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[Enirlan]

Hi guys, 

I recently have run into a problem where starsector's performance has slowed down significantly. 

I have been running starsector with a number of mods for a couple of months, I hadn't changed them, and I have no installed any new software since then.  VMPARAMS has been set to 5000 / 5000 values for memory.  Starsector, when run, would use all of that memory (as shown in taskmgr), and the performance was great.

However, the last week or so, starsector is no longer using that full amount of memory, and instead settles on about half of that (2500mb-2800mb).  Taskmgr shows that an additional 2000-3000mb of memory is "Free".  This has caused a huge performance hit ingame, especially battles.  I would like to ask anyone why this would suddenly happen when no configuration changes of any kind have been made to either starsector or my system, and why starsector is suddenly deciding not to use the full amount of memory ?

NOTE : Java has been updated through windows update.  Could this have caused it ?

[Alex]

NOTE : Java has been updated through windows update.  Could this have caused it ?

Hmm - are you using your system's Java to run the game, or are you using the Java that comes with the game? Using the wrong version of Java could potentially cause problems similar to what you're describing - in particular, from Java 8 onwards, the default settings for memory management are different and not suited to what the game needs.

(Hi and welcome to the forum, btw!)

[Enirlan]

Hi alex And thanks.  

How can I tell if the game is using it's included java, and not the windows version of java?
EDIT : I normally always run starsector from the desktop shortcut.

[Alex]

Then it *should* be using the Java it shipped with, but, well, it's windows, so things could get weird.

Could you check your environment variables and make sure that the new Java's folder is not in the PATH variable? Also, might want to unset JAVA_HOME if that's set.

How can I tell if the game is using it's included java, and not the windows version of java?

... actually, before doing the above - you can check this by looking in the starsector.log file, in the first couple of lines, it should say something like:

Java version: 1.7.0_79 (32-bit)

First, delete the log file to clear it (since it'll have data from old runs), then run the game, then check if for that line and see what it says. Hope that makes sense

The log file is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core, assuming the default installation directory.

[Enirlan]

2    [main] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher  - Java version: 1.7.0_79 (64-bit)

Nothing found in environment variables, there is no JAVA_HOME variable, and the PATH variable has nothing relating to java in it (it only specifies the directory for physX).

What should I do next?

[Alex]

Alright, so the good news is it's using the right version of Java.

But, I'm not sure what'd be causing the problem, in that case. Memory shown by task manager is not the most reliable indicator, so we shouldn't necessarily assume it's pointing to the problem. Is it possible your graphics drivers got updated?

I know you said no system changes, but, just to double check - any changes/updates in your mod list?

It might also be worth testing how it runs in vanilla. And trying disabling GraphicsLib (through its settings file, since it's still required by other mods) may be worth a shot - even if this isn't a graphics issue per se, the reduced performance requirements would help.

Beyond that, nothing comes to mind right now, hmm.

I guess a fresh reinstall of Starsector (after moving off your mods/saves/screenshots folders) wouldn't hurt to try, either. There've been cases of that helping with various issues, if the install got fouled up somehow, for whatever reason.

I'm sorry I can't be immediately more helpful; this is a pretty odd issue!

[Enirlan]

Graphics driver hasn't been updated for 5 months.  I generally don't update my graphics driver unless I experience problems with newer games or updates to games.
And no changes to the mod list.  I will try running vanilla and see how that works out performance wise.  It *should* run like it did when i first tried starsector a number of months back, which was flawless 60fps (no hiccups).  If it runs okay, that might narrow it down to mods - then i'll try the graphicslib disable through the settings file, see if that does anything.  If it does, i'll report back here.

Oh and I already tried reinstalling today.  I also redownloaded all the mods I had been using, none of which were newer versions of the mod that I could see.

I also wanted to point out that while in game, the status on the top right is showing 0-1% idle, and 30-40fps mostly (worse in battles, and the time scaling slows down if there's more than 10+ ships in the battle).

And don't worry, because I think youve been extremely helpful so far !

[Alex]

Graphics driver hasn't been updated for 5 months.  I generally don't update my graphics driver unless I experience problems with newer games or updates to games.

Was just mentioning it because if you've got windows 10 (which I don't know if you do), it might "helpfully" update them without letting you know.

I also wanted to point out that while in game, the status on the top right is showing 0-1% idle, and 30-40fps mostly (worse in battles, and the time scaling slows down if there's more than 10+ ships in the battle).

Oh! That's pretty useful info, yeah. This sounds like it's basically not using the graphics card at all and doing rendering in software. One thing that's possible - do you have two graphics cards on your computer? Oftentimes there'll be a weaker integrated card on the motherboard and a dedicated graphics card.

If the game all of a sudden got switched over to using the weaker integrated card, the symptoms would be basically exactly what you're describing. And that's happened before, that is, I've had reports of the game running fine on the dedicated card and then the OS at some point just randomly deciding to run it on the other one. The fix would be to force it to run on the dedicated card, with the specific steps depending on the card you've got (and that, honestly, I'm not too familiar with).

(Also, just as a point of interest, do you have ATI or NVIDIA? Performance on ATI is generally speaking... not great. But since it *was* good at a certain point, I'm assuming NVIDIA. So, probably an irrelevant question.)

Another possibility is that if you *do* have an ATI card, the game might have switched to *that* from the integrated card, on which it would've been getting better performance, if i.e. it was a decent Intel graphics card. That'd also explain why you're seeing more free memory, possibly.

[Enirlan]

I use Windows 7 64-bit.  And regarding integrated graphics - It is disabled in BIOS (Using a GTX 1050), the Nvidia control panel only lists one adapter for OpenGL rendering (global setting).  Any game that I run should use the global settings, and not make up any random settings.  Regardless, I setup a specific profile and set the adapter to the GTX 1050 instead of autoselect.

Okay, so the vanilla ran fine .. I ran a simulation with 20+ ships, and it was 60fps with 50-80% idle.  I then reloaded the game with LazyLib/GraphicsLib, and ran another simulation.  The problem started again.
Both times the game was using about 2500mb of memory.

Im almost ready to reinstall windows lol =\

[Midnight Kitsune]

Try running the game with graphics lib's shaders disabled in the settings file

[Alex]

It really doesn't make a lot of sense that it was fine before and now isn't.

But, yeah, I'd suggest trying that, too.

[Enirlan]

Okay, so I tried reinstalling a fresh copy of windows.  After I completed everything, I reinstalled starsector / mods.

The performance seems to be back to normal (I think).  I'll have to play for a few hours before I can see for sure, but the simulated battles (with max battle size) supported around 50 ships, and there was barely a hiccup.
I guess there was some issue with windows, and it wasn't starsector creating the problem..

[Alex]

Okay, so I tried reinstalling a fresh copy of windows.

I've got to say, that's pretty hardcore. Glad that seems to have helped, though!

(I can just imagine me telling this to people - "Oh, you're having issues with performance? Just reinstall windows, I've had reports of this helping.")

[Takion Kasukedo]

I seem to have a similar problem, but it's to do with loading the game.

Any time I add a faction mod, the game loads up so slow i'd likely be able to go to sleep, wake up 5 hours later, and it'd still be loading.

Even just the one faction mod does it, and GraphicsLib has the shaders disabled.

[Alex]

By "loads" you mean when you first start the application?

If so: this sounds like the OS forcing vsync to be on (which can slow down loading a lot since it adds an extra wait to updating the progress bar). Not sure why adding a faction mod would have anything to do with this, though.

At which point does it get slow, btw? All along the way, or does it wait a long time after the progress bar is filled up?