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,

[kiwasabi]

Messaggio originale di 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

That means this isn't even a low end PC issue. This program is just very poorly optimized. My suspicion is that the dev is a better game designer than he is a game programmer. Harsh but true. He should take that Spelunky money and hire someone who actually knows what they're doing. But I've found that in this narcissistic world we live in that the ego rules all. So we the customers get to pay the price for the fact that the dev doesn't want to admit that he shouldn't be wearing all hats.

[Power_Bert]

Messaggio originale di kiwasabi:

Messaggio originale di 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

That means this isn't even a low end PC issue. This program is just very poorly optimized. My suspicion is that the dev is a better game designer than he is a game programmer. Harsh but true. He should take that Spelunky money and hire someone who actually knows what they're doing. But I've found that in this narcissistic world we live in that the ego rules all. So we the customers get to pay the price for the fact that the dev doesn't want to admit that he shouldn't be wearing all hats.

I dunno. Before the first patch everything worked just fine. Looks like they fumbled something up while fixing other stuff.
I can play other way more demanding games just fine.

[Dick Kickem]

Yeah, same problem here, but on a pretty good pc (7800x3d+7900xtx). Works great on the deck though.

[kiwasabi]

The performance problems are STILL NOT FIXED in the latest patch. And still being ignored by Derek Yu.

[Tatra]

Messaggio originale di ♥♥♥♥ Kickem:

Yeah, same problem here, but on a pretty good pc (7800x3d+7900xtx). Works great on the deck though.

Even better, works perfect on Steam Deck even if you turn the GPU clockspeed & TPU power to their min settings.

So, no, no general "poor optimization" as someone has claimed... if that was the case, it would be that slow for everyone... But there is presumably some bug with users with particular categories of hardware setup.

I dare say the team will be looking into this alongside other post-launch issues... They just released ~50 games at once, I can't imagine how busy they are... But issues like this are probably going to require pouring over detailed logs from multiple affected users to try to figure out what the commonality is. A bit more difficult to resolve than "Hey, if you're in Hyper mode in Bushido Ball and lob the ball, it always wins"!

To anyone who is getting this; personally, I'd advise heading to the Bug Reports section and posting there, including as many hardware/software details as you can, maybe link to a dxdiag file or something, I dunno. Judging by the people who say it got fixed by switching from "Borderless" to "Fullscreen", may be worth confirming your monitor resolution/framerate as well.

[11clock]

Stuff like this is why I have consoles despite owning an expensive gaming rig. Some games just randomly break for no apparent reason. Console hardware is standardized, so the game works the same for everyone.

Thankfully UFO 50 runs perfectly fine for me, but I have been frustrated with so many other games not working properly, from random stuttering, to graphics not properly being displayed, to just straight up crashing on launch.

Anyways, hopefully we get a console port of UFO 50 later.

[Grimmhammer]

Messaggio originale di kiwasabi:

Messaggio originale di 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.

Setting to fullscreen fixed the issue for me.

[foldspace]

ugg, my laptop was working fine and just now I got the latest update and its running 10 fps at best.

[Foamed]

So here is what you can try:

1. Update your computer's OS, the firmware, and the GPU driver (or integrated graphics card) to the latest version.
2. Do a complete shut down (not a restart), then start the computer up again.
3. Shut down all other applications running in the background (this includes disconnecting from the internet).
4. Try running the game (ufo50.exe) while not running Steam. If it works, great, if not then run steam and turn off Steam overlay.
5. Try to force V-Sync to be on (this will induce some minor input lag). If it helps keep it on, if not return the setting back to default.
6. Run the game in true fullscreen mode (not borderless). True fullscreen uses less system resources than borderless and windowed mode.
7. Turn off the CRT filter in the UFO50 "Video settings".

It should help a little bit, but I can't promise it'll actually make the game fully playable. Your computer is very old and 8gb of RAM is the absolute bare minimum for 2024 unless you're running a Linux distro optimized for low end specs.

[kiwasabi]

Messaggio originale di Foamed:

So here is what you can try:

1. Update your computer's OS, the firmware, and the GPU driver (or integrated graphics card) to the latest version.
2. Do a complete shut down (not a restart), then start the computer up again.
3. Shut down all other applications running in the background (this includes disconnecting from the internet).
4. Try running the game (ufo50.exe) while not running Steam. If it works, great, if not then run steam and turn off Steam overlay.
5. Try to force V-Sync to be on (this will induce some minor input lag). If it helps keep it on, if not return the setting back to default.
6. Run the game in true fullscreen mode (not borderless). True fullscreen uses less system resources than borderless and windowed mode.
7. Turn off the CRT filter in the UFO50 "Video settings".

It should help a little bit, but I can't promise it'll actually make the game fully playable. Your computer is very old and 8gb of RAM is the absolute bare minimum for 2024 unless you're running a Linux distro optimized for low end specs.

I've tried basically all of this already. The game is just very poorly optimized.

Isn't it amazing how programs are so badly optimized now that you're forced to constantly upgrade hardware that should be essentially future proof by now? I mean seriously, it is just planned obsolescense This is getting ridiculous. These games are meant to simulate the experience of NES era graphics and gameplay. And you're telling me 8GB of RAM isn't enough to run these games? It's not my fault that the developer only tests his programs on high end PCs. Stop trying to blame the victim here. My PC meets the minimum specs. Which should already be way more than what's needed to run this game in any case.

