Fix the lag caused by spiders (please)

[kroban]

As many here already know, spiders are a lag machine pretty much, you don't even need an insane amount, a few can already cause some wild stress on a server. IIRC this seems to be caused by something like each spider constantly doing checks on every single entity around them to see what they can eat or not.

This has been a thing for years, and not only it affects the spider farms, it affects an entire character, Webber. Hes pretty much "Wilson with a spider skin" since you can't really make good use of spiders other than on a couple bosses like Bee Queen and Dragonfly. And I bet that almost all Webber players are frustrated at this still being a thing.

Many people here are expecting this to get fixed when the Webber Skill Tree arrives. But, since there won't be any more skill trees this year, I think it would be awesome if atleast this gets a quick fix. Its only a net positive honestly, both for the Webber players, and the spider farms in general, which is pretty much an essential farm in the game.

BTW its not really related but, heres a funny pic from like a year ago. On the server I play we did a surprise birthday party for a friend that mains Webber, it was pretty chaotic but fun lmao

 

Edited September 25, 2025 by kroban

[HopelessBot]

Agreed, currently Webber is just so weak compared to others even while not mentioning the spider lag Webber is on par with pre-skilltree Walter.

They need to make Webber not be the "Wurt but worse haha".

20 minutes ago, kroban said:

its not really related but, heres a fun pic, on the server I play we did a surprise birthday party for a friend that mains Webber, it was pretty chaotic but fun lmao

Thats pretty cool. happy birthday!!.

Edited September 23, 2025 by irangod
Minor mistake.

[Hungry French]

36 minutes ago, kroban said:

Как многие здесь уже знают, пауки — это настоящая машина для создания лагов. Вам даже не понадобится безумное количество пауков, достаточно всего нескольких. IIRC похоже, это происходит из-за того, что каждый паук постоянно проверяет каждый предмет вокруг себя, чтобы понять, что он может съесть, а что нет.

Эта проблема существует уже много лет, и она влияет не только на паучьи фермы, она влияет на всего персонажа, Уэббера. Но из-за этой проблемы он скорее «Уилсон с паучьей кожей», и я знаю, что почти все игроки за Уэббера разочарованы тем, что эта проблема всё ещё актуальна.

Многие здесь ожидают, что эта проблема будет решена с выходом дерева навыков Webber. Но поскольку в этом году больше не будет деревьев навыков, я думаю, было бы здорово, если бы хотя бы эту проблему решили как можно скорее. Эточестно говоря, только плюс как для игроков в Webber, так и для паучьих ферм в целом.

Кстати, это не совсем по теме, но вот забавная фотография, сделанная около года назад. На сервере, где я играю, мы устроили вечеринку-сюрприз в честь дня рождения друга, который играет за Вебера. Было довольно сумбурно, но весело, ха-ха

 

Unfortunately, this is a problem with Klei servers. The Glue servers themselves are bad, and with the condition that the surface and caves are 2 servers that work very poorly with each other, it turns out a mega combo of lags... Most likely Klei will never fix it... Even for singles...

26 minutes ago, irangod said:

Согласен, в настоящее время Уэббер очень слаб по сравнению с другими, даже если не брать в расчёт паучий лаг. Уэббер на одном уровне с Уолтером до получения навыков.

Weak, but not a bad character...

[Well-met]

its a lua engine that was never designed to run such expensive entity thinking. Unfortunately im not sure this is something you can "fix"

[Maxil20]

10 minutes ago, Well-met said:

its a lua engine that was never designed to run such expensive entity thinking. Unfortunately im not sure this is something you can "fix"

It would be possible to adjust the code to make it run more efficently. @hoxiexplained the issue and showcased a way to optimize the code to make it run smoother.

Edited September 23, 2025 by Maxil20

[Kova_]

5 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

It would be possible to adjust the code to make it run more efficently. @hoxiexplained the issue and showcased a way to optimize the code to make it run smoother.

