources.

[JohnFrancis]

It's down to a couple of things, I did a little testing and found out the below.

Gas takes up more computation than solid tiles so as you dig stuff out the game slows down. Mixed gases are even worse and most players just let everything slosh about.

Vacuum takes up up more computation than solids for some reason so when you hit space and that giant open vacuum area it causes your frames to drop hard.

The fastest you can get the map to run is to cover the entire map in solid tiles of the same temp. For testing new builds I have a saved blank map template with 2 tiles of bunker at the top and every single other tile is abyssalite. Allows me to run cycles fastest on super speed so I can see if the build works over the long haul.

[M.C.]

2 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

Gas takes up more computation than solid tiles so as you dig stuff out the game slows down. Mixed gases are even worse and most players just let everything slosh about.

It's not just that. Revealed tiles are processed differently and take more CPU power compared to unrevealed ones. Simply turning on debug mode to reveal the entire map results in a major FPS loss for the rest of the game.

5 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

Vacuum takes up up more computation than solids for some reason so when you hit space and that giant open vacuum area it causes your frames to drop hard.

Yep, I've seen that too. It makes no sense whatsoever. Vacuum has no properties that need to be updated continuously.

[Grimgaw]

If I were review kind of person, when the game lunches, I'd give it negative review just based on end game lag. That's despite nearly 3k hours sunk into it. 

Yup, one of these meme ratings.

It's been an issue since beginning of Alpha and frankly little has changed. For a supposedly endless sandbox game, the fps issues end it rather quick.

I'm still curious why is game dying a slow fps death while my RAM and CPU cores are barely pushed. With a month until release some dev input on this issue would be more than welcomed.  

[OxCD]

2 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

If I were review kind of person, when the game lunches, I'd give it negative review just based on end game lag. That's despite nearly 3k hours sunk into it. 

Yup, one of these meme ratings.

It's been an issue since beginning of Alpha and frankly little has changed. For a supposedly endless sandbox game, the fps issues end it rather quick.

I'm still curious why is game dying a slow fps death while my RAM and CPU cores are barely pushed. With a month until release some dev input on this issue would be more than welcomed.  

Yup, definitely agree. The better you are at ONI, the more lag you get from achieving a well established base...

[Nitroturtle]

4 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

Vacuum takes up up more computation than solids for some reason so when you hit space and that giant open vacuum area it causes your frames to drop hard.

This is interesting, and now what I would have expected.  My last end game base, I filled about 40% of the map with tiles (entire map was dug out pretty much) and then went back and removed them to form huge vacuum rooms.  I didn't feel like I noticed a whole lot of difference though.  With that said, this was all done in survival so lots of other stuff changed along the way as it took some time, so it wasn't a very accurate test.

 

3 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

I'm still curious why is game dying a slow fps death while my RAM and CPU cores are barely pushed. With a month until release some dev input on this issue would be more than welcomed.  

In fairness, they did improve performance fairly significantly a few releases back.  But yeah, it's still annoying to put so much time into developing a base, only to have to restart due to performance issues in late game.

[natanstarke]

Yeap the game always endup into a lag drama sooner than later.

Things that makes lag:

- Mixed gases into big open areas

- Lots of piping non insulated ones seems to be the worst but still not as problematic as gases.

- Pathfinding, this one got a lot better, but flying critters and dreckos MUST BE KILLED or contained into stables the lesser the better.

- Space, you open there boom, infinity lag.

 

Things that help

- Vent excess gas to space

- Try to insulate more pipes

- Kill critters

- Use the low prioritys more often

- Proibiting dupes from going to certain places like get a lot of them but only 8 can go oil for example.

 

Not tested but may help:

- Give more downtimes

- Store everything into a more stable place temperature wise " maybe an insulated storage for this?"

 

 

 

 

[M.C.]

4 hours ago, Grimgaw said:

I'm still curious why is game dying a slow fps death while my RAM and CPU cores are barely pushed. With a month until release some dev input on this issue would be more than welcomed.  

I am almost ready to forgive the late game lag that happens because the simulation is still fundamentally single-threaded. Multithreaded programming is not easy. I understand that.

What I am not ready to forgive is the fact that they still haven't solved the problem of too many reports accumulating in memory (and saved game files). You'd think a simple configuration slider allowing you to set the maximum number of reports would be one of the first things they'd do.

But no... can't have that. Adding stupid nonsense like sporechids? Sure, why not! Fixing a source of performance degradation? Nah...

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 minutes ago, M.C. said:

But no... can't have that. Adding stupid nonsense like sporechids? Sure, why not! Fixing a source of performance degradation? Nah...

I still haven't run into this problem on my machine.  Maybe its because I have plenty of RAM so it never becomes an issue.  Or maybe its because I rarely play past 1500 cycles. IDK.