[kiwasabi]

Messaggio originale di Tatra:

Messaggio originale di ♥♥♥♥ Kickem:

Yeah, same problem here, but on a pretty good pc (7800x3d+7900xtx). Works great on the deck though.

Even better, works perfect on Steam Deck even if you turn the GPU clockspeed & TPU power to their min settings.

So, no, no general "poor optimization" as someone has claimed... if that was the case, it would be that slow for everyone... But there is presumably some bug with users with particular categories of hardware setup.

I dare say the team will be looking into this alongside other post-launch issues... They just released ~50 games at once, I can't imagine how busy they are... But issues like this are probably going to require pouring over detailed logs from multiple affected users to try to figure out what the commonality is. A bit more difficult to resolve than "Hey, if you're in Hyper mode in Bushido Ball and lob the ball, it always wins"!

To anyone who is getting this; personally, I'd advise heading to the Bug Reports section and posting there, including as many hardware/software details as you can, maybe link to a dxdiag file or something, I dunno. Judging by the people who say it got fixed by switching from "Borderless" to "Fullscreen", may be worth confirming your monitor resolution/framerate as well.

If it was simply a hardware issue, the game would run slowly at all scales. The fact that 3X through 5X. and the CRT filter cause the performance hit to happen, means that the game is badly optimized. There is absolutely no reason that a simple screen filter like the CRT filter should cause a loss in performance. It means the game is poorly optimized. It's alright, I've dealt with the Spelunky bootlickers back in the day as well. When all else fails, defend the developer who hasn't even acknowledged the issue after two weeks....and gaslight the victim by claiming it's not a performance issue. I work in quality assurance testing. I know what I'm talking about. You don't need to just mindlessly defend the developer. The developer is a millionaire who chooses not to hire QA staff because he egotistically believes he can do everything himself. So he releases buggy unfinished products and then has no support staff to even respond to bug reports, let alone actually fix the issues.

And I did post in the bug reports section and got no response. Again, please stop with the bootlicking. He isn't going to hire you. He isn't going to share his millions of dollars with you. It doesn't get you anywhere. Derek Yu is a much better game designer than programmer or QA tester. He should swallow his pride and actually hire staff who can address his limitations.

One last thing. I know we live in a very obvious dystopia of a world. It doesn't mean we have to put whipped cream on a turd. And the performance issues in UFO 50 that persist after 2 patches and 2 weeks post release...are a giant steaming pile of dung. It's alright to point these things out. We don't need to keep letting others dump on us. We don't need to call it rain when people standing above us are pissing on us.

[foldspace]

Messaggio originale di kiwasabi:

If it was simply a hardware issue, the game would run slowly at all scales. The fact that 3X through 5X. and the CRT filter cause the performance hit to happen, means that the game is badly optimized. There is absolutely no reason that a simple screen filter like the CRT filter should cause a loss in performance. It means the game is poorly optimized. It's alright, I've dealt with the Spelunky bootlickers back in the day as well. When all else fails, defend the developer who hasn't even acknowledged the issue after two weeks....and gaslight the victim by claiming it's not a performance issue. I work in quality assurance testing.

I'm sympathetic. These games should run on a toaster and the entire collection could easily have been published to run in the browser with zero performance issues on old hardware. I know because I develop browser games for kicks.

My guess is that the main culprit for the variable performance is that the designers wrote UFO 50 themselves in Gamemaker as a substitute for using a professional dev team like Blitworks (Spelunky 2 and ports for Spelunky HD) to handle the coding. Maybe they should be hitting up the Gamemaker team for support.

[foldspace]

For what it's worth, turning off both fill (back to 4x scaling) and CRT modes also fixed my framerate issues but playing without fullscreen is a bit of a bummer. (I'm using an older Windows 10 Toshiba laptop running at 1080p).

[Foamed]

Messaggio originale di foldspace:

but playing without fullscreen is a bit of a bummer.

You can try using Borderless Gaming:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/388080/Borderless_Gaming/
Or you can download an older version for free from their GitHub page:

• https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming/releases/tag/10.0-rc.1

[Foamed]

Messaggio originale di kiwasabi:

The performance problems are STILL NOT FIXED in the latest patch. And still being ignored by Derek Yu.

I find it wild that people jump to baseless conclusions based on the lack of information.

Just because something isn't officially stated on social media, mentioned in the patch notes, or aren't replied to does not mean that they aren't aware of the issue or aren't doing anything about it. Btw,

Derek Yu isn't the only person who worked on this project. The development team consists of Derek Yu, Eirik Suhrke, Jon Perry, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto, and Tyriq Plummer.

Messaggio originale di kiwasabi:

And you're telling me 8GB of RAM isn't enough to run these games?

You need a quad core CPU and a dedicated GPU with OpenGL 4.0 support to meet the recommended specs. If they developed the game using assembly it would run on a NES, however they developed it using a game engine which comes with its own set of issues.

You also have to take into account that there's an endless amount of hardware combinations out there, some of which may affect software in unintentional and negative ways.

The only other solution I can think is to try to dual boot using a lightweight Linux distro (which also supports Steam out of the box), otherwise you'll have to wait and hope for a future patch to fix the issue.