IMO that code wouldn't improve the performance much.  These function calls (searching for the food) are run just once per second which should be okay.  I think the main issue is in the boundary box and spiders are bumping to each other too much. They can push each other causing domino effect. Those "bumps" are run per a gametick.  And if you consider than typical Webber main has 50 spiders.... well guess the result  

The other issue is that players tend to build large bases.  Typically the end game server has over 1000 entities loaded add twenty five spiders bumping each other -> server lags 

[Hungry French]

1 hour ago, Kova_ said:

На мой взгляд, этот код не сильно улучшит производительность. Эти вызовы функций (поиск еды) выполняются всего раз в секунду, и этого должно быть достаточно. Я думаю, что основная проблема заключается в том, что пауки слишком часто сталкиваются друг с другом. Они могут отталкивать друг друга, что приводит к эффекту домино. Эти «столкновения» происходят за один игровой тик. А если учесть, что в типичной игре Webber main участвует 50 пауков... то можно догадаться, каков результат  

Другая проблема заключается в том, что игроки, как правило, строят большие базы. Обычно на сервере конечной игры загружено более 1000 объектов, плюс двадцать пять пауков, сталкивающихся друг с другом -> задержки сервера

This is only a problem for worlds with caves...

[Bumber64]

17 minutes ago, Hungry French said:

This is only a problem for worlds with caves...

You mean all worlds that actually want to experience mid-game content?

Cutting out another source of lag is only hiding the problem that spiders contribute to.

[Hungry French]

47 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

You mean all worlds that actually want to experience mid-game content?

Cutting out another source of lag is only hiding the problem that spiders contribute to.

The fact of the matter is that the relationship between the Surface and the Caves is done disgustingly. Making it a separate server is terrible... Is there really no other way... Other games also have a multi-layered world, but there is no such thing...

They haven't even migrated to newer versions of lua...

[HopelessBot]

3 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Weak, but not a bad character...

I have never said Webber is a bad character, or that he is designed badly.

[Hungry French]

2 minutes ago, irangod said:

I have never said Webber is a bad character, or that he is designed badly.

Nowadays, it makes it seem that for players, a weak character = weak.

[Edible Coal]

6 hours ago, Well-met said:

its a lua engine that was never designed to run such expensive entity thinking. Unfortunately im not sure this is something you can "fix"

they can make spider behave more like a hive mind and one brain controlls all

[nimzowitsch10]

how time consuming would it be to move the game over to an entirely different platform like unity or something, i feel like with the way things are going the lag in this game is never going to get better.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I assume that spider AI takes up a lot of GPU. Someone mentioned that it's when they're looking for food is why they make servers struggle. Could be same with pigs and other creatures. This really needs to be addressed as close as Webber's skilltree comes.

[Edible Coal]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I assume that spider AI takes up a lot of GPU. Someone mentioned that it's when they're looking for food is why they make servers struggle. Could be same with pigs and other creatures. This really needs to be addressed as close as Webber's skilltree comes.

is cpu !!!!!!!!

[loopuleasa]

Just kill all overworld spiders and don't play webber.

The point of webber is to cause IRL sanity damage to both the other players and their low-end laptops.

[Crestwave]

14 hours ago, Well-met said:

its a lua engine that was never designed to run such expensive entity thinking. Unfortunately im not sure this is something you can "fix"

To clarify, the engine is written in C++. The game scripting is done in Lua, while expensive operations (including pathfinder and FindEntity) are offloaded to the C++ side, which allows it to be performant both in terms of development efficiency and computer resources. The key word being "allows"—there's always room for improvement, of course.

[Hollow soul 3]

I think this is why Webber doesn't have a skill tree yet.

[Frosty_Mentos]

8 hours ago, Edible Coal said:

is cpu !!!!!!!!

[Catuna_]

21 hours ago, Hungry French said:

Weak, but not a bad character...

His spiders are quite bad, coming from someone who gave him a couple fair shots.

20 spitters (those being his best spiders) only manage to accomplish around the level of a 1x damage player swinging a dark sword in an ideal scenario... which is pretty poor compared to characters with more damage, other follower characters etc. Yes you can tame more but the point is that Webber really needs a TON of spiders to start doing decent damage and this is ignoring spider issues like eating meat, boss fear mechanics which kill your spiders' dps for a decent while and whatever other inconveniences that come from playing Webber. Meanwhile, 20 merms with Wurt lets her beat CC while shes doing absolutely nothing...