 

@M.C. Could you share a save that gives you trouble and I can see how it behaves on my end?

[M.C.]

1 minute ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 

@M.C. Could you share a save that gives you trouble and I can see how it behaves on my end?

It's not a single save file. It's all of them. Files become bigger, save/autosave/load times longer as your game progresses. I have 32 GB RAM, so I seriously doubt memory has anything to do with it.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Most of my save files are around 1 or 2mb.  I have some really old ones that are 5 or 6mb.  So.. I still don't appear to be having the same problem as you are.

[M.C.]

1 minute ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Most of my save files are around 1 or 2mb.  I have some really old ones that are 5 or 6mb.  So.. I still don't appear to be having the same problem as you are.

If you want some numbers: my oldest base was around 2700 cycles. The save file was 11 MB. It took several minutes to load.

I get it, though. You are not suffering from this problem. Good for you. It doesn't mean this problem doesn't exist. A simple search of this forum would give you plenty of similar complaints.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, M.C. said:

If you want some numbers: my oldest base was around 2700 cycles. The save file was 11 MB. It took several minutes to load.

I get it, though. You are not suffering from this problem. Good for you. It doesn't mean this problem doesn't exist. A simple search of this forum would give you plenty of similar complaints.

I'm not saying it doesn't exist.  I've seen many people talking about it in the forums. I'm simply saying that I've never been able to reproduce the problem.   

Strangely, every time I've asked for a problem save to work with, I've gotten the same response: "Its not one, its all of them."  That... isn't useful. 

[M.C.]

Just now, KittenIsAGeek said:

I'm not saying it doesn't exist.  I've seen many people talking about it in the forums. I'm simply saying that I've never been able to reproduce the problem.   

Strangely, every time I've asked for a problem save to work with, I've gotten the same response: "Its not one, its all of them."  That... isn't useful. 

Are you a developer? Can you actually do anything to fix this problem? If not, well... that might be why you keep getting that response.

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, M.C. said:

Are you a developer? Can you actually do anything to fix this problem? If not, well... that might be why you keep getting that response.

I may not be a developer, but I am very good at troubleshooting.  I've written multiple bug reports (that have all been addressed) and helped track down several persistent issues.  

I'm curious about the problem: Is it a windows-only issue?  Do system hardware capabilities make a difference?  Is it due to the file size, or is it related to the compression algorithm?  Is there a critical point at which the FPS starts to drop?  Is there a critical point at which the end of cycle lag crops up?  Are the two issues related directly or indirectly?  Can changing certain system settings contribute (or alleviate) the issue?  

But, hey, whatever.  I was just trying to be helpful.

[M.C.]

Just now, KittenIsAGeek said:

I may not be a developer, but I am very good at troubleshooting.  I've written multiple bug reports (that have all been addressed) and helped track down several persistent issues.  

I'm curious about the problem: Is it a windows-only issue?  Do system hardware capabilities make a difference?  Is it due to the file size, or is it related to the compression algorithm?  Is there a critical point at which the FPS starts to drop?  Is there a critical point at which the end of cycle lag crops up?  Are the two issues related directly or indirectly?  Can changing certain system settings contribute (or alleviate) the issue?  

But, hey, whatever.  I was just trying to be helpful.

Fair enough. See what you can find.

The Darkest Citadel.sav

I don't know if it's a Windows-only issue since I don't have a Mac. I don't think it has anything to do with compression. I do think it has everything to do with the amount of useless data (specifically, old cycle reports) accumulated over time and never deleted. Players who used the (no longer working) mod that removed old reports see major improvements to their save/load times. There is no critical point at which FPS starts to drop. Performance deteriorates gradually as the game progresses.

[Grimgaw]

5 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Strangely, every time I've asked for a problem save to work with, I've gotten the same response: "Its not one, its all of them."  That... isn't useful. 

How is it that we the players have to troubleshoot this issue?

5 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I'm simply saying that I've never been able to reproduce the problem.   

Are you saying that there's hope and there are people out there who rock 60fps with most of the map uncovered?

[miauly]

For me game went laggy on cycle ~200, and I have most of the map and space undiscovered yet, and not that much of a developed base. Maybe the reason is that I like to ranch shine bugs just for nothing and they fly all around the base in numbers.

 

Playing on Linux, save attached for anyone interested.

cycle_203.sav

[bonzaiferroni]

10 hours ago, M.C. said:

What I am not ready to forgive is the fact that they still haven't solved the problem of too many reports accumulating in memory (and saved game files).

This one has been hard for me to understand as well. My only guess is that it is something related to backwards compatibility of save files. That is one thing that has been stellar in ONI compared to other early access games I've played, I've never run into issue with upgrading breaking a game.

