FPS & Performance Tips

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

As of April 2017 I'm unsubbing from this post and no longer updating the OP.

General Tips

• Check this guide out updated: 12/9/18
  
  
• Abandon or complete side quests in your Quest Journal (J)
  There's a bug (or maybe not working feature) that makes it so quest NPCs are tracked, as well as the items. Removing these quests can improve performance.
  
  
• Increase the Zoom level in the options menu
  This is especially helpful at places like the outpost or during environmental effects.
  
  
• Try running the game without using Steam. (closing other apps will also help)
  Close Steam and navigate to where Starbound is located on your computer. It should be Program Files>Steam>Steamapps>Common>Starbound. Once there, you'll notice a Win32 and Win64 folder. Open the one that corresponds to your system, then launch Starbound.exe (or Starbound_OpenGL.exe). If this method works for you, be sure to right-click the .exe file and create a shortcut for easy access later.
  
  
• Find out if you're running a 32-bit or 64-bit system.
  Windows: click 'Start' and type 'System' (it's in the control panel). On the System screen, look for the line that says System Type. On the Starbound launch screen, choose the option that corresponds to your system type.
  
  
• Adjust the Settings for your Graphics Card
  You can try enabling both OpenGL and Triple Buffering. You can also try disabling Vertical Sync (V-sync) - this can cause screen tearing (horizontal graphic errors), so you might try the optional settings here if your card provides them.
  
  

  Originally posted by NanoPi:

  I got a FPS boost by turning on "Threaded optimisation" for Starbound.exe in NVIDIA Control Panel.
  
  http://i.imgur.com/72QHxQS.png

  Originally posted by Punished "Refundee" Snake:

  Might be worth noting that Triple Buffering has no effect on or off unless V-Sync is enabled. Triple Buffering is a method option of V-Sync to improve the chances of a smoother framerate.

  
  
• You can also disable V-Sync in Starbound.config (go to Starbound folder and search for starbound.config, then look for Vsync at the bottom. Change "true" to "false".)
  
  
• Use Fullbright to remove shadows and the need for lots of torches
  Some users have said that using too many torches underground can cause FPS to drop. You can use the admin command /fullbright to remove the darkness on your map. To do this hit 'enter' type /admin and then /fullbright and type /admin again to turn admin mode off
  
  
• Some areas are worse than others.
  Environmental effects and lots of NPC's seem to cause a lot of strain on your system. Places like the Outpost also can cause the game to drop FPS. In these conditions, try increasing the zoom so your computer has to render less.
  
  
  

  Originally posted by yeehaw:

  ***Some steps removed by OP since they're already included above in this post***
  
  These are some tricks/tips to help you optimize your game, hopefully these work for you, if they don't then make sure to tell me because I'll try to find other ways to fix the FPS and edit this post.
  
  
  CONFIG File:
  
  Step 9. Right click on the "Starbound.exe" and on the top go to "Compatibility", there will be two options are the bottom that say "Run this program as administrator" and "Disable display high scaling on DPI settings" check these both and then click apply and OK.
  
  
  Mods:
  Step 1. If you don't know how to install mods then go to Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Starbound\mods and keep the folder open
  
  Step 2. Download these mods:
  (You're going to have to look these mods up, steam removed my links because of the spam filter)
  
  No shadows 1.0 - (increases performance by disabling point light shadows through a .patch of the lighting.config. All point lights will act as regular lights. The decrease in atmosphere will hopefully be made up for in an increase in frame rate.)
  
  FPS-Booster v3 - (Backgrounds cause large amounts of lag, on your graphics card[Or otherwise known as GPU]. What FPS-Booster does is for those low end computers out there, is removes them so players can still play. So playing on things such as labtops with poor graphics chips can still play, Provided they got processing power & arn't on power saving mode!)
  
  FrackinUniverse FPS Boost 1.0 - (Some removed code and image parallax)
  
  Step 3. After downloading these, drag the mod folders into the "mods" folder.
  
  Step 4. Start up your game and they should be downloaded!
  
  I hope this helped!

