Single-player lag spikes, physics glitches

[Onymous]

I consistently have latency spikes in singleplayer, accompanied by physics glitches. The glitches can be minor to fatal [to the character, not the game's running process]. A spike happens once every 30 seconds, predictably, always. Frames get skipped, each time. The game physics also falter as the system tries to catch back up, leading to unpredictable results for the player.

For example, I have a composite rail that's about 400 rails long, a bumper at each end, and a one composite rail platform. Riding the platform from one end to the other takes about 26 seconds. The tracks are not smooth, but jagged to match the natural ceiling, keeping the rider as skimming the top. The planet is barren, with some modifications: microformed all around the track so there are spawns, 14 defense turrets to kill the spawns, a teleporter, a bed, and maybe two dozen torches.

Whenever a spike occurs, there's a good chance (one in three?) that the rider will be forced off of the platform - apparently either being pushed off, falling through, or just falling nearby. This happens at different spots in the unchanging rail, and normally there's no problem anywhere.

These spikes have been apparent since I can remember. There have been many deaths and much frustration. Building this rail made the problem particularly visible. For the design, there's really no possible workaround. This farm should work, but doesn't, and the only reason why not is the glitches caused by the spikes.

I first observed this, after having played vanilla exclusively. In an attempt to address the issue, I tried three mods, with no apparent effect:

• Optimizebound
  
• Parallax Compression
  
• More Threads

I also tried several things from various guides, mainly this one and that one. These also had no apparent effect [on the issue]:

• No quests are being tracked (all done).
  
• Enable / disable vertical sync.
  
• Disable multiplayer via Steam / Discord.
  
• Enable / disable monochrom lights.
  
• Enable / disable fullscreen (1920x1080).
  
• Choose any zoom level.
  
• Enable / disable texture limit.
  
• Run run-client.sh , without Steam running.
  
• Closed all other user applications.
  
• Confirmed running a 64-bit executable on a 64-bit system.

Running Linux with Starbound on the dedicated GPU, with plenty of CPU and RAM observed available while issue occurred.

[Kozuel]

Bumping and following this because I've been experiencing this myself with or without mods and it was the only reason I stopped playing Starbound.

*Edit* This is a known thing apparently and is not exclusive to Linux but affects Win7/8/10 users as well. With apparently no known fix.

[Onymous]

I've seen lots of discussion about general performance, or trying to get more frames per second. Lots of them talk about lag, but what I saw wasn't exactly clear on what "lag" means in their case. Did you find any threads that refer to this issue specifically: the 30-second interval lag spikes and accompanying physics glitches?

[Kozuel]

Just last month: https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1699416432426058824/

[Onymous]

Thanks!

[Kozuel]

Yeah, not exactly good news, I always used to think it was caused by all the mods I had installed, but learning now that it's 'just a thing' is really discouraging.

[Onymous]

Agreed. It isn't good news. I didn't get far with my amateur application profiling, but from this distance it seems like garbage collection getting out of hand. Maybe it is something like that, and maybe some tuning could fix it. I hope so. The alternative is just to think that the engine has a fatal flaw and cannot possibly run the game that we're asking it to run, on modern systems that are well over the requirements.

Reading some older responses from the devs showed me that they were passionate about their work. Hopefully they still are, but it's also possible they've moved on to other projects. Still, a flaw that makes players stop playing calls for criticism.

[Onymous]

Any solution? Is there a way to profile in more detail, to know what's going wrong? Is there a way to tune some components that could commonly cause this (perhaps GC-related)?

[Kolljak]

running rtx 2070 geforce card with 16gb of ram. stuttering persists. its just a game thing its a shame really. cmon chuckles get your ♥♥♥♥ together.

[Onymous]

Are there any new ideas on how to fix lag spikes in this game?

[Tolone]

Do the spikes occur with the same frequency and severity on a new character? You could check in /Starbound/storage/player for any large .player files; any character over 1.5MB can start to experience lag spikes with the savegame tick every 30 seconds.

If you've been experimenting with modding and custom items, completed a huge number of quests, or caught (or more specifically, caught and released at least once) an enormous number of capture pod pets, those sorts of things can severely bloat the .player file. As the file grows larger, the save tick latency becomes higher and higher, until it starts to cause a perceptible (or eventually, crippling) lag spike. This can be fixed by editing the character's .player file to remove the garbage that builds up over time, though the process is a bit involved.

[Onymous]

Thanks for the follow-up. However, I've lost interest in the game, and lost faith in the developer.

[GAMESweetG]

I reckon that the cause of the lag is a graphics issue. Because strangely I did an experiment, a few days ago. I switched the Nvidia GeForce Control panel settings for this game to integrated one (which is Intel HD graphics). I did see improvements to the game. Because the game was running very smoothly. However the game screen was flickering while moving around. Not sure why that was doing that.

But I feel that the FPS lag is actually based on graphics related problem.

[Onymous]

What I was seeing affected gameplay itself, and wasn't just a matter of reduced rendering speed. I described as "physics glitches".

Objects in the game would behave incorrectly. For example, the platform would move without carrying a character riding it forward. Standing on a platform, I'd fall through it. If instead it were purely graphical leg, the platform would visually stutter, but everything would continue normally after the system came back from lag.

[Onymous]

As others have mentioned, it's a problem similar to what many people report. I've lost interest, so here's a list of other times people have posted about something like this:

5 Jan 2020 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/2626095078198842973/
14 Dec 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/3909619202494542388/
13 Oct 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/3159763879068260305/
29 Sep 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1630790506927995935/
27 Sep 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1630790506920529041/
18 Jun 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1638662230384666238/
14 Jun 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1638662230369392950/
14 Aug 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1642045637380894237/
14 Aug 2019 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1642045637380845736/
11 Feb 2018 https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/3/1699416432426058824/

[GAMESweetG]

I can confirm that it is the graphics and possibly the ram or processor. Because I'm now using my new higher gaming spec laptop. Which has 32GB ram and Nvidia GeForce 1060 GTX.

I trialled Starbound on it. And I was able to play the game very smoothly, without any lags at all. Compared to the poor experience that my older gaming laptop had.