[Nitroturtle]

9 hours ago, miauly said:

For me game went laggy on cycle ~200, and I have most of the map and space undiscovered yet, and not that much of a developed base. Maybe the reason is that I like to ranch shine bugs just for nothing and they fly all around the base in numbers.

 

Playing on Linux, save attached for anyone interested.

cycle_203.sav

I think it might be your hardware (or it could be Linux).  On my Windows machine (i7-8700k/16GB) I'm getting 50-55 fps with this save.

[Grimgaw]

2 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said:

I'm getting 50-55 fps with this save.

Are you not seeing an issue here? Seriously? Cycle 200...

[Nitroturtle]

15 hours ago, M.C. said:

Fair enough. See what you can find.

The Darkest Citadel.sav

I don't know if it's a Windows-only issue since I don't have a Mac. I don't think it has anything to do with compression. I do think it has everything to do with the amount of useless data (specifically, old cycle reports) accumulated over time and never deleted. Players who used the (no longer working) mod that removed old reports see major improvements to their save/load times. There is no critical point at which FPS starts to drop. Performance deteriorates gradually as the game progresses.

Not sure what the specific complaint was on this one, but for comparison sake, it takes around 23s for me to load this save and ~2s for the auto-save.

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 hour ago, M.C. said:

Fair enough. See what you can find.

OK.  Will do.  First impressions: It took about 45 seconds to load, which is MUCH longer than most of my saves.  At normal speed, I'm getting between 40 and 50fps, depending on where in the base I'm at and which overlay I'm using.  The end of cycle save took 3 seconds of single CPU activity.

Spoiler

The single-thread spike in the middle is the save.

 

Giving it more free RAM sped up the save by 1 second but did nothing for the initial load.  Closing some doors improved FPS marginally.

Spoiler

System idle resources:

After loading ONI:

Loading save file:

SS while running at normal speed:

 

Left it to run for a while on its own.  Your base is much more open than most of my designs, but it looks like you've got everything set up to pretty much run itself.  I noticed you've got a tremendous food supply, and you're definitely good on air and water.

After 16 cycles, the memory footprint increased by 1.1gb for an average gain of 68.75mb/cycle.  The save time increased by about 1 second to 3 seconds, and FPS maintained an average between 45 and 50 with the occasional spikes.

Spoiler

Then I let it run all night.

Spoiler

New save delayed almost 4 seconds.   Its now topping out at 47fps, and the memory profile has increased another 400mb.  Without doing anything but letting the game play. 

Reloaded the save at the same cycle (692):

Took about 40 seconds to load, so faster than the original save.  Its using about 1.6gb of RAM less than when it was just running.  Its hovering between 43 and 46 fps with occasional drops to 42 and spikes to 47, so averaging about 4-5fps than the original save.  Save locks up for almost 3 seconds, so reloading improved the delay.

 

Clearly there's a memory leak of some sort at the point where the autosave hits.  The little bump around the 15s mark is when it saves, and it always goes up.  The first couple of saves after load are fairly significant, about 400mb, but the amount is reduced with each save.  By cycle 691 you could only tell it was still happening by looking at the memory profiles many cycles apart.  The save file also increased by about 400mb between cycle 610 and cycle 691, which seems fairly significant.

 

Restarted yet again, this time letting it run on turbo (which was the speed it was saved at).  FPS holding steady between 30 and 35.  Closing some doors brought the average FPS up to 37.  Save time freeze back at about 2 seconds, so decided to let it run for a while.  By cycle 620 the pattern was showing identical to running at normal speed.

Restarted again, this time with a mod to disable the autosave feature.  Started off just like every other time, closed some doors, then let it run in turbo.  Holding steady at 35 to 37fps at 8.9gb used.  After 20 cycles, there was zero memory bloat and the FPS was still holding steady, even though reports were still being generated.

Manually saved the game.  Took about 3 seconds and there was a 400mb bloat.  FPS dropped marginally.  Clearly there is something going on with the save game feature.  I'll keep working.

10 hours ago, miauly said:

For me game went laggy on cycle ~200, and I have most of the map and space undiscovered yet, and not that much of a developed base. Maybe the reason is that I like to ranch shine bugs just for nothing and they fly all around the base in numbers.

 

Playing on Linux, save attached for anyone interested.

cycle_203.sav

I'll take a look at this one next.  I play on Linux almost exclusively.

[miauly]

1 hour ago, Nitroturtle said:

I think it might be your hardware (or it could be Linux).  On my Windows machine (i7-8700k/16GB) I'm getting 50-55 fps with this save.

Enabled FPS counter and it turned out I am playing on 7 FPS, funny. I have  i7-4700MQ which is not exactly a potato, and 10GB of RAM, but only integrated graphics. I guess Linux may be a reason, but I did not expect it to be that penalized.