Major Bug/Problem!

[Bovin Khan]

So, i have an issue where when i start playing the game, within a few secounds the game starts to stutter worst and worst until it is almost completly frozen. The only way to stop it is to Alt + Tab to another screen. But when i go back to the game, it starts doing it yet again.

I watched the games resource usage and it is NOT going up when this happens according to Task Manager. The thing is, it does not ALWAYS do it. I have 1000+ hours in this game and i only encounter this every once and a while. But when it does happen, i have no idea how to fix it.

System specs:
Ryzen 5 5600x
RTX 2070 Super 8GB
32 GB Ram
Windows 11

My system is beefy..... no reason for this other then a major game issue.

[Rekal]

There are several reasons it could be something other than a game issue. Game issues are software related and software is a code that should work the same every time it's run. For example if the code was 2 + 2 = ? The expected result every time you run the code should be 4. If you suddenly sometimes randomly get 5 or 3 instead of 4 it points more toward the hardware that is calculating the code incorrectly for some random reason. This is not a dig at you or your hardware, just a reminder to keep an open mind and not lay blame when the issue is still unknown.

First off, have you done a file verification recently? This seems to be a rare issue that doesn't effect the majority of players. If some of your files were corrupted the file verification should catch that and fix the issue. Right click on DSP in your Steam library, click properties and on the Installed Files tab is the option to run an integrity check. That is really the only option we have right now to fix game issues.

Now a flashing screen typically indicates a graphics card issue. Since the game plays normally for you most of the time then the issue is something intermittent. What can cause an intermittent issue for a GPU?

GPU drivers -- I have to assume your drivers are up to date because most auto-update. You mentioned the game working and giving you 1000+ hours of playtime so it's probably not your drivers. Drivers are another form of code after all so 2 + 2 = 4 should not randomly change.

Physical Connections - The GPU is physically connected with 100+ contacts to the mother board and with fans running inside the case thing vibrate a lot. If one of those contacts become sketchy it could cause an issue. The only fix for this is to open up the case and pull the GPU out of the socket and re-seat it.

Power issues - Electricity is like water, if it's flowing smoothly no one even thinks about it. If your grid surges or dips occasionally and you don't have a UPS to smooth things out it can cause issues as well. Or your PC's power supply (PSU) is right on the ragged edge of maximum power output so when the game starts and your HDD starts reading the files and feeds them to your CPU and GPU, your CPU starts processing the code while the GPU does its own little fast as possible startup dance. All that power could draw the PSU output down which caused the GPU to trip in the middle of the dance. If your PSU is in good shape then it's pretty unlikely because it's happened more than once in the same way.

VRAM Errors - Since the problem arises on game start then the problem could be caused by the GPU loading game data into a bad memory sector. Not every game uses every VRAM sector, and not every bad sector will cause a game ending error loop. There are a LOT of VRAM sectors on your 8GB card so having a few not work right isn't that big of a deal. Try out some GPU or VRAM stress tester like FurMark to get an idea if your card has a clean bill of health or not.

Those are a few things to try to troubleshoot with how you've described the problem. If you could repeat the problem reliably instead of it being seemingly random it might shed more light on it. Does it ever happen directly after a reboot? Is there a certain program you use before and have running in the background that causes it to happen?

[Bovin Khan]

No, it is NOT my PC. Not when i can play 100's of other games, including games like this one, and not have a single issue. I have verified files, and nothing was found.

[Rekal]

Originally posted by Bovin Khan:

No, it is NOT my PC. Not when i can play 100's of other games, including games like this one, and not have a single issue. I have verified files, and nothing was found.

Okay, an analogy for what you just said -- I tried to stop my car but it wouldn't stop so I hit the car stopped at the light. Can someone help me figure out why my car wouldn't stop? It's NOT my car. My car works fine, it speeds up, it turns left and right, all the lights work and the stereo works too.

Open mind. You're experiencing a problem with this game that others are not. What are you doing/using that others are not? Hardware and settings are the most likely thing to investigate.

Have you done a virus scan recently?

What resolution are you using? What is your monitor's native resolution? Flickering screen can also be your video card switching resolutions for whatever reason. Usually you don't get stuck in a loop going back and forth though. Have you tried switching the resolution settings in game?

[Bovin Khan]

The screen is not "flickering". It is stuttering. I will start the game, load up a save or new game. When i get on planet the FPS is perfectly fine, but within a couple seconds the screen starts to stutter faster and faster. In fact it makes my whole PC do it. If i am watching a video, the video does it from the game as well.

I play the game at 4K resolution. But my screen is not flickering. And i am not even sure where you are getting that term from. Flickering is NOT the same or even close to stuttering. And NO i do not have a virus...

BTW it does not do it 100% of the time. I've been playing the game most of last night just fine.

[Rekal]

Originally posted by Bovin Khan:

The screen is not "flickering". It is stuttering. I will start the game, load up a save or new game. When i get on planet the FPS is perfectly fine, but within a couple seconds the screen starts to stutter faster and faster. In fact it makes my whole PC do it. If i am watching a video, the video does it from the game as well.