He's not bad in the sense that Webber does not have anything that makes him strictly worse than others, but he is quite bad in the sense that trying to use his perks is frustrating and the reward is quite meager. 

10 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

how time consuming would it be to move the game over to an entirely different platform like unity or something, i feel like with the way things are going the lag in this game is never going to get better.

This would take an absurd amount of time. Also, are you really trusting unity after they tried changing their licensing fees? 

[ShadowDuelist]

11 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

how time consuming would it be to move the game over to an entirely different platform like unity or something, i feel like with the way things are going the lag in this game is never going to get better.

 

37 minutes ago, Catuna_ said:

This would take an absurd amount of time. Also, are you really trusting unity after they tried changing their licensing fees?

Yeah, I was thinking the same. As much as I’d love a remaster on a better engine, that’s basically the same as making a whole new game, so they might as well just go for DST 2. And as far as I've seen, a large part of the community plays on potato PCs—moving it to anything more modern would just lock them out.

[Frosty_Mentos]

1 hour ago, ShadowDuelist said:

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same. As much as I’d love a remaster on a better engine, that’s basically the same as making a whole new game, so they might as well just go for DST 2. And as far as I've seen, a large part of the community plays on potato PCs—moving it to anything more modern would just lock them out.

The only option I guess would be 'get money to get a better PC' for most players. Honestly, I don't have that many issues with mass spiders. It's mostly just those weaker servers that flop from them.

[hoxi]

22 hours ago, Kova_ said:

IMO that code wouldn't improve the performance much.  These function calls (searching for the food) are run just once per second which should be okay.

There's still no justification for the code to be unoptimized as it is. It might run once per second, but with many spiders with running their brain at different intervals, it could end up affecting things anyway. It's one of those things where even if something else might be the cause, this probably also isn't helping, and there's no reason for this to be the way it is.

22 hours ago, Kova_ said:

The other issue is that players tend to build large bases.  Typically the end game server has over 1000 entities loaded add twenty five spiders bumping each other -> server lags 

Gotta keep in mind that things that are unloaded shouldn't be processed for this stuff (if they are, well..), only exceptions are things like walls, fences, tingle nodes, pillars, which have their physics remain active regardless of being unloaded to avoid creature pens from not working, and a few others that don't persist for long.

Now, if you have many many walls and fences in a world, then yeah it'll likely contribute.

 

12 hours ago, nimzowitsch10 said:

how time consuming would it be to move the game over to an entirely different platform like unity or something, i feel like with the way things are going the lag in this game is never going to get better.

Very much so and at that point it should be a separate game.

Also, there are a good amount of examples out there where "simply switch engine for improvements" or "make game in X engine instead of old engine" doesn't actually do that or automatically solve everything, sometimes it results in something worse.

As said by Crestwave further above, DST uses (old) lua and runs on a custom C++ engine, and while I can't say anything about the engine side, the lua side is mostly fine except for a few cases (relatively to the code base, a lot of it is in the way brains are handled more than anything, and a few things that are updated a bit too frequently instead of on longer intervals).

It can always be improved and optimized.

[SilverSpoon]

2 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Also, are you really trusting unity after they tried changing their licensing fees? 

That **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** who did it is gone.

And Klei's Oxygen not Included is already made with Unity.

Edited September 24, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Hungry French]

3 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

Его пауки довольно плохи, учитывая, что он сделал всего пару приличных снимков.

20 плевунов (это его лучшие пауки) в идеальном сценарии наносят урон на уровне игрока, размахивающего тёмным мечом... что довольно мало по сравнению с персонажами, наносящими больше урона, другими персонажами-спутниками и т. д. Да, вы можете приручить больше пауков, но суть в том, что Уэбберу действительно нужна целая куча пауков, чтобы начать наносить приличный урон, и это без учёта таких проблем пауков, как поедание мяса, механика страха перед боссами, которая на некоторое время снижает урон ваших пауков, и прочих неудобств, связанных с игрой за Уэббера. Тем временем 20 мермов с Вуртом позволяют ей побеждать в CC, при этом она абсолютно ничего не делает...

Well, that's the other characters' problem. I generally think that getting allies for eternity is a bad thing.