PDAs, you, and Lag. (PSA)

[Kurzidan]

So I'ma make this short (bold = short, non-bold Tldr)

I feel like the PDAs, and the sheer jump in numbers of them in recent updates - is why the game is so much laggier.

It's possible they're not the only "extra" cause


But I played way back in the day with my Brother's game until you (the devs) did something that broke family share, I uninstalled pretty much immediately back then and don't know if that was just a coding error, but I feel like if it was intentional that you really can't do that even though you're capable of it- like. I feel like that would be something Steam/Valve would get bent out of shape over but anyway.

And the lag was definitely less noticeable back then..

where as Now that I own the game and am playing the latest "non experiemtal" build (think its 40020sum)
Its almost gamebreaking lag spikes

This brings me to my conclusion that its the PDAs largely at fault.

Down in the Jellyshroom cavern - There's a seabase
It has like.. I dunno 4-9 PDAs and some scannables if you don't have them already.

Looking at this seabase - with a fairly decent hardware setup - caused massive chugging.

Looking away freed frames back up, and once I'd cleaned the place out - Looking back at the base, from all the same locations that chugged before - Did not chug after. - Making it a pretty safe assumption to say The PDAs need better optimization

[Magma Dragoon]

It's probably the light and shadows on the buildings, fixtures and terrain that's causing your frames to dip, PDAs have been there for a long time

[Phaota]

Yeah, PDAs are just minor props in the game and would not create the lag. Even in Experimental, there are serious lag issues. Strangely, several hours ago, I was able to zoom around on speed 2 on the northern island caves, in the precursor cannon interior and underwater with hardly any lag at all. I thought the memory leak had finally been solved. Then, a few minutes ago, I was back over on the northern island in the caves and suddenly the game begin to chug to 2 to 3 FPS. It became so bad I had to close out. So, the memory leak is still happening.

[slxpress]

The playtester mentioned issues with draw distance. That's one of those charybdis/scylla problems. The draw distances are already difficult to deal with, but I do understand how they'd help consoles and computers run the game. So if you reduce it, you help the framerate/lag/crashing issues, but...you reduce the draw distance to a virtually unmanageable level.

I am not a playtester, so much of that is coming out of my nether regions, but it does make sense.

[Kurzidan]

I do not think I recall there being interactable pdas the last time I was playing (before this fall)
Much like I recall a much less laggy game. - if I tried to recall - It was probably "thousands" of builds ago - like this one is 40062 oct 2016 - I don't think the last version I played was even close to that.

The version I played was sometime near the time that the 32bit was just starting to be unsupported and no longer be updated - and obviously, was sometime around the time that the Aurora actually being boardable, explody and etc, was a thing.

______

as for the Jellyshroom Caves incident this time - It seems extremely likely the PDAs were the cause. they were one of the only things that changed from before and after, apart from I think a pot and the living wall. scans. - I could go back and check if its any worse than when I left. The opening I found this time was practically right over the seabase..

[Kurzidan]

Holy hell that was an ordeal of the ages... So I randomly found the slit on the surface that was almost direct to route for the base

Could not.
For the life of me... or my batteries.

Find it again.

I musta saw and remembered wrong when I thought I'd mentally saved the area....

Anywho. Got back down there - Pretty much the same as when I left - looked at it from afar, looked at it from the windows, in every which way I could, most of which lagged when I first found it, Nothing.

For validity sake. I'll go ahead and leave, - save and start a new save and head over there and check it.

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edit 1 Anyway I passed out after I made the new save - so I'm just going to edit my last post and let this thread die.

edit 2- So I went back on a new save - and at the surface of this test - There was no lag (by that i mean "upfront")

Biggest differences between then and now is amount of "things" attached to my character/save

I still feel like the PDAs in some part play a large role but I couldn't just immediately recreate it purely off of PDA

____________________________
Some of the differences.

Well. The first immediate difference I noticed - There's more Crab snakes down here on this save than the prior save - I only saw like 1, maybe 2 before - Now there's at least that many and a more - with one of them appearing to be distorted - He's massive.. like. He could fit the others ones all across its body - and still have more length to spare.