I play the game at 4K resolution. But my screen is not flickering. And i am not even sure where you are getting that term from. Flickering is NOT the same or even close to stuttering. And NO i do not have a virus...

BTW it does not do it 100% of the time. I've been playing the game most of last night just fine.

Where I got the flickering misunderstanding from was your first post. You said it stuttered when you start playing the game, which I assumed meant on startup of the game. Startup is just a loading screen and how you'd experience stuttering on a loading screen made me think the screen must be flickering.

Your latest post though clears that up by explaining it happens after you load your save and clarifies that it is in fact stuttering and not flickering. Stuttering in this game is typically from frame rate drop, and frame rate drops typically because the factory is really large or you're in the presence of a Dyson Sphere.

The game is poorly optimized which for now is hand-waved as acceptable because of early access. The Dyson Sphere's visible rendering process is especially bad at the moment and just loading a plan up causes problems. So bad they added a "Do not display" option in the Sphere planning UI to just skip it entirely.

Now the question is, is that the kind of stuttering you're experiencing? Do you have the steam overlay's FPS monitor up to watch your frame rate? (Shift+Tab -> Settings -> In Game tab) How big are the factories you load up when this happens? Has it ever happened on a brand new game?

If you load up a big factory game with a big Dyson Sphere as soon as you turn to look at the sphere (even if it is in a different system) it can drag the game screaming to a near halt. If you've got 1000s of hours in the game, you've likely done multiple play throughs so I'd think you'd be familiar with this kind of FPS lag induced stuttering.

Is it something different?

[Bovin Khan]

The stuttering does not show up on the FPS (meaning my fps counter does not change at all) nor does it show up in any kinda resource monitoring. CPU, GPU, RAM usages is all exactly the same and does not change. Which leads me to the fact that it looks exactly like there is a coding issue that is resulting in errors.

What amazes me is the fact that my FPS counter doesn't change at all lol.

As far as the game optimization, i have to very much disagree with you on that. I feel the game is VERY well optimized for how much is being handled. I've had truly MASSIVE worlds. Entire planets covered for 1 specific purpose and the game handled pretty well.

The ONLY time i have any true issues related to the optimization is when placing LARGE blueprints. I do have multiple play throughs. Tho this stuttering is very random it seems. Like right now, it's not doing it. I have tested restarting my PC and that "seemed" to fix it but i will have to replicate this before i can say for sure.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by HaddockA:

Originally posted by Bovin Khan:

My system is beefy..... no reason for this other then a major game issue.

The moment you know that you're dealing with someone who clearly doesn't know a whole lot about computers... ~sigh~

Indeed. A beefy computer is not everything. We don't even know what graphic settings is he using. I had stuttering issues that went away as soon as I disabled dithering. Maybe that is the solution for the OP.

[Searry]

Interesting. I've never had any performance issues.

[Marakith]

Sometimes it's simply a conflict with another task running on the PC in the background, try closing down unnecessary tasks before starting the game using task manager and see if it fixes it. If it does, then try the process again, but close these tasks one by one until the stuttering goes.

[Grish]

If you have OneDrive backing up your documents and you're Dyson Sphere Save folder is in your Documents folder (it is by default) that can cause a lot of lag.

You're system isn't beefy a 2070 GPU is barely enough for this game, I too have massive systems, dozens of complete spheres etc. Huge blueprints do generate some lag when placed initially.

Top left of the screen where it shows a blue/green FPS vs world sim speed. Should pop up a little slider to prefer one over the other... e.g. produce more FPS but slow down world sim speed. Try that.

Also try if you want to R2Modman, get the mods BepInEx, DSPModSave, DSPOptimizations, SampleAndHoldSim and CompressSave and you'll have a much better time of it end game FPS and stutter wise.

[m00t]

I'm having this problem. When DPS has focus the game is no longer Frames Per Second but Seconds Per Frame. If the game does NOT have focus it runs very smoothly in the background. I have not even left the starting planet yet so it is not an issue with having a megabase.

I built this computer a month ago, ryzen 7700x, 64gb of ram, rtx 4070. It's not an underpowered machine problem, it's a bug.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by m00t:

I'm having this problem. When DPS has focus the game is no longer Frames Per Second but Seconds Per Frame. If the game does NOT have focus it runs very smoothly in the background. I have not even left the starting planet yet so it is not an issue with having a megabase.

I built this computer a month ago, ryzen 7700x, 64gb of ram, rtx 4070. It's not an underpowered machine problem, it's a bug.

Sounds like there is a problem with your computer or your game settings (turn off dithering). I have a stable 30 fps on my 6-year-old laptop (I do need to dedust at the very least) even with multiple Dyson swarms and/or spheres.

[JokeryEU]

seems like you have a temp problem. Install CPUID HWMonitor and check temps while playing