[Spiral]

Originally posted by 🔵 It's Lynx:

Great tutorial, though I believe the mods you have listed are all out-dated now. :SBchicken:

They're outdated but still work

[Robotica]

I really want to play this game, but for some reason I can't seem to resolve my lag issue. I've followed all the steps on this guide and many others, yet none of them seem to fix my issue. In general the game tends to run okay, but periodically the game will freeze up, sometimes for just a second and sometimes for as long as 10 or 20 seconds. Sometimes when it freezes up everything stops, but then sometimes I am still able to move around but nothing else. It usually tends to happen during combat, which is the worst, because in reality the game is still taking place and once the freeze ends the enemies dance around the screen in a hyper-speed.

I have only a few mods installed, and they are mods aimed at improving performance. I really don't see much of a difference with them on/off. I really don't see why it lags so bad, my computer should be able to run it.

Windows 10 64bit (tried with all different compatibility modes/options)
8GB Memory
AMD FX 8350 (8 cores/4ghz)
AMD Radeon 290x
Everything updated with the latest drivers/versions/etc.

Any thoughts?

---- UPDATE ---

I had the game installed on a separate hard drive where Steam and all my normal games live. I moved it to my SSD OS drive and it seems to have resolved the periodic freezing! YAY!!! I am still getting some mediocre fps drops but I can live with that.

[Koudougou Cthulhu]

Originally posted by Robotica:

I really want to play this game, but for some reason I can't seem to resolve my lag issue. I've followed all the steps on this guide and many others, yet none of them seem to fix my issue. In general the game tends to run okay, but periodically the game will freeze up, sometimes for just a second and sometimes for as long as 10 or 20 seconds. Sometimes when it freezes up everything stops, but then sometimes I am still able to move around but nothing else. It usually tends to happen during combat, which is the worst, because in reality the game is still taking place and once the freeze ends the enemies dance around the screen in a hyper-speed.

I have only a few mods installed, and they are mods aimed at improving performance. I really don't see much of a difference with them on/off. I really don't see why it lags so bad, my computer should be able to run it.

Windows 10 64bit (tried with all different compatibility modes/options)
8GB Memory
AMD FX 8350 (8 cores/4ghz)
AMD Radeon 290x
Everything updated with the latest drivers/versions/etc.

Any thoughts?

---- UPDATE ---

I had the game installed on a separate hard drive where Steam and all my normal games live. I moved it to my SSD OS drive and it seems to have resolved the periodic freezing! YAY!!! I am still getting some mediocre fps drops but I can live with that.

I was experiencing the same issue with constant random 2-5 second freezes. Moving the game from my mechanical HD to my SSD also resolved the issue for me.

[Robotica]

@Koudougou that's good to know, I found that little tidbit while I was desperately searching for a solution. On a similar note I found another person who said they got a drastic improvement by running the game from a ramdisk. If your not sure what that is just do a quick Google search, but essentially it's making a hard drive with your memory. I only have 8gb of ram so it didn't work too well for me, and you need a minimum of 8gb to make a ramdisk. If you want to try it out it's free, there's a free app from AMD.

Also, just another note to put here in case anyone is looking. I found another interesting idea but you need a decent secondary gaming computer. There were a few people who mentioned running the game on a local multiplayer server helped, but you need to run the server on a different computer. I think the concept here is that the server is doing a lot of the hard math, and so your actual computer won't be as stressed.

And finally, even after posting my previous message I was still having quite a bit of lag. On logging into the game it would run at a decent framerate at a fairly steady pace, albeit for dense areas such as the outpost or villages. But after 20 to 30 minutes I would start getting a good bit of lag that would be much worse in some areas and not as bad as others. However if I was in a bad spot and I logged out and back in the game would typically run good again... for a while.

Anyways nothing I could find was fixing it, and in general I was still experiencing lag in areas that didn't make sense. So, I went and purchased a new graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080) and WOW!!!! The game is running really good now!!! It's even pretty dang good at the outpost and other dense places like villages. I only played for about an hour so far, but it's been very good now. I came from an AMD Radeon 270x which in all honesty should be more than enough!

