World Generation Speed

[SpiegelZinker]

Hello dear community,

as the title implies, I wanted to talk about the speed of world generation, as it's been a trouble point for me for some time now.

With a few tools I am able to play older versions of DST. In particular, I play the version of the Walter Update a lot. And comparing the speed of world generation in that version to the speed now reveals that it was a lot faster back then.

Now, I understand that since then World Generation has gotten more complex. Nevertheless, the difference is drastic. In the Walter Build, generating a world takes like 2 to 3 minutes, with caves that is. In the current version, which is the Maxwell Refresh, doing that takes no joke like 10 minutes. I understand that I don't have the most powerful computer, especially the hard drive is a problem, but still.

If that was the only issue, it would be half as bad, but the decrease in performance is also visible elsewhere. I've had it that I generated a world, picked a character and it loaded so long after that, half a day passed, which keep in mind, is after I waited 10 minutes for the world to generate.

For the ones interested these are my specs:

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3317U CPU @ 1.70GHz

• Hitachi HTS545050A7E380 (512GB Mechanical Hard Disk)

• Nvidia GeForce GT 635M

• RAM: 4 GB DDR3

Especially the RAM, of course, is really limiting the PCs performance. Still though, it's more than playable on Walter's version. And I do understand that the game has gotten more complex (I'm repeating myself), but a difference like that is hardly due to complexity alone. I believe that maybe the game wasn't fully optimised? Either way I think that some performance buffs are in order, as it's one of the only thing that has taken my playtime down from almost daily to twice per week (one of the others is a post about crafting on a controler, which I've also made a post about)

On a deticated server, like the Klei Official ones it's of course a different story, but that bearly counts, as the server is doing most of the work there.

But I'd be thankful for any response. See ya!

[dois raios]

Where you download older versions of dst?

[00petar00]

Turn texture streaming on as that will use a lot of ram if it is off.

[gamehun20]

I definitely find 4 gbs of ram not enough for the game but also try to turn off most things in the background you don't need and lower settings. small texture mode on and overall window resolution

[ArubaroBeefalo]

a little thing i did when i had low computer was to turn off all graphical setting for the SO and force explorer.exe to close with task manager while playing (later you can just relaunch it again when you need it)

[LeafyFly]

Which world size did you select? Small world may take longer time. Because world needs to be regenerated if some important things are not spawned.

[flamboyant wolf]

17 hours ago, gamehun20 said:

I definitely find 4 gbs of ram not enough for the game

as someone who spent over 4 years playing dst on an old laptop with 4 ram, I'd say it's... yeah, it kinda sucked.

[. . .]

You can try using the Don't Starve Alone mod (if you're playing solo) it may help speed up things a little if you're making a world with caves. Other than that unfortunately there's not much you can do unless you upgrade your CPU and RAM which I think are important factors in the game loading faster and also a SSD instead of HDD (though I use HDD and it only takes like 3-5 minutes for making a large world with caves so that's why better RAM and CPU matter)

Also like other guys suggested turn on texture streaming it helps

[Starlogy]

No but seriously, where'd you get the tools you use to play old versions of DST? I wanna look at the old ocean one last time...

[SpiegelZinker]

On 12/6/2022 at 4:56 PM, dois raios said:

Where you download older versions of dst?

I'm sure that theres a sketchy website out there which hosts them, but that's not the way I do it.

Through backing up my hard drive from time to time I have the DST folder from that backup. If you turn Steam to offline mode and then switch the two folders it won't realize it's an older version. So if you have an old computer with dst on it, which you haven't touched in a while coppy the DoNotStarveTogether Folder to a hard drive and to your current computer. The hard drive is just a back-up if you forget to switch the two folders when you're done. Next go to steam and turn it offline. Then go to your current steam directory and move the DST folder out of there and move the older one in, while steam is running. It won't know what you've done, unless you connect to the internet again. If the game crashes upon start, try selecting the 32 Bit version.

So this is a reply to all of the tips given so far. Thanks to anyone who shared their thoughts and expiriences!

The first, and most obvious suggestion is more RAM. And yeah, that's probably the best tip. I'm sure I'd be able to install it, despite being rather inexpirienced in that matter, however, it would be a hustle to find the exact RAM that's already installed in this computer, so I'd have to find either 1 8GB stick or a matching 4GB stick. It's not crazy expensive but I'm kinda cheap.

Texture streaming is something I have enabled, and it does help, just not with world generation, as that doesn't really have anything graphic going on.

Don't Starve Alone is a genuely great mod. I recomend it to everyone, as it really is just a different feeling if you have or don't have lag. I don't know it's effects on world generation though.

One guy also suggested that smaller worlds may take longer to generate. It seems counter-intuitive, but perhaps there is some truth to it. Most of the worlds I generate are Normal, which is not the default. Default is large.

 

The main take-away is the fact that it wasn't always like that. Like I said, in older versions of the game it generates much faster. And I'm sure that a little bit of optimization could bring it back to those speeds. So please, Klei Devs, maybe you could look into that.