Modded Game Lag (How do I stop this?)

[ifoz]

The game runs near-flawlessly in vanilla for me (drops a few frames when in forests due to all the leaves) but runs quite bad when modded.
Currently playing with Better Ruins and Better Traders, and I get severe lag spikes very frequently, sometimes only seconds apart.

Does anyone know if this is an issue with mods or with some settings that I might need to tweak?
I have a pretty decent PC, and I still get this lag even at low render distance, so I don't think it's anything to do with rendering.
The game will be running fine, have a two-second freeze, and then run fine again.
It's also considerably more choppy in regards to framerate when modded, but the lag spikes are the main issue for me.

Does anyone know if there is anything I could change in settings or something to fix this?
Thank you!!

[LadyWYT]

Can you snap a shot of your graphics settings? That might help narrow down the cause, though I'm wondering if it has more to do with how much of the world has been explored. My current game doesn't have those mods, but has a handful of others and has similar issues. I don't think any of the mods are really performance-heavy, and the graphics settings aren't terribly extravagant(hardware is decent). I have explored quite a lot of the world though, and activated at least five translocators, so I'm wondering if that's perhaps keeping more chunks active/loaded than there are at the beginning of a game. However, I'll also note that the dropped frames aren't always an issue--sometimes when I reboot the client, reload the world, or even just play for a while the game will sort itself out.

I will also note that in my case, it could still be a lurking issue with my mouse, although I've not noticed it causing the issues I was having before.

[ifoz]

37 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Can you snap a shot of your graphics settings?

Yep! Here you go.


 

37 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

That might help narrow down the cause, though I'm wondering if it has more to do with how much of the world has been explored.

Honestly, I don't know about this. I've had worlds with a ton explored and a ton of translocators activated with zero slowdown or stuttering issues.
I'm honestly wondering if Better Ruins is trying to generate big stuff underground or does huge generation placement checks whenever new chunks are loaded, perhaps that could relate to it somehow?

[LadyWYT]

What I have mine set to, although I run Fullscreen and not Windowed(was just for screencap). I'm not sure what hardware you're running, but I would assume since our settings our similar that it's similar to mine: Ryzan 5, Radeon 590, and 16 GB of RAM.

1 hour ago, ifoz said:

I'm honestly wondering if Better Ruins is trying to generate big stuff underground or does huge generation placement checks whenever new chunks are loaded, perhaps that could relate to it somehow?

Possibly. As I recall, Better Ruins adds a lot of items to the game(or at least, the blueprints that let you craft uncraftable items?). It also generates some larger, more detailed structures than vanilla, and some of them are proper dungeons leading underground that you will need to clear out if you want the loot/space. I don't think they're quite at the scale of the Resonance Archive, but one of the reasons that the Archive tends to drop frames is due to all of the chiseled detailing, I believe. So it's very possible that the Better Ruins could be the cause of the lag. The next time you notice a framerate drop/stutter, it may be worth popping into spectator mode and taking a quick look around to see if there's any massive structures that might be the cause.

[Thorfinn]

I never had much luck getting Better Ruins to not drag my system down. Similar performance hits whether I'm on my i5/980 Strix or my i9/4070 Ti. I'm not running out of ram or SDD in either case. And both are running 1024 or greater view distance. As cool as Better Ruins looks, I just can't.

[ifoz]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I never had much luck getting Better Ruins to not drag my system down. Similar performance hits whether I'm on my i5/980 Strix or my i9/4070 Ti. I'm not running out of ram or SDD in either case. And both are running 1024 or greater view distance. As cool as Better Ruins looks, I just can't.

Honestly, same.
It's a super cool mod but I'm struggling to cope with the constant lag.

I also think that the surface ruins are a little too... not ruined?
There should be zero wood left aboveground after centuries of decay, and yet I'll find some with whole wooden parts and chests that aren't even rotten.
I also think sometimes they are just too big and too common, and it takes away from the game's lonely (no civilisation) but lively (world feels alive) atmosphere.

I love the mod, and all of the new ruins are super cool and intricate and I really appreciate the effort that went into them, but in it's current state with the lag, I think I honestly might use it less. If the lag is ever fixed though, I'd love to get into a proper full-length playthrough with it on.

Edited July 9, 2024 by ifoz

[Wahazar]

Check your memory allocation, maybe disc swap is in use, or whatever it is called in Windows? Mods like to consume RAM.

[iotid]

there are some almost hilariously leaky mods out there, this was shortly after world gen, and letting it wait for a bit after initial chunks were generated
not sure if better ruins/dungeons/villages, or added entities/interactions are the worst offenders...

gotta test what works for you, and curate your experience pretty hard, take advantage of config files and configuration mods that keep others under control, trying to kitchen sink everything in ends up with a lot of texture/memory leak problems unfortunately

[Fiur]

Yeah same for me. 3070ti choking hard with the mods installed. Funnily enough it's not as bad in MP as in SP. 

