Starbound is Unplayable

Well, I'm kind of new here, but not to Starbound, and as I've been trying to patiently wait for the devs to implement some form of optimization for the game so that it's playable, I've been trying to play the game, only to experience huge fps issues. I'm really dissapointed, as I was really looking forward to getting lost in this universe. I don't have any mods, and I play Stable.

 

Post your specs and Starbound.log file. Cant help you otherwise.

 

Where would i find the Starbound.log file?

 

In your starbound/storage folder.

 

Maybe you could go to into options and look at fullscreen resolution?

 

im running 2 1080s and i get 20 fps i think the game has some issues

 

The game doesn't use the GPU very much. It is mostly CPU dependent.

 

after 1.2.2 update starbound has freezes every 2.5 or 8.5 sec
even on my laptop with Nvidia GTX 1060
even with mods/ even without mods
i guess starbound is bad optimised
long terrain/objects loading time
memory eating (like google chrome)
or storage folder on 5GB xD

 

What is your CPU?

Long generation times is a sign of CPU bottlenecking. And Starbound can use a bit of memory, especially when generating. 5GB isn't unheard of.

 

it's intel core i3 6100t

 

Have you checked your background processes? Makeing sure nothing else is needlessly running? Your CPU isn't steller, but it should do the job, assuming it isn't bogged down with other things like having a bunch of internet tabs open.

 

i guess problem is in Starbound 'cause other games is not laggy like it

 

Other games =/= Starbound. Most other games are not as complex as starbound, don't let the 2D graphics fool you, there is a lot going on in the background that you don't see.

If you look at a game like, say, overwatch, that game is more GPU dependent, so it makes use of your GPU a lot more. The levels are all static, the lighting is mostly pre-rendered, so all that is left to really process are the characters and the fighting going on. Starbound has to track each and every block, the lighting, the physics, the AI, etc, and those are things that can't be done on the GPU, so that work load is placed on the CPU.

A game like Minecraft, while similar in requirements, is able to cull things that are not actually within camera view. So from a technical standpoint, everything behind the player is invisible. On top of that, the game will hide blocks that have no exposed surfaces. This saves a lot on processing. Starbound, however, can't do that. If it is on screen, it needs to be rendered.

So saying other games are not laggy is a poor comparison. If you just push it off as "poor optimization", then most everyone would suffer from it, which is not the case at all.

 

I guess that you have never player MInecraft with IndustrialCraft2 machines working around, getting 10k EU energy from reactors and having Mekanism x4 ore processing working and sorting at the same time. Meanwhile 3 multifarms are working and 10 bee apiaries keep producing honey outside and two 30x30 advanced miners are working in special "mining dimension" thanks to chunk loaders. Insane amount of tasks at once and it happens whenever you look at them or not. And these are mods, not vanilla content that can be greatly optimized by creator. And I can get 40-50 FPS(30 in heavy load). Without Mekanism it could go up to ~55 because Mekanism is made to be extremely compatible and it means worse optimization. AI works whenever you look or not. And it can work and it's still java. Meanwhile you can put OpenComputers computer that will run real lua scripts. I'm still surprised how my MC world is stable despite the fact that opening the game with ~25 mods takes around a minute and after opening my savegame I get 10 second freeze. There's nothing in starbound that can be compared to it. The only time when I had low FPS in MC was when my 10+ IC2 machines were turning on and off few times per second when there was not enough power but after building reactors I don't have this problem at all. Why 20 tenants in Starbound suddenly FPS heavily drops? I can put 20 villagers in MC and maybe I will lose 1-2FPS. And also, generated village NPCs don't cause as much problem as tenants. Why putting dozens of chests in one room makes Starbound laggy again? Same thing I can do in MC and nothing will happen. Starbound is just badly optimized. Starbound runs fine until you want to do something bigger or you have extremely beefy PC. This isn't a good state

 

A few things first. What are your computer specs, and are you playing on a server with these, or locally?

Minecraft AI is extremely simplistic. Their AI consists of basically just ideling around, and if something comes into range, attack it by running up to it. Additionally, the pathfinding in minecraft is also fairly simplistic. Pathfinding in a 2D world, vertical world is a bit more complex because the AI has to plot its path and if jumps are required, it has to calculate if it can make the jump in the first place. You don't see this, but it calculates paths many times a second, and if the landscape changes in that time, it will have to recalculate. Its like a GPS setting your path, then having to redo its calculations because you missed a turn, but doing that many times a second.

