Game dropping FPS on a low end laptop

[Beckerzineo]

Hello,

I have a Chromebook running Windows 10, an Acer... something, all you need to know is it has a Celeron N4020 CPU and 4GB of RAM.

I have the game running and nothing else, and it seems to work fine on the menu, but in game, it consistently starts "lagging" (dropping to like half FPS) after a little while. I played Spelunky, Towerfall, CaveStory+ and other 2D games just fine in this machine, in fact I used to make little games with Game Maker, and all also ran just fine, but this (these?) game(s) lag for me, pretty hard.

The most curious thing is that if I Alt+Tab in and out of the game (I'm running nothing else on the laptop, also, before anyone), it comes back to normal speed, for a few seconds (then it becomes laggy again).

I know it's a pretty low end device, running a OS that isn't even meant to be running, but I can work on it just fine, in fact I only played a bit of Rakshasa and the shooting driver game because I gotta get back to work, but both lag like this. I'm wondering if it's a problem with Game Maker Studio or the implementation of delta timing whatever on this game, maybe it being a weird processor messes things up for it. Hopefully it gets patched soon, I've been waiting so long for this game... (and I can't wait for it to come to Switch, btw, I rather it comes sooner to Switch then this gets fixed lol, but I thought I had to at least report my problem, maybe someone else has it too).

Best regards,

[PEAR EATER]

I'm getting the same issue on a device that meets the requirements on the Steam page. If I pause and unpause the slowdown goes away, but then will return a few moments later.

Intel i5-8250u, 8GB RAM, Intel UHD Graphics 620.

[Kitkat]

The game has been a little laggy for me too. It's still playable just......very very slow.

[393Groover]

Running the game in windowed mode might help.

[kiwasabi]

This is happening to me too. I've played many 2d games without issue that are a lot higher end than this game like Cuphead, Narita Boy, Huntdown, etc. It appears that this game is very poorly optimized. The performance is unplayably slow for me.

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor 3.68 GHz
RAM: 8.0 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Geforce 210

[Mister Blue Cinco Litros]

same, the speed changes all the time, making many of the games almost unplayable...

[RemsDude]

Same, its terrible

[Duke Von Rollington]

+1 I get quite a few frame drops on well above recommended specs

[Sigin]

+1 here. Sometimes lower than 30 fps

[Mister Blue Cinco Litros]

changing from borderless to fullscreen fixed this for me

[kiwasabi]

I've turned on and off CRT filtering as well as changed from fullscreen to windowed and back, and there is no change for me. Actually, the CRT filter slows it down even worse. Found that out from a different thread. We need a patch to fix these performance issues before I can even play this game.

[Jasmine]

Have you tried changing the scale? I have framerate issues when I set it to fill the screen, but if I go down to 2x or 3x scale, it runs fine.

[jakenastysnake]

Originally posted by Mister Blue Cinco Litros:

changing from borderless to fullscreen fixed this for me

Yep, same here. Changing from borderless to fullscreen fixed it!

[kiwasabi]

Originally posted by Jasmine:

Have you tried changing the scale? I have framerate issues when I set it to fill the screen, but if I go down to 2x or 3x scale, it runs fine.

I just tested this. On my computer 1X and 2X scale appear to run smoothly. Once I change it to 3X - 5X it slows back down. CRT mode amplifies the slowdown to unbearable levels.

[kiwasabi]

This issue was not addressed in the latest patch and is still not fixed. Was buying this game a mistake? I can only play it in 2X scale.

[Power_Bert]

The latest patch made performance worse for me. Now the game drops below 60 whenever something explodes or happens onscreen.
I would stay away from this game until they manage to patch the patch. Which will probably take forever as these are only a few people.

AMD Ryzen 5700X, Geforce 4070rtx, 16 GB Ram, High Speed SSD, Windows 11