I'm kind of annoyed though that I would need to buy this new graphics card to not lag in a pixel game... It's crazy... I'm still not even getting flawless FPS, in areas like the Outpost I do still get a little stutter here and there, but nothing like it used to be. I honestly didn't expect the new card to make this much of a difference, I am highly impressed.

[Tim]

Originally posted by Robotica:

I went and purchased a new graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080) and WOW!!!! The game is running really good now!!!

In this case they should write honest system requirements for the game.

• Game require GeForce GTX 1080 for 30-60 FPS gameplay
• High performance SSD
• Secondary decent gaming PC

This is fun to read this thread from time to time ...

[FuscusNight]

Game doesn't run good, random fps drops to 30 or 40 then back up to 62. Turning off vsync in ini file helped only a bit. How can such a simple looking game run worse then something like lets say Prey 2017 or Witcher 3 ?

PC specs : Intel i5 4670k 3.8 Ghz, 16GB DDR3 RAM, AMD RX 580 8GB, SSD 250GB Samsung EVO + 1TB Toshiba HDD, Windows 10 64-bit.

[Don Bezaleel]

My brother has Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000, 6GB RAM, Intel Core i5-3210M and he can run Starbound so sweet in 60 stable FPS. He bought his machine three years ago. I buy mine maybe the last year, I don't remember.

This is my machine information:

-----------------------------
System Information
-----------------------------
Processor: AMD A10-8700P Radeon R6, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G (4 CPUs), ~1.8GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 7638MB RAM
Page File: 2920MB used, 6573MB available

-----------------------------
Screen
-----------------------------
Name: AMD Radeon R6 Graphics
Chip: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9874)
DAC: Internal DAC(4000MHz)
Display Memory: 4315 MB
Dedicated Memory: 496 MB
Shared Memory: 3819 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)


"So, Cabeza de Roble, how many FPS do you play?"- you could ask; well, if God and all Angels are with me, I can play with 30 FPS if I do not move my character.

Since last week I am looking for an answer to my problem, a solution and let me tell you something: is a waste of time, I hate my life, I need someone who can tell me what the problem is...

God Bless Starbound.
Thanks in advance for your reply.

[gaye silly cate]

Hey Cabeza de Roble what OS are you running on your PC?
If it is Windows then go to task manager and turn up starbound's priority in the processes tab, but probably not up to realtime tho.
If it is anything else then i can't help :///
Hope that helps tho ;P

[Don Bezaleel]

Originally posted by EvilAsh999:

Hey Cabeza de Roble what OS are you running on your PC?
If it is Windows then go to task manager and turn up starbound's priority in the processes tab, but probably not up to realtime tho.
If it is anything else then i can't help :///
Hope that helps tho ;P

Thanks for take your time to answer. I use Windows 10. I did what you say and nothing change :c
Do you believe there will be a solution from the creators soon?

[gaye silly cate]

No, not really :/
If loads of ppl with an i3 were complaining and it still says i3 is reccomended they probably don't care :/
I wish they did tho

[kcza]

♥♥♥♥ runs like ♥♥♥♥...i wonder how you british bumpkings managed to ♥♥♥♥ this up to such degree. unplayable on a pc worth 2k, but work fine on a 200€ laptop from 2k10.. smells

[Gremlin6969]

My game always crashes each time i try fighting the first boss( the crystal one in the mines with all those naked flesh dudes).The first phase runs smoothly, but when i take the first part of his health down, ,my game has a terrible fps drop and freezes.
Is there a way to fix this?

[Vladimir Lenin gaming]

thanks bro

[BrainyPepper]

My/Our life/lives would be so much better if the devs just optimized the humanoid A.I. It's the biggest problem I have with performance, by far. The animal A.I. is very easy on my computer, but the humanoid A.I. murders it.

[Cryptix]

Originally posted by Prime Mongea:

My/Our life/lives would be so much better if the devs just optimized the humanoid A.I. It's the biggest problem I have with performance, by far. The animal A.I. is very easy on my computer, but the humanoid A.I. murders it.

Really? That seems odd. They're very similar.