So in short, Minecraft doesnt suffer from much AI performance issues because... the AI isn't really doing anything requiring much process.


I'm not saying Starbound is a model of optimization. It's not. There can always be optimizations made with anything. I'm just saying blaming optimization outright is not quite accurate. I've played Starbound on a wide range of computers, ranging from minimum hardware to "beefy", and outside of actual performance issues that effect everyone across the board, the number of other issues have been quite few, and with 1.0, the game is objectively vastly more optimized than it once was, and I strongly argue that the majority of people's problems are not from a lack of optimization, unless I am just so damn lucky to have drawn the "never have any issues" card... that isn't unheard of for me, and has been quite annoying when trying to solve people's problems...

 

tl;dr for laz: Don't trust your eyes to judge and AI hits hard on your GPU or CPU.

 

My guess is the issue is mostly Starbound's lighting system, which doesn't make use of GPU capabilities, and instead runs, as far as I know, only on CPU power, which can be quite an issue, and one that'd probably be worth an update entirely to itself, since it's a major limiter. It'd probably require more time than any of the other post 1.0 updates, though, given how large in scope such a thing would be (not only writing the new engine, but making the result look reasonably like it did before the change). If it was fixed, I suspect most of the complaints about lag would be gone.

 

Asus GL552VW, single player.

Well, AI in Starbound is much simpler than in Minecraft. In 3d world mobs need to go around walls when needed, that is much more demanding than any of AI behavior in Starbound, in Starbound it's just "if the block is above, jump", "player is on the left, go left", "player is on the right, go right". With NPCs it's "search for an object around or other NPC and go to it" If you look at AI in Starbound, it's are insanely simple. In Starbound mobs just rush at player, at least in minecraft skeletons try to keep the distance or walk around the player, ranged mobs in Starbound is "walk towards the player until there's direct LOS, then stay and keep shooting". Terrain in minecraft also can change and mobs are aware of it. Minecraft has the same AI problems as Starbound plus many more of them. You can't block a Zombie by placing two blocks in front of it, it will avoid it. In Starbound there's even no need for this because world is 2D, so it's much simpler and putting simple pillar is enough, also when you do this with Starbound mob, you can put stairs behind that mob leading over that pillar and mob won't recognize it because as I said, in Starbound it's "player is on the left then go left". In MC villagers try to run from Zombies, in Starbound unarmed NPCs don't even run from attackers. Mobs also idle around in Starbound like in MC. Sorry, but saying that pathfinding in 3D world is simpler that in 2D world is pure absurd. If AI in Starbound is really more demanding than AI in MC then it's just unoptimized and created in bad way. Anything can be created to drain CPU and it doesn't have to be complex at all.

The fact that game lags doesn't mean that "there's so many complicated things in background". With simple bug in my java code I could get 100% CPU usage and massive system lags just because ~20 tasks continuously ran simple portion of code without any limits. Also, keep in mind that performance issues in Starbound happen in certain situations which reduce available options in base building in sandbox building game. Try recreating them. Of course exploring planets or beating dungeons cause no lag. Starbound isn't complex when compared to other, less demanding games. Keep in mind that Starbound also tries to not work on things invisible for player. Countless time I've seen traders attacked by mob just when the trader appeared on my screen, and it was on already explored planets. We have strong computers now but it doesn't mean that developers can write crappy unoptimized code and devs can do game complex as games from 10-15 years ago but demanding much much stronger hardware. It's not only Starbound's problem, but many new titles are like that. In 1984 Elite was released and it had entire procedurally generated galaxy and complex economy just in some kilobytes. It had the same economy as Elite Dangerous from 2014 and after playing ED I can say that it's really complex. Of course I'm not demanding optimization like this, it would be crazy. But anyway, if Starbound was created many years ago, it would work on any old rig without any performance problems. Starbound is just badly optimized. With tons of mods, calculations around and mobs around in Minecraft it can do 10 times more operations and it still works much better. Also, Optifine mod for Minecraft is a mod that boosts performance for MC a lot just by things like changing rendering and simplifying calculations.

