Game feels more jittery after update

[phonon5891]

Maybe it's just me, but it really feels like the game has become more jittery since the last update. I started over with a new char and world, and for the first time ever died multiple times in the early game caves (forest, snow, and desert) due to microstutters in combat. These stutters were always there, but they used to be only a minor annoyance at worst; now they seem to happen more often, and the stutters also feel longer. It feels like the difference between 0.02 and 0.2 seconds, but sometimes that's all it takes when you're swamped by 10+ mobs. Might be the lighting -- I feel it happens more often when I use magic spells that generate light and particles like the early game bouncing laser (bought from wizard). Tried removing vsync, toning down particles, setting colors back to normal from vibrant -- the game ran smoother but the stuttering didn't go away.

I'm playing on an M1 macbook pro, so this might just be the mac version. To reiterate, this never felt like an issue until this last update.

Will play more and report back with more observations, but I wanted to post this here first to make devs aware.

[Fair]

Hmm, thanks for the report. I will try to test it out more on the couple of macs I have myself.
I think the issue may be from available memory, so one thing you could try is to do a full restart of your Mac. Not just a sleep like you usually do when closing it :)

[phonon5891]

I'll try that later today, but I don't think memory availability is the issue here: I have 32 GB of RAM, and running the game plus every other thing running on my system only brings up my RAM usage to ~70%, so plenty of room left. Perhaps it's related to how much memory Java allocates to the game instead? Most other Java-based games I play (Minecraft, Starsector, etc) has some method or command to tweak the memory allocated to the game, so if there's a way to do that for Necesse I would love to try and do some testing.

Actually, now that I think about it, allocated memory might be it -- I recall having a very similar issue in Minecraft with microstutters related to chunk loading, and it went away completely as soon as I bumped the allocated memory to 4 gigs (the default was 2).

[phonon5891]

Yup, seems like it somehow *was* allocated memory. I navigated into Necesse.app, hoping to find some sort of execution script containing memory parameters, and found StartNatively.sh. Edited xms and xmx both to 4G, slashed heapregionsize to 16M, and lowered maxgcpausemillis to 40.

There are still minor microstutters here and there, probably from texture loading or something, but once that completes, things are now MUCH smoother.

Did the run script change between 0.22 and 0.23? Maybe a newer/different bundled JRE? If not, I wonder what happened between the two versions to cause that much of a difference.

Will play/test a bit more just to make sure this is not a fluke.

[Ceana of the Crags]

Originally posted by Fair:

Hmm, thanks for the report. I will try to test it out more on the couple of macs I have myself.
I think the issue may be from available memory, so one thing you could try is to do a full restart of your Mac. Not just a sleep like you usually do when closing it :)

And please stop the world moving during creation. I was outright sick-to-my-stomach and just clicked through the process hoping it would STOP!! Sinus issues mean that one cannot have that sort of movement while trying to focus on a spot. It's like travel sickness that you are forcing on your players.

[Fair]

Hit the binoculars button to the right of the main menu to turn it off. Or just click outside on the level :)
Here's a screenshot of the button: https://i.imgur.com/lcz9uHV.png

[Eightball]

Personally i've only noticed frame drops and jitters at NPC towns. Not sure why, because my own town seems to have just as many people in it but doesn't give me these issues.