It just swims super slow when "idle" in comparison, and it loops around and around like the serpents/snakes in shows are comically shown doing until they knot themselves - cept it doesn't do that. - And I mean I can see it so vividly from practically across the cave/horizon from seabase.

The second immediate difference - I couldn't interact with two of the pdas - the first desk one and the one in the snapped off corridor outside. - I couldn't get them functional no matter what I did until I used a dig command near the corridor one and spawned a prop-cannon and displaced nearly everything in the room to finally move the desk.

More Differences:
I made a new save, put on some cheats to actually swim there without suffocating, and a seaglide - I made sure everything was how it was when I chugged the first time, everything quality wise on/high - and went straight to the opening and seabase.

Nothing except bearings inbetween

No inventory for the most part
no extra blueprints
no extra data entries
no aurora explosion
No fixed pod or relay - almost no warnings for aurora and no distress signals
No exploration or buildings constructed, Little to no debris active

And that brings me to f1 and f3 - F1 houses a decent number of the settings that used to be inside f3, some new ones and a few are missing, but mostly.
On F1 however is a Notifications tab - possibly relevant to the above differences.

This notification tab grows in data - being at its largest with a full inventory of 1-block items, data entries on scanned fish/objects, pda entries, warnings from the aurora, I imagine "events" too, like whether the aurora has exploded or not. - blueprints and what out of what for them.

with no inventory, no buildings, nothing really done and no time really elapsed - This list is super small. - and the way some of what /is/ on there is shown.. it leads me to think that while yes this tab is only words - usually the smallest filesize type thing.... the way some are written make me think they're just the display head for longer more convoluted code - targets and gets, etc. - like it monitors in real time, your inventory - generating labels for items added, removed, etc - not polled as of loading the tab, nor delayed.

I could see how possibly a memory leak could spring up from dragging all this around - and still feel the PDAs or interaction hooks or something cloosseely related to those - is a culprit in instigating further lag spikes..

It wasn't shadows or the shader or anything - I did all the same tests as when I first got there and it was no lag - so it had to be more related to what stopped it from lagging before, and possibly other non-current biome related factors...

Another thing adding on to those factors would be the additional Crab snakes here - and the lack of explored areas otherwise. No Reapers triggered yet, no leviathans, only a small number of gaso and reefbacks. - next to no moving or triggered debris - and as potentially few misc spawns as possible - unless I was to have teleported here instead of swim...

Over a dozen sandsharks in one small area with a small herd of reefback on my main save wouldn't be loaded in yet, along with all that mess of stuff. - not entirely sure how PDAs look/act/weigh outside in the gameworld - but along side that it seems, they act laggy.

If that's not altogether enough for a memory leak, to occur immediately/shortly after restarting/loading save - Then there must be even more factors... - as Initially I would've tossed memory leak idea out, because most of the time when I go to a new biome, I've recently restarted the game - Much like with this edit/reply - I pass out playing open world survival these days.. dunno why.. they just make me tired quick. - I leave the game running, and restart when I get back. - I will also restart once I post this (or atleast quit) as I left the game running here too.

edit 3 - Btw if edit 2 in any way looks off or incomplete - uhhh... oh well :l my capacity for paying attention to incomplete thoughts hasn't really gotten up yet. I'll edit it much later if the thread comes back to life.

edit 4 - okay so another thing before I quit I noticed

A Multipurpose room "fragment" that I never saw the first time or even as I was swimming around the windows looking in. It was right smack dab beside it when I unpaused. Another PDA so about 7 in total - apparently one was on the ground outside from the contracted hand - and additionally there was Magnetite resource caches (the bigger bulkier versions) nearby that I didn't notice coming up, nor were there any (that I had noticed) in the main save.

Additional additionally - In main save - All the cyclops engine parts I found were just like "discs", I mean I found like 12 of them, just discs, but this save I found engine looking pieces and discs