Optimization was due years ago

[PIRATE D KING]

As a players who has played hundreds of hrs of ONI and has bought with excitment every DLC i have to admit i am most dissapointed this time around, the main reason as to why i quit the game last time was that my base grew to a size where the game simply could not keep up, moving around the map was so laggy that it completely broke the immersion of the game and kinda tilted me to be honest, wich is why i was so excited about this new DLC in particular because it seemed obvious to me that the reason why they would offer the an alternative way of playing the game (several minimaps instead of a big one) was focused on improving performace issues by dividing the workload into various systems (asteroids), however i am at cycle 200 now, the only things i have are:

- A mid size oxygen generating system capable of  processing the outputs of 4 electrolyzers

- 60 planted mealwood farm tiles

- 5 hydrogen generators with 5 bateries

- The basic pipe system to sustain 4 lavatory and 4 sinks

- A great hall

- 9 dups

with only this the game would have been fluid in the last version of the game i played, however in this version i have to pause the game to be able to move around my base without losing more than half of my fps, considering the game has had optimization issues since even before the automatization DLC i find this not only disappointing as the reason why i bought the DLC was to enjoy a more fluid gameplay, also feels pointless to keep investing in a game that for years now has not been able to deliver a smooth gameplay in mid to late game bases.

my suggestion is simple, if you cannot optimize the game to a point where you can call it a finished and smooth gameplay experience then make it simpler, instead of adding more and more content and systems to be processed throw away what is not needed, simplify features and systems, anyone with an inch of common sense knows that no matter how beautifull and complex a game is, if optimization is bad the gameplay will be bad, and when that happens as a player you will simply quit.

[babba]

My experience is that they add new game game content and game (speed) optimizations on a regular basis ( little by little ). It would be great if Klei would have a phase where they stop adding content for 3 months and only works on speed optimizations in that time.

IMHO it makes a big difference, on a fast cpu, how much asteroids have been colonized and if one plays with 80 or 280 dupes, as example.

[Coolthulhu]

I hope we won't get another bad optimization like the one for critter and dupe AI. "Want to pet me? That's gonna be 20 claps plus tip. In a row."

I'd expect the biggest problem to be the temperature updates. Maybe gas movement.

Temperature updates are essentially a blur function with weird weights. Can be done in 1D - first horizontal, then vertical - which is faster than both at once. n*m operations, instead of (n-2)*(m-2)*9. High chance it's done already, though.

At this point, penny pinching for those few % of performance by using SIMD (SSE, AVX) would probably be worth it, if it's not done yet.

[Sx6944]

6 hours ago, babba said:

My experience is that they add new game game content and game (speed) optimizations on a regular basis ( little by little ). It would be great if Klei would have a phase where they stop adding content for 3 months and only works on speed optimizations in that time.

IMHO it makes a big difference, on a fast cpu, how much asteroids have been colonized and if one plays with 80 or 280 dupes, as example.

The problem isn’t really about CPU here. I have several base game saves with double base size, dupe and critter counts which can run really smooth. But with past several updates, the dlc FPS drops like a sh*t. You need either run with medium speed or pause the game to move map around. 

[Yobbo]

AFAICT the DLC uses a similar amount of map space to the base game, just split into multiple asteroids. So the base simulation burden should be similar... except they've added a whole extra "radiation" layer to it, so it can only increase.

But in any case it's in the middle of development. This is not a good time to optimize, rather optimization should happen after finalizing all the new additions. I can tell you from long experience if you optimize before finishing adding things to your project you'll just end up wasting your time as your optimizations are continuously rendered obsolete.

I think i've also seen it mentioned that the DLC has certain debug info enabled that straight up makes it a lot slower. In short, picking up a new expansion that both adds core mechanical systems and is in the middle of development, and expecting it to be more optimized than the base game, is a recipe for disappointment.

