Any ways to improve performance?

[Odey555]

I'm running a pretty good laptop, intel core i7 3ghz, windows 7 64, why does the game start lagging with many prisoners and bigger prisons? Any way to make it run smoother in those occasions, maybe even smoother in general?

[BumpWillis]

alaways, unfortunately reduce your video rez, sorry but we all know it..Given the $800 video cards now we are forced to concede. gOoD lUcK

[avantech]

A couple of fanboys should soon tell you that they can play 2000 prisoners with no LAG while playing GTA5 and running NASA software, that your laptop is a toaster, etc.

When you point out that you can run other games with no LAG, and that many other players have the same issue, so it's probably the game and not your computer, they will call you names. Eventually they'll leave very satisfied with themselves, since they've "won the argument".

To the point: you can try disabling fog of war, keeping wide corridors (3+ squares), avoiding extra staff, and above all avoid land expansions. But everyone hits the LAG barrier at some point, usually well before 1000 prisoners.

The devs ignore this issue, I keep bringing it up - here and in their bug tracker - to no avail.

[Odey555]

Originally posted by avantech:

A couple of fanboys should soon tell you that they can play 2000 prisoners with no LAG while playing GTA5 and running NASA software, that your laptop is a toaster, etc.

When you point out that you can run other games with no LAG, and that many other players have the same issue, so it's probably the game and not your computer, they will call you names. Eventually they'll leave very satisfied with themselves, since they've "won the argument".

I have never read more truth in a comment, YOU SIR are so right

[Trixi]

Originally posted by BumpWillis:

alaways, unfortunately reduce your video rez, sorry but we all know it..Given the $800 video cards now we are forced to concede. gOoD lUcK

your terrible bad, this game doesnt need much graphic, the main problem is the cpu and ram

[Trixi]

well the game is calculating many things in real time (pathing, needs, electricity etc)

so what you can do (list a bit incomplete)

1. avoid bottlenecks, where much entities crashes together. So make your main pathes 2 fields or 3 fields wide and avoid everything thats crown your prisoners.
2. dont build your wires and pipes in circles
3. use guard patrols instead of guard stations
4. dont build doubled walls
5. dont buy to much land
6. try to hold you job queue short, so dont build to much at once, better step by step

[DutchGamer78]

Originally posted by Trixi:

well the game is calculating many things in real time (pathing, needs, electricity etc)

so what you can do (list a bit incomplete)

1. avoid bottlenecks, where much entities crashes together. So make your main pathes 2 fields or 3 fields wide and avoid everything thats crown your prisoners.
2. dont build your wires and pipes in circles
3. use guard patrols instead of guard stations
4. dont build doubled walls
5. dont buy to much land
6. try to hold you job queue short, so dont build to much at once, better step by step

For me its a combination of +700 prisoners and your number 5. If i play a standard large map and cram in 1000prs, almost no lag. But a standard large map with bout 500prs and one land expansion...lots of lag.

[billy]

this game gets a little jerky when you get 400+ prisoners no matter what PC you got. I upgraded to a new PC about 2-4 times quicker than my old one and this game runs the exact same and starts getting a little jerky at the same number of prisoners.

I think we just have to put up with it unless the devs can improve it.I think buying land adds to it and i try not to.

The maps are easily big enough to run a prison with thousands of prisoners but theres no way you could run that at 60 FPS 100% of the time.

I wonder if the devs initially thought prisons would be able to be bigger , if not why such big bits of land

[Odey555]

Originally posted by billy:

I wonder if the devs initially thought prisons would be able to be bigger , if not why such big bits of land

Well they obviously meant to have bigger prisons, I mean if not why have land expansions and varying map sizes? They should really work on optimization now before adding anything else.

[Trixi]

Originally posted by Odey555:

Originally posted by billy:

I wonder if the devs initially thought prisons would be able to be bigger , if not why such big bits of land

Well they obviously meant to have bigger prisons, I mean if not why have land expansions and varying map sizes? They should really work on optimization now before adding anything else.