 

I never said 3d pathfinding was easier than 3d pathfinding, I said Minecraft's AI pathfinding is more simplistic than Starbound's pathfinding.

https://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/

Minecraft AI doesnt process jumping, or at least not complex jumps. If it is like more than 1 block, then they can't do it. Starbound AI has a lot more variables they need to consider, such as platforms and are capable of doing much longer jumps up vertical envirnments. Minecraft NPCs will just run against the wall if it is more than 1 block high, and spiders are technically "always on a ladder" which is why they can climb up walls. (No joke, that is how they are designed).

Never said Starbound AI was advanced, I said it was more complex. Starbound NPCs run from threats. If they havent been attacked, they don't see a threat, but that is something that can easily be added.

Yeah, putting a block in front aof a zombie doesnt stop it, (see above link) but neither does it in starbound. They will seek out an alternate path to where they last saw you. Minecraft monsters will literally just stop if they can no longer draw a line to where you are.

Main point here. Minecraft AI is basic, Starbound AI is complex.

Yes, but broken code would be apparent to everyone, not just a handful of people. There should be noticeable performance differences across the board, which isn't the case.

Starbound does load worlds in chunks like minecraft, yes, however minecraft has tons of culling to reduce demand that Starbound doesnt, and simply can't do. All those caves and monsters in the dark areas of your screen, guess what, they are being processed and rendered.

1984 Elite, yeah, a few KB. All of Starbound's functionality is held in ~11.5MB World generation, AI, lighting, rendering, etc. All of it. The rest of the games file size is mostly assets and configs. Old games were small because they didn't have much in the way of actual assets, that had to use trickery to make things look more complex. That is why origional Mario, they reused the clouds for bushes. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_a_oggyx9pU/VLhDiXqX5oI/AAAAAAAACeI/7xtotE-fqs0/s1600/mario+bushes.png

If starbound were made years ago, it wouldn't be anything like it is right now.

And yes, I know about Optifine. And yes, it does wonders for Minecraft performance because they basically rewrite most of the game's rendering functions for it. Its easy to do that when that is all you are actually doing. Don't confuse the work of modders and the work of developers as being on par with one another. They have stark differences. Modders are not bound by anything outside of their mod.

Again, I am not saying Starbound can't be more optimized. I am in favor of any and all improvements because it benefits me too. However, it seems people have become accustom to blaming optimization without really looking at what is going on. "Oh, its lag, must be poor optimization.". I've seen many times where people with flat out shitty computers are blaming the optimization. I've seen people blame optimization when the issue was something else on their computer. I'm not saying Starbound can't use improvements, only that the majority of issues probably are not Starbound at all.

 

Again, if Starbound AI is really more complex than Minecraft's AI, then MC AI is just much more optimized and better because it gives much more better results.

That's how you can easily block mobs.They don't even try stairs because they can't go back when they see a player. It's "If player is left, go left". If the stairs are behind the mob, it won't use it. Mobs will just jump few times under the pillar and give up even if they have an option to reach the player. In minecraft Zombie will use stairs if it means slightly longer path.
Or even better:

Mobs don't even check blocks above. These mobs can easily jump ~5 high pillars but they don't jump until there's a block directly in front of them.
MC's AI is still simple but it's more advanced than Starbound's AI. If Starbound's AI is really more complex than MC AI, then I suggest AI rewrite for devs because it means that just code is bad. And this is what is optimizing the code. You can write complex code and you can write other code that does the same thing 10 times simpler and isn't complex at all, but gives better results.
And again. Today we have powerful computers. Game like that is nothing because much weaker computers in the past did much more complex things. Today devs shouldn't make unoptimized crap just because computers we have now will probably run it fine. They can't make a crap because "well, but most of games have i7s anyway so why bother". If there are problems with optimization, it can be easily discovered if game has low FPS and hardware is not fully used. 25FPS, 35% CPU usage, 2,4GB RAM usage, Disk usage almost nothing. If it has necessary hardware but the game just doesn't use it and prefers to lag instead, that's a clearly optimization problem and not my hardware because it's not even used. What is more, if I go to my "lag factory" of chests for the first time, I get ~35FPS. If I teleport to my tenants and return, FPS gets lower and lower. This is also a sign of optimization problem.

Build something like this:

There are two rows of chests below this. There are all racial armors on the left. Teleport to area like this, teleport away. Teleport back and forth few times(remember to see all chests before teleporting) and check your FPS. After 3 times I got ~20FPS as you can see on my counter in upper left corner. CPU usage 36%, RAM 2GB.