[PIRATE D KING]

8 hours ago, Yobbo said:

But in any case it's in the middle of development. This is not a good time to optimize, rather optimization should happen after finalizing all the new additions. I can tell you from long experience if you optimize before finishing adding things to your project you'll just end up wasting your time as your optimizations are continuously rendered obsolete.

i would usually agree with you as that is the "proper" way, however with DLC after DLC being added, each bringing new content, waiting after to the very end to optimize means that we as players will spend most of out time in the "not finished yet, therefore laggy" state, its been 6 months already since spaced out came out and i find it unacceptable that after this time i cannot play the game smoothly past cycle 100, if this continues i will have to wait 2 years after the next DLC is released to play it properly.

[babba]

8 hours ago, Yobbo said:

AFAICT the DLC uses a similar amount of map space to the base game, just split into multiple asteroids. So the base simulation burden should be similar... except they've added a whole extra "radiation" layer to it, so it can only increase.

But in any case it's in the middle of development. This is not a good time to optimize, rather optimization should happen after finalizing all the new additions. I can tell you from long experience if you optimize before finishing adding things to your project you'll just end up wasting your time as your optimizations are continuously rendered obsolete.

I think i've also seen it mentioned that the DLC has certain debug info enabled that straight up makes it a lot slower. In short, picking up a new expansion that both adds core mechanical systems and is in the middle of development, and expecting it to be more optimized than the base game, is a recipe for disappointment.

I think the total map size of all asteroids ( incl. the big map terra dlc classic ) is much bigger than in the base game, however...Guessing is not knowing - So if anybody has the total cell size amount(s) with detail listed asteroid(s) map facts, that would be great to hear about

AFAIK content is added regular basis and optimizations are performed by Klei from time to time...But we all know that it would be great if Klei could spend more dedicated hardcore time on optimization  Touch wood 

I think its good if one has a cpu above +2000 score in the single threading cpu chart and 8GB free and available ram before launching ONi. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html - That`s my personal babba min spec for the game

+3000 cpu score is a decent system for playing, my opinion. I recommend +4000 cpu score for the year 2022/2023

[Yobbo]

11 hours ago, PIRATE D KING said:

waiting after to the very end to optimize means that we as players will spend most of out time in the "not finished yet, therefore laggy" state

 

2 hours ago, babba said:

AFAIK content is added regular basis and optimizations are performed by Klei from time to time...But we all know that it would be great if Klei could spend more dedicated hardcore time on optimization  Touch wood 

True, true... it's especially jarring in a game that otherwise is very playable and feels quite complete, even though stuff is being added all the time.

[AndreyKl]

On 6/3/2021 at 5:59 PM, PIRATE D KING said:

with only this the game would have been fluid in the last version of the game i played, however in this version i have to pause the game to be able to move around my base without losing more than half of my fps

It's very likely that dlc version of the game has debug logging and debug code enabled which is slowing the game down.

[Yobbo]

7 hours ago, babba said:

I think the total map size of all asteroids ( incl. the big map terra dlc classic ) is much bigger than in the base game, however...Guessing is not knowing - So if anybody has the total cell size amount(s) with detail listed asteroid(s) map facts, that would be great to hear about

I was curious so i looked at the worldgen files...

The vanilla planets seem to all (well i only checked a few) be 256×384 = 98304 cells, so pretty close to 100,000 cells to simulate. The starting Spaced Out planetoids in the DLC seem to be around 160×274 = 43840 cells, so a little under half the area. The initial expansions seem to be about 128×153 = 19584 cells or 128×128 = 16384, so about 1/5 to 1/6 of the vanilla asteroid. The others vary from 1/7 to 1/25 of the vanilla area.

I added up all the asteroid sizes for the Forest cluster, and got around 120,000 cells, so about 20% more cells to simulate than the vanilla asteroid when all added up.

The Classic start is bigger again, but not as much as one might expect, coming in at pretty close to 160,000 cells total. It saves space by only having two large planetoids rather than three. The starting planetoid in this start is 240×380 = 91200 cells, so pretty close to vanilla. The expansion is 160×176 = 28160 cells, a little more than 1/4 of the vanilla asteroid, a little less than 1/3.