Well, i had found the issue with the powergrid. I've tried to install at an empty prison 6 generators with 2 backups and connected them with power switches, and for automation i connected them to logicgates. Well i had a fps drop at an medium map + 1 extension from about 40fps to 1fps. That was without any prisoners or guards at the map. That was weird, this hurted my. Invested about 1 day, to think about my logic. This was at this time, were they have added those events :)

[Forgotten.]

your terrible bad, this game doesnt need much graphic, the main problem is the cpu and ram [/quote]
Are you terribly bad? i have 16 GB RAM, and a six core processor. But once i get 500 Prisoners i start to lag. 1.)the more prisoners the more cooks/gaurds/buildings. in your second message i agree, but even then it doesn't matter. Once you hit a certain limit with large land your screwed.

[Estelyen]

Originally posted by Forgotten_LmGz:

and a six core processor

Doesn't matter at all, since the number of CPU cores doesn't do anything for this game. What Trixi meant was that in order to reduce the lag that starts with the above problems, the only thing that really helps is raw CPU power, in other words, how much GHz your CPU has.

I have an old i5 750 with 2.33 GHz and the game starts to become slow at about 500 prisoners. That's just the way it is and there's nothing anyone can do about it. So I just plan my prisons in a way that I can play with 400-500 prisoners and I'm still enjoying the game^^

[Trixi]

Originally posted by Forgotten_LmGz:

your terrible bad, this game doesnt need much graphic, the main problem is the cpu and ram

Are you terribly bad? i have 16 GB RAM, and a six core processor. But once i get 500 Prisoners i start to lag. 1.)the more prisoners the more cooks/gaurds/buildings. in your second message i agree, but even then it doesn't matter. Once you hit a certain limit with large land your screwed. [/quote]

In one of the aboves answers was mention, to reduce the graphics quality. I guess this will improve framerate about 0.05 fps. This game calculates about everything with raw CPU power and is barely using multithreading. In fact this game uses just 2 cores. So in fact you could already use 2/3 of your potential CPU power to do sth else, without slowering down your game speed. More RAM isnt also such bad, but in fact the game also dont need more than 4GB.

Oh, forgot to mention: my system specs can keep up with yours. i have also 16GB RAM and an Eight-Core CPU, that makes the situation for this game even more worse. As i have an eight-core my GHz are a bit lower which results in a worser performance, than if i would have bought the quadcore for the same amount of money.

Another thing, i was at the limit with this game. Played with 2000 prisoners and a framerate about 4-5fps.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=758237058

[Red192]

launch PA, load the game, ALT+TAB, go into C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Introversion\Prison Architect, delete the file DEBUG.txt (try another time if give an error)

Return to game,
enjoy

[MrHiggs™]

Originally posted by BumpWillis:

alaways, unfortunately reduce your video rez, sorry but we all know it..Given the $800 video cards now we are forced to concede. gOoD lUcK

Originally posted by Odey555:

I'm running a pretty good laptop, intel core i7 3ghz, windows 7 64, why does the game start lagging with many prisoners and bigger prisons? Any way to make it run smoother in those occasions, maybe even smoother in general?

Unfortunately the game appears to be bottlenecked by the coding of it.
I had an i3 7100 and a 1050ti with 8gb of ram and upgraded to a i5 8400, RTX2080 with 16gbs of Ram and had no performance increase

[The Queen Salis]

The savefile is LITERALLY a text description of every tile on the map, every designated room on the map and every single entity on the map and their relationships.

The game tracks every prisoners need timers, random event timers, where everyone is going, what everyone is doing, etc.

And the entities part of the savefile is BS - it just lists them in the order of creation, never bothering to separate them into any groups. I think it should have sublists of "alive entities" with prisoners and staff and "items" at the very least. As it is, you will find the prisoner you search for in the slew of outfits and other garbage.

If the game has to jump through every freaking outfit to check what the prisoner will do next in each tick, of course it will lag.