How do I improve my fps and save times?

[auron471]

Im almost at cycle 800, and its gotten to the point where i get really bad fps when im not paused, and after an hour of playing, my save times skyrocket to take 5 minutes. Im not joking. 5 minutes to save the game. Every 2 cycles.

 

Is there anything i can do to my base to help improve the game's performance? I has thinking that storing everything inside storage chests might help but im unsure.

[Oozinator]

1 minute ago, auron471 said:

Is there anything i can do to my base to help improve the game's performance?

Sure

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

48 minutes ago, auron471 said:

IIs there anything i can do to my base to help improve the game's performance? I has thinking that storing everything inside storage chests might help but im unsure.

IF you store things in lockers, then store only one type per locker.  Otherwise there isn't an improvement over having the debris on the floor.

[Ixenzo]

5 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

IF you store things in lockers, then store only one type per locker

I suggest using a mod to increase the capacity of those lockers - I give them essentially infinite capacity but restrict them to a single item, e.g. igneous rock only. The 20t vanilla limit is absurd when you have 12 thousand tons of igneous alone on the map.

[SharraShimada]

There is mod with configurable 1 tile big storage uinits. You can set the capacity via config. But keep it below 2 million, because it will crash otherwise.

[psusi]

18 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

IF you store things in lockers, then store only one type per locker.  Otherwise there isn't an improvement over having the debris on the floor.

Why would using storage compactors help at all?  It's still considered to be a debris item sitting on the ground.

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, psusi said:

Why would using storage compactors help at all?  It's still considered to be a debris item sitting on the ground.

Because if you have only one item type in a compactor (aka Sand or Copper Ore) then there's only one thermal calculation between it and the environment.  Subsequent additions to the container result in an averaging of the temperature of the material.  However, if you have multiple items in one, then you will have multiple thermal calculations with the environment -- the same as a stack of debris.

Debris on the ground have the additional disadvantage of splitting materials and keeping their temperatures isolated, resulting in multiple thermal calculations when the stack gets evaluated. Take this screenshot for example.  There are three different 'stacks' of granite, all with differing temperatures.  

Spoiler

Of course, each stack is greater than would fit in an individual storage container, so you would need 4 containers to hold all this granite.

Anyway, if you isolate the debris by type, you reduce the computation load per map square  You can certainly do this by dropping stuff on the floor, but its much easier using storage bins.  The value in computational load comes when you evaluate how many calculations are being performed on an individual square of the map.  If you have a dozen things in a storage bin, or a stack of a dozen different items, then twelve separate calculations are performed when that environment square is evaluated.  An individual item type in an individual bin (or an individual stack on the ground) results in only a single computation before the game moves on to the next square.  Thus sorting your items out (storage bins make this simple) will reduce the overall computational load on your computer and therefore result in increase in performance.

[nakomaru]

Best things I did for my fps/save time in order.

1. Use a half width map. Now I stay at 60fps at 20x speed.
2. Build a $2000 desktop.
3. Minimize rail usage.
4. Use only 3 dupes.
5. Use the mod that deletes cycle data.
6. Placebo level: filling in the map with solid tiles, debris consolidation. But still gonna do them for sure.

FYI you can mod storage to contain unlimited debris. But the debris still splits up into multiple stacks at 25T/100T. So it's still the same as throwing it on the ground in 25/100T stacks. Not sure, but I think the mod for this helps them to stack to 100T instead of 25T, which means 4x fewer piles. (5x vs vanilla bins)

[Oozinator]

3 hours ago, nakomaru said:

1. Use a half width map. Now I stay at 60fps at 20x speed.
2. Build a $2000 desktop.
3. Minimize rail usage.
4. Use only 3 dupes.
5. Use the mod that deletes cycle data.
6. Placebo level: filling in the map with solid tiles, debris consolidation. But still gonna do them for sure.

7. Never ever activate Critter drop points in big open areas, they are evil and feed god of lag.

[suxkar]

Does anybody know how dupes look for materials? Is it a greedy search in the pathfinding grid until the desired material is found?

@nakomaru what is the "delete cycle data" mod you mentioned? I can't seem to find it

[Tytan]

praying

[Junksteel]

I confess that after 2000h+ spent on the game I'm not so willing to help it performs anymore. I truely love ONI but these issues are limiting a lot the possibilities we have with the game. As the discussion about performance progresses, the efficient/correct way to play the game becomes more narrow. It's a sandbox building game but I feel like the box can't handle all the sand...
 

The heavy nerf we had on cooling methods right before release made everything feels worse to me. Not saying it objectively made it worse. But all the steam turbines everywhere, all the piping across the map, all the thermal calculations it generates, all the stuff you have to actively put on just in order to cool stuff made me feel the game slower, heavier and bureaucratic. I mean, you can do stuff the lazy way (aka mixed gasses, liquids dripping, debris on the floor, mixed materials in the same piping line) but knowing performance will hit severely later. I mean, it's hard to determine what operates in a placebo level and what effectively reduces lag in a long term save as there are no in game mechanics stopping the player from creating performance hell. It aggravates my OCD and triggers all sorts of performance paranoia since cycle 1 which is gradually reducing my drive to play the game.

[nakomaru]

3 hours ago, Oozinator said:

7. Never ever activate Critter drop points in big open areas, they are evil and feed god of lag.

It's been so long I nearly forgot. 6 is in fact kill and isolate critters.

2 hours ago, suxkar said:

delete cycle data

Fast Save

After this mod was released, Klei optimized some of the previously very bloated data structures. It's not as big of a change as it used to be, but should still have some effect.

2 hours ago, suxkar said:

Does anybody know how dupes look for materials?

They find the nearest pile (to them) of unclaimed material. So it looks through every possibility a fairly optimal way, probably A*. After it finds the nearest, it will continue to gather up to maybe 5 other very nearby piles.

[Ixenzo]

Does anyone know of a mod or a way to increase the stack limit? Seeing nine 100t stacks of dirt in the storage locker is mildly frustrating. Should in theory further decrease the amount of calculations.

[nakomaru]

100T limit is hard coded due to rounding errors at high masses. It's probably possible to mod, but I'd be surprised if it didn't break a lot more than you'd hope for.

[Ixenzo]

7 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Placebo level: filling in the map with solid tiles, debris consolidation

I was under the impression that gas calculations take considerably more cycles than a solid massive of tiles. I mean, there's much more mass in them to trigger the thermal cutoff earlier, plus you could go double whammy with insulated tiles. And then gas tiles also mix and stratify all the damn time.

Debris consolidation is still reducing pathfinding, and if we didn't care about pathfinding we wouldn't have been culling worthless creatures and confining slightly less useless ones to one tile pens.

[nakomaru]

Those are my rankings from personal experience only. I do believe both of those things help, but I wasn't able to demonstrate them convincingly in terms of measured FPS. All other items I observed measurable speed gains.

[psusi]

21 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Anyway, if you isolate the debris by type, you reduce the computation load per map square  You can certainly do this by dropping stuff on the floor, but its much easier using storage bins. 

How is it easier using bins?  Just set up a dispenser to drop it through a closed pneumatic door into a locked room.