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[Alex]

Thank you for giving it a go! Argh, shame it didn't fix it. But that it seems to have helped some lends a bit more credence to the "overheating" theory.

[petrojelly]

I forgot to mention, i had speedfan on the whole time, and it never really went over 45 oC at all. RAM usage also didn't tick over 3.8 gb, even though i've allocated 6.

What i've noticed however, is that the frame rate never dips below the fixed value (or from 60 originally) - it feels like whenever the system can't deliver the stipulated FPS, there's a de-sync of some sort and it just never recovers.

[hamofjustice]

Thats some good testing @petrojelly. My troubleshooting spreadsheet is just a huge mess. Always getting distracted and wondering "wait, did I test this combination of things" with little rhyme or reason.

I never fiddled with the DPI settings as have been mentioned, which seemed to have worked some for you @petrojelly? Or is it like when I tweak something, think I have finally cracked the code because I have had an excellent run, working smoothly in places where previously kept crashing...... then it starts again. Rahhhh.

In regards to strange window placement, changing scaling settings in windows settings has worked for me, as well as changing which monitor is set as primary (ofc, only if you have multiple monitors running). The intel graphics command centre also has additional scaling tools, which might be impacting whats happening with you, if you have that running.

[petrojelly]

i'm not sure though, it appears tinkering with the settings.json has helped the most.

I ran across this large fleet which i could bench the stability against, but eventually i got tired and put godmode on in the settings.json and rolled past them. since then i've not had freezes again (of course i rolled the godmode back).

[petrojelly]

replying to my last post because of new developments:

it crashes again. I'm still of the opinion that it's got to do with the FPS being somehow 'locked'. For me, the crashes manifest in large battles. and as someone else has observed, once the crash happens, it happens for every time there is a battle, regardless of how small.

My hypothesis is that the frame rate on integrated graphics isn't allowed to 'slow down', so to speak. so if there is a moment where the system can't deliver the fps in the settings, be it 60 or 30 or whatever fps, it locks up until it recovers, but it stops delivering video.

In my mind, a properly working solution would allow the fps to dynamically dip below the set fps.

The reason i think this is because the FPS and the idle % counter at the bottom mid of the screen never seems to fluctuate.

I really want to take out this domain mothership please.

edit: took it down to 20fps, even at such a crawl, it still freezes. (W10, core i7, 1065g7, 32gb ram with 6gb assigned to the game, 'iris graphics')

[Alex]

My hypothesis is that the frame rate on integrated graphics isn't allowed to 'slow down', so to speak. so if there is a moment where the system can't deliver the fps in the settings, be it 60 or 30 or whatever fps, it locks up until it recovers, but it stops delivering video.

In my mind, a properly working solution would allow the fps to dynamically dip below the set fps

Hmm - that's not really a thing, unless there's a *really* weird driver bug. As far as the game code is concerned, there's nothing there that's remotely like that - it'll be fine dipping down to whatever framerate it can produce. The framerate is just a product of how quickly it does things.

[petrojelly]

Thanks, if it's not a thing, it's not a thing. it's just that i noticed the frame rate never dips, even though i would otherwise expect it to.

now what's interesting is that the first time i put the fps limit on, the game went a good long time without freezing. if only i could recreate those conditions somehow.

Is there a cache file that is safe to delete? or any file that is either created or removed by changing the fps/vsync?

[Alex]

Ah - good thing to check, but there isn't any cache or anything similar. So if there's a difference in conditions, it seems like it'd follow that the conditions on your system are what changed somehow.

[petrojelly]

I managed to find some settings that allowed me to finally do away a domain mothership in a long-drawn out battle. whether the stability of these settings will be reproducible for larger battles will have to be determined. In a nutshell, it's a combination of minimizing system requirements and somehow reducing the computations/second for the battle. it appears having alot of shooty-boom boom happening in quick succession is more likely to cause the game to freeze, rather than alot of maneuvering and pot shots here and there to isolate and take down ships with long breaks in the middle.

settings:
Vsync off
fps locked to 30
the above are done in the settings.json file.

- admin mode
- compatibility with windows 7
- reduced colour to 16-bit (65536 colour)
- change high DPI settings to [v] ovveride high DPI scaling behavior, scaling performed by [system (enhanced)]
- 1440 x 900 resolution, full screen.
- Desktop resolution at 1920 x 1200 (on a 3840 x 2400 4k monitor)


System specs:
intel 10th gen i7-1065g7
32gb system ram (modified vmparams to take 8gb for the game)
iris graphics (intel integrated) with built in dell drivers
system is dell xps 7390 2-in-1


It feels like the intel integrated graphics don't play well with the game. i don't know what can be changed with the game to play better with the intel graphics. Because it appears one can 'tide over' this bug by reducing all the system requirements for the game, where reducing resolution seems to have had the largest effect, I'd suggest having the UI-scaling function that is planned to also include scaling-*down* the UI for very low resolutions (800x600?) as well, for those in situations like myself to at least plough through large battles until a better fix can be introduced. It is one gamer's opinion that because the game has relatively low requirements, it is well suited to casual gamers on laptops, and may be worth optimizing the game such that it can reach this audience.

[Alex]

Very interesting! In particular that a lower resolution helps.

In the next release you will be able to scale the UI size down, btw, via the settings file - there's a new "screenScaleOverride" setting there. So using that in conjunction with "resolutionOverride", you could probably run the game at 320x200 if you wanted to. Reading stuff at that resolution would be another matter

[petrojelly]

I've been giving this a little more think - if there is no feasible way to work on the game to have it play nice with integrated graphics, would it be possible to instead have a ultra-low-graphics mode? like an ultra pixelated mode where even a toaster could run the game?

[Alex]

Honestly, not really. The amount of effort to have a second set of effects that both still look halfway reasonable and also actually make a real difference as far as performance would be... significant. And it's very unclear what specifically is causing issues here; I could easily see a case where technically-less-demanding graphics make no difference whatsoever to the crashing issue. And depending on what sort of toaster it is, different things might be unexpectedly performance-heavy.

I mean, this sort of thing isn't *impossible* - plenty of games have a bunch of performance toggles - but it's a lot of work, and Starsector visuals already lean towards not being very demanding, so the margin for potential gain here isn't very large. E.G. something like changing the resolution - as you did - is likely to have more of an impact than whatever else I might do.

[petrojelly]

i'm inclined to agree with you here. the visuals and whatnot in the base game really isn't performance heavy. besides, mods do a good enough job of making things sparkly. I'll look forward to both your UI scaling and my behemoth of a wall-PC that i hope i'll get around to putting together once this pandemic blows over.

[petrojelly]

So uh, Alex? we (I) might need that 320x200. I just went into a skirmish with 3 capital ships on my side and i think 6 of those pirate capital freighters with assorted accompanying cruisers and corvettes. I thought i'd swim around in a conquest, but nope, froze in the first MIRV salvo. The skirmish played out to its conclusion when (not) played in tactical view, so i had nothing to do but assign some rally point.

This was played at 1280x800, the lowest 16:10 resolution. In the upcoming update, could we have the setting for the lowest 16:10 resolution as an option too, please? (640x400) because i'm pretty sure if i went in with anything more than 3 capitals, the game would bug out even in tactical view.

[Alex]

Silly question; sorry if it was addressed earlier in the thread: have you tried reducing the battle size in the gameplay settings menu? Sounds like that might help here, too.

In the upcoming update, could we have the setting for the lowest 16:10 resolution as an option too, please? (640x400) because i'm pretty sure if i went in with anything more than 3 capitals, the game would bug out even in tactical view.

(You'll be able to do this via the override settings I mentioned earlier.)