Edit: I was told that it is recommended to get a Server if someone wants to play modded as the game as of the current state of affairs can't handle modding for SP without a dedicated server.

Surprising but thats just how the state of things are.

Edited July 29, 2024 by Fiur

[Thorfinn]

Welcome, @Fiur

It all depends on the mods. What I consider heavily modded (maybe a dozen smaller mods, or one of the big boys and a handful of add-ons) works fine, mostly. With exceptions, like Better Ruins and Wildcraft, that I never did resolve.

But, yeah, stand-alone server makes a lot of sense if you've got one to spare. I recently built an awesome Linux server with a stupid amount of RAM, but some operations, even in vanilla, like massive forest fires, are still tough for it to handle. 

[Fiur]

Yeah. Even just a few mods make my game struggle and I have to limit my viewing distance.

Using AlloyCalculator, Chiseltools, CommonLib, ExtraInfo, ExtraOverlays, Minerz, ProspectTogether, Statushud, xlib, xskills.

And then the VolumetricShadingReUpdated. I was told to get it as it improves performance. But honestly you don't get anything logical out of the freezes.

Like I would understand that it will freeze when the GPU is running at 100% and it crashes down to 0% everytime. But the game freezes constantly with only 20% on the GPU. Cpu etc. barely touched as well. 

While I do have 32Gb of Ram to work with. I'm no Computer Expert and there might be something unoptmized with my PC too. 
TO BE FAIR - the mods have different versions. And that might be the issue with everything. But I can't really tell. 

Hope this game goes far in the future.

[Thorfinn]

Plenty of space on your SSD?

[Hal13]

The optimize RAM option can lead to huge lag spikes, usually accumulating with time played in a single session.

I'm using a Ryzen 5600G with an RX580 (8GB) and 32GB of RAM, running the heavily modded (57mods) game from a mechanical hard drive with usually no issues (though currently I am experiencing some that seem to be linked to xskills and over 200hours in a world)

Better Ruins does not generate the same issue for me. But my modded setup does seem to require more than 16GB of RAM (with "optimize somewhat").

Which game version are you on? What game version are the mods for? Are there mods that might interfere with each other or even are known for being incompatible?

Are you using a 13th/14th gen intel cpu and could it have something to do with their stability issues? The current stance of several game dev studios in regards to those processors is if you get certain issues, send the cpu for a rma, as they seem to be failing spectacularly often due to something (via oxidation, faulty microcode requesting too much voltage, unknown possible other reasons intel is not commenting on) degrading/ageing the chip significantly faster than it should.

[Fiur]

3 hours ago, Hal13 said:

The optimize RAM option can lead to huge lag spikes, usually accumulating with time played in a single session.

Yeah had that disabled.

GPU seems to drop to 0% whenever the spikes happens.

I do have the 32 GB ram as mentioned.

Games on a SSD with lots of free space.

I tried playing again without the Shade while it was a bit better with less overall freezes - it started to spike heavily after the night ended and didn't want to stop while I was moving around.

Edit: Game Version is the current one. Only 2 mods were complaining about the game Version that was Status HUD and Alloy Calculator. 
I don't think it has anything to do with the mods as it does freeze in the Main Menu as well. 

Currently don't have any money or income to overhaul the System and Setup.

Edited July 31, 2024 by Fiur

[Hal13]

29 minutes ago, Fiur said:

it does freeze in the Main Menu as well. 

that's something that should not happen at all. possibly some background tasks windows starts to run, maybe windows update? There are huge spikes in your ethernet usage corresponding to the major dips in GPU load. maybe try disconnecting the pc from the network and take a look if the issue still persists?

 

33 minutes ago, Fiur said:

Currently don't have any money or income to overhaul the System and Setup.

should not be necessary for at least some time with your specs... any AM5 cpu (apart from the x3d chips) is only 12-16% faster, the 3070ti is still about 10% faster than a 4060ti but about 20% slower than a 4070, you should be good for at least another generation.

[LadyWYT]

A couple more things that may or may not help fix lag in a modded world:

1. If you play with a gaming mouse, you may want to check its software settings to make sure there's not something fouling up the works, if not close the software entirely(if possible). I use a Corsair mouse, and closing the iCUE software has seemed to help game performance in some cases.

2. Try running Vintage Story as administrator. This should help make sure that the game is getting priority when it comes to computing resources.

3. If you use Windows, check the Windows mouse settings and make sure that enhanced pointer precision is turned off. This seems to have had a fairly significant impact on performance for me, and I'm suspicious that a recent Windows update may have enabled that option by default. You can find the option under Advanced Mouse Settings, like so:

Also worthy of note--if you tinker with your mouse software and settings, you may need to tweak your mouse sensitivity in-game and/or in Windows settings afterward. I had to do so with mine, as my mouse speed became very sluggish initially when disabling certain things(mostly iCUE).