Why is the game so slow?

[erikem]

I have quite a powerful PC (i7700k, 1080 Ti, 64GB RAM) with Kenshi installed on a ramdisk. And even with this setup the game is slow. What exactly is slow?
- saves being saved are slow
- saves loading is slow
- when I run through the world I constantly get "loading" and the game is paused for some time until "loading" is done
- lots of other stuff is slow

I have been checking resources usages and at peaks my CPU is used like 20%, GPU ~30% with ~ GB VRAM used.

So the question is - why is the game so slow?

[nDervish]

Originally posted by roadricus:

omg ramdisk. did not heard about it soo long, forgot it to be a thing. why would you want to use ramdisk today?

I would imagine it's because he has 64G of RAM and the game isn't going to use all of that natively, so you may as well use it to (effectively) cache the game files instead of letting it sit unused.

[Yellowjacket]

Originally posted by erikem:

before I go into the checklist I'd like to say that my current play-style is about setting up some processes in a base and let it continue its miserable existence while single main character roams throughout the world and steals whatever the base needs

1. When I load a save inside a shop it may take anything from 1 to 10 seconds to load up all textures inside that shop. Especially true if it is a bar with many visitors.
When I save a game it takes like 10 seconds to save
When I load a game it may take up to 20 seconds to load until game UI is shown (and then textures will have to load)
When I zone - I often get these "loading" messages which force game on pause. They may take sometimes up to 5-6 seconds to disappear and on a long route (10-15% of the map) such messages can appear 10+ times
2. My base is usually far away from where my main character is and usually there are no lags inside the base except for some zone and texture loading (can take like 10 seconds) when I switch from main character to someone in base
3. No I did not as I assume that shadows and graphics-related stuff is something that keeps GPU busy and like I've said a) my GPU is quite powerful and b) I've never seen Kenshi putting any serious stress on GPU. With that being said I want to note that I don't put "all on max" especially when it comes to viewing distances
3.1 I have "people in towns" enabled (or whatever it is called)
4. Define "check hardware"
5. I've made sure that there are no other CPU/GPU/DISK-hungry processes running at the same time

it's not a gpu hungry game, so much as cpu hungry tbh.

As for load times, they are near instant even moving at 3x speed, because i got a internal ssd.

[Kenlek]

Ye. I can run Kingdom Come, Farcry5, Witcher 3 and all Assasin creed games on full graphics without lag.
I see HaTsUnE_NeKo makes all kind of excuses, but seriosly .. THE GAME NEED OPTIMIZATION!!
I have 16GB DDR4 RAM, SSD DISK's, Rather new Nvidia graphic card with 8GB Video RAM.
As i said, this rig can run all AA titles full graphics and no lag at all. I so want to like this game. The set of systems, factions, crafting/building and mod support are all pices that can make this game great. Graphics is like pre 2000, but gameplay has a nice mix. Please make it stable!

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

the game is optimized to the limits of the engine in use.
the issue is not optimization
its that it uses Ogre 2.0 and not Ogre 2.1
Ogre 2.1 allows for multiethreading.
but changing it out would require a year or more to change out and the Devs have already said they not changing out engines.

this is not an excuse, just simple facts.

[TrollPlayerMx]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

the game is optimized to the limits of the engine in use.
the issue is not optimization
its that it uses Ogre 2.0 and not Ogre 2.1
Ogre 2.1 allows for multiethreading.
but changing it out would require a year or more to change out and the Devs have already said they not changing out engines.

this is not an excuse, just simple facts.

do we will have a kenshi 2? or atleast a way to support the dev to 2.1? i think a lot of us will be there to give some money

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

The Dev has not said what he is working on yet, just that he has plans.

[Kenlek]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

The Dev has not said what he is working on yet, just that he has plans.

Multithreading is a must with current PC standards. I dont think I ever see PC sales anymore with less than Quad core. I got 8 Cores on my rig. And the game uses only 1. That is very limiting. i understand that swapping engine is not easy and will be time consuming.

You can tell the Devs that the consept in this game is brilliant. The gamers are starving for games with a soul (to put it that way). So many tripple A titles are dissapointing (BF5 and latest Fallout.. ++). All most of us want is fun and freedom of choice kinda games. Exactly what kenshi offers. My point is they sit on a golden opportunity, all they need to do is to get funding to make the game run well on most rigs. Or do as Suggar daddy suggest and make Kenshi 2 with ogre 2.1.

[nex]

you have to consider that this game was started many years ago. back then the engine didn't support multi-threading. could he have chosen another engine? maybe.. but the only thing we can do is tell our friends about kenshi and promote the sales so that maybe kenshi 1.5 / 2 can be a thing one day..

[Kenlek]

Thats true. But I just tested something mentioned in another Thread. And that crossed with some facts/weaknesses i saw about the engine made me suspect some mods making extra lag. See, I would not play this without some mods. There are some "must have" mods that make the game so much better. But I was a bit "greedy" about my mod selection and had 30+ mods enabled. Earlier I did remove some mods to test if it helped and those i removed did no change. But yesterday i disabled every single mod and started a fresh game. I had still a bit lag, but way less than before. It was playable again! Also the load time dropped from 3-4 mins to under 1 min !! I then added just the few mods i must have and it was still way less lag, and load time still under 1 min. I then set all graphics options back to the original way and did NOT make game lag more. Just a bit fps drop now and thats probably because of weather (dust, rain etc). So enabled the mod that removes weather effect and it was almost lag free again. :)

There are some mods that makes the game almost constant load something to/from disk and also stress the CPU. I am 100 sure none of the mods are outdated or has comments that they make problems (I checked every one), but surely there are isues with 1 or more. I will (when i have more time) use half on/of technique to figure out exactly which mod that makes the problem.

It might seem very obvious that mods could be the culprit (the main reason for lags), but I am used to running 40+ mods in other games that support it and has rarely any problems. This is the first time (in any game) I seen it make the engine into a crawl. Usualy symptoms with mod problems are game crashes, and "bug like" behaviour. But to sum it up, there are some mods that makes this engine have serious problem with any disk (yes, even SSD). If you experience same behaviour as I did, remove all mods and try a new game.

Anyways - multhitreading would surely improve game alot regarding graphics and FPS. And it would also enable devs to add even more content (better graphics and more systems). So that is something I would happily support.

[Tarsis]

I'm running a modlist of over 100, and not seeing the problems you guys are reporting. Now that doesn't let them off the hook, of course. I could just not have that "wrong" mod, collection, or my load order might just be different.

I *can* get those problems you are reporting by maxing out the squad size in the options menu, and then maxing out the nests in the game creation/import menu, or by cranking up my graphics settings rather high and zooming way out and looking around at 3x speed. I rarely get any loading popups, and even my lategame saves only take about 4 to 5 seconds to load.

This really sounds more systemic than just mods, but I just don't know what variable is being missed, there are just too many with all the various setups and OS choices etc.