[AndreyKl]

On 6/5/2021 at 12:07 AM, Yobbo said:

The vanilla planets seem to all (well i only checked a few) be 256×384 = 98304 cells, so pretty close to 100,000 cells to simulate. The starting Spaced Out planetoids in the DLC seem to be around 160×274 = 43840 cells, so a little under half the area. The initial expansions seem to be about 128×153 = 19584 cells or 128×128 = 16384, so about 1/5 to 1/6 of the vanilla asteroid. The others vary from 1/7 to 1/25 of the vanilla area.

Those planetoids don't interact, so reasonably they should be in different threads entirely, thus making the game perform better. But they appear to be part of same map on the same thread. Hopefully this will be fixed.

[kezat]

It would be interesting to try and get a better feel for what sort of things have the big performance hits. I tend to go a bit crazy with my conveyor lines but it does seem that conveyers are one of the things that cause the most performance issues for me. What are other things that you all have seen that cause the most issues for performance?

In the past I have seen people talk about pathing logic is another but i'm not sure if that's the case anymore.

[babba]

20 hours ago, kezat said:

It would be interesting to try and get a better feel for what sort of things have the big performance hits. I tend to go a bit crazy with my conveyor lines but it does seem that conveyers are one of the things that cause the most performance issues for me. What are other things that you all have seen that cause the most issues for performance?

In the past I have seen people talk about pathing logic is another but i'm not sure if that's the case anymore.

I find that a gazillion critters and dupes often pull the most performance. Often when I have 200 dupes, I get rid of 100 for more fluid game speed. I would love to keep them, but the motor oil running down the screen sometimes gets too thick !

[JaxckLl]

Things we know aren't well optimized because they cause slowdown on even high end systems:

• The gas calculation, especially when extreme temperatures and phase changes are involved. Don't drop massive quantities of Water on your Magma biome, let youtubers do that kind of stupid ****.
• Pathing calculations for critters & dupes. Minimizing critter numbers and using single-tile traps whenever possible (single-tile means no pathing needed) solves this problem. You can usually force a crash this way by spawning 30-40 critters all at once using Sandbox, provided the map was already well played.
• Map transitions, especially when generating a new portion of the map such as a new rocket. This is a reliable crash for me under the current patch, as it was when the DLC first dropped.
• Mixed pipes, especially conveyors. Conveyors are especially bad because they're basically always mixed and the temperature calculations for each basket are thus totally unique. Running your conveyors slowly and having stop offs at general temp changes massively helps here since it minimizes the temp calcs needed (Objects in a container all share the same temp, so if you can use a conveyor chest as an end point instead of a drop off for better performance).
• Objects on the ground. This is the worst one as a map's worth of objects will easily overwhelm even the best systems. Again this is mostly due to the temperature calculations. While it is more efficient gameplay-wise to use a single drop off tile, it is much more efficient performance-wise to have separate containers and to use chests frequently (we know it's the temperature calcs since a map sandboxed to the same temp across the board will have less lag than one with a natural gradient. There's still lag since the objects still exist and feel the need to recheck their temps, but it's less since the difference usually doesn't need to be calculated). Never had a crash from this, but had a 400+ cycle base reach unfun levels of slowdown due to me not staying on top of my sweeping.
• Opening separate screens, such as Skills (bad), Research (worse), or Priorities (worst). Not really sure why this is so bad, as there isn't significant gains from having the game already paused (maybe 3-4 frames, but there's a reliable 10 frame dip and couple seconds of input lag no matter what). Never had a crash here but definitely had the game hang for over a minute a couple of times. Especially annoying with the default hotkeys since "f" is used for the Priorities screen.
• Moving around the map can be really bad and can even cause crashes for some set ups. Personally never experienced this, I suspect it's a memory issue for those experiencing crashes.