Post by Threshold Seven in General Feedback

Viewing post in General Feedback

Make sure to start a new game any time a new version is updated. You can sometimes continue from an old save with no issue, but starting a new game will rule out any issues, which I think may be the the cause of some of the issues from your previous post.

The last update 9 was just a quick fix for the camp fire and some other small issues. The fire was not casting light.

Addressing your performance issues. FPS is of most concern. You should be getting higher fps with the optimization update. Real-time sun lighting and shadows for the day night cycle, and a relatively high polycount and model count in a large seamless world are going to be rough on an older laptop.

What fps are you getting on average in different situations? It should be highest standing at the shore looking out to sea or the sky and lowest looking towards the forest, especially with a lit campfire.

I will look into the other issues.

Thanks again for your feedback.

doej1345672 years ago (5 edits)

> Addressing your performance issues. FPS is of most concern. You should be getting higher fps with the optimization update. Real-time sun lighting and shadows for the day night cycle, and a relatively high polycount and model count in a large seamless world are going to be rough on an older laptop. What fps are you getting on average in different situations? It should be highest standing at the shore looking out to sea or the sky and lowest looking towards the forest, especially with a lit campfire.

Here is more data on it (notice the NVIDIA Performance overlay in the top right corner):

You were right. Looking at the ocean did reduce the load on the GPU. Looks like the main factor for the high GPU usage is all that foliage (leaves and grass).

Toying around with the graphics settings and looking at the performance, the only option that changed a lot seems to be the FPS setting (logically). The others don't seem to do much (they are something, so keep them in, but the effect is small performance wise).

Maybe a setting for the foliage would be the key to make this game available to more players. One for the amount of leaves / grass, one for the texture detail of them and the third one for disabling the wind animation, might do the trick. A setting to disable the wind animation might also solve another problem I had when the shadows got to twitchy or for people who might experience some sort of nausea because of all the movement.

Also, about the "GTX 550" in the minimum requirements on the title page. Did you mean the "GTX 550-Ti?" If you did, my GPU should well exceed that minimum you set there https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-550-Ti/m1559...
and almost meet the highest requirements with the GTX 1060 https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-3GB/m15.... As the GPU is at 100% when I set the game to Lowest Settings and 60 FPS (1080p), I ask myself: Are those requirements still up to date, is this the goal for the final version, or is the plan to push the requirements even further?

You also might wanna define "lower end" in that "Video Settings within the game will allow Windstone to run on computers with lower end processors and graphics cards" statement.

Threshold Seven2 years ago (2 edits)

It's tricky make a recommended Minimum and maximum requirement as it is a subjective and the game changes with updates. The current requirements are an estimate based on my old and computers and an old version of the game and play testers systems from about 3 years ago. The low is around where the game should at least load and run but still have lowish fps even on low settings. It's the minimum to at least be able to play at an acceptable, albeit low fps, and that's where it becomes subjective. The high is recommended for the game to run at least 60 fps average on high settings, but that became even more unclear with the big overhaul update a month ago. Anything under the highest recommended specs shouldn't be expected to run 60 fps at maximum settings. I'll look into a more relevant min max requirement.

How does Windstone run for you compared to other games such as Ark or any other game that is large and a seamless open world? Ark is a good comparison because it is built similarly and on the same engine.

Thank you for testing the performance with overlays and the screen shots.

You may have noticed that I removed the 4 variations of settings for most settings and not there is just low and maximum. The maximum is the original maximum and the low is a modified medium/high. I did this because there was not much of a difference between medium and high and low looked absolutely horrendous.

I don't see much difference in performance between low and maximum either but there is some. The main reason was to preserve visual quality and to adhere to a certain visual standard.

View Distance setting was left untouched and has the biggest affect on fps for me and may for other users. Could you try running the performance overlay test again and record the difference between view distance settings when looking into the trees? If you do this, make sure it is at an angle where there are many trees far in the background also.

I also changed the way that the view distance settings are changed in the engine and I need to confirm that it is actuality culling all objects like trees, rocks and mountains in the distance and not just grass. I can do this myself, but it just occurred to me that it might not be working properly after the change.

The trees definitely have a big impact on performance and I'll continue to optimize in the future. There is also a significant performance connection with certain scripts that run constantly to check various variables that I can make run more efficiently as well as AI and the dynamic day night cycle which both also affect fps. I'll be working on those also.

Thanks again for the feedback.

EDIT: I confirmed that the view distance setting is working as intended. Setting this lower should significantly affect your fps if it is struggling at max settings

doej1345672 years ago (1 edit)

> How does Windstone run for you compared to other games such as Ark or any other game that is large and a seamless open world? Ark is a good comparison because it is built similarly and on the same engine.

I don't have Ark. All I got is

"Minecraft" Forge with OptiFine, 57 fps, 1920x1017 (windowed mode) => around 30 % GPU usage
"Rising Worlds" 80 fps, 1920x1080 => around 80 % GPU usage
"Assassin's Creed Origins" 56 fps, 1920x1080 => around 80 % GPU usage
- I had this one on 1600x900, which lowered the GPU usage to 40%. Maybe I should try that with your game as well... EDIT: That res seems to be non-existent in your game as well as lowering it to the lowest 16:9 res still doesn't allow for a below 99% GPU usage 60 fps...
"Just Cause 3" (deleted for disc space reasons, but it ran smoothly)
"Shadow of the Tomb Raider" 59 fps, 1920x1080 => around 90 % GPU usage

that have a comparable large open world.

Rising Worlds is quite simmilar to your game - not from an lore standpoint, but viewing it from a graphics and gameplay perspective. Harvestable recources (trees even fall when choped down), foliage moving in the wind, etc. Here is a screenshot with performance overlay:

> Could you try running the performance overlay test again and record the difference between view distance settings when looking into the trees? If you do this, make sure it is at an angle where there are many trees far in the background also.

I tried, but there is not much to see, because 1) OBS doesn't like fullscreen apps and I don't know how to record that overlay and 2) the usage at 15 FPS just jumps around the 60% a bit and what you see is more the base randomness of the performance than actual results and at 30 or 60 fps it always stays at 99% and you cant see the usage rising from there...

Threshold Seven2 years ago(+1)

Sorry, I didn't mean record a video. I just meant record the data; take a screen shot as a record. Leave the fps setting at 60 and only change the view distance setting. View Distance has 4 stages which greatly reduces the number of mountain rocks, trees, boulders and foliage in the distance, which should increase your fps.

doej1345672 years ago (2 edits)

... and I ment it doesn't make much of a difference:

Direction I look:

Nearest:

Near:

Far:

Maximum:

Other Settings:

Interesting. So the map is lightweight - nicely done :) [only 55% GPU usage]

On another note a "do you want to save" menu would be nice before closing or switching to the main menu. Because if you accedently forget about saving (or don't know yet, that it is a thing), you loose all your progress on close. I expected autosave like any other game like this has and was annoyed when I had to start all over the first few times. And when you die you think it is hardcore all the way the first few times untill you figure out that you can save manually. A "do you want to save" screen would probably guide you towards the idea that you can save manually from the pause menu.

Threshold Seven2 years ago (6 edits) (+1)

Thank you

Something is up if it's set to 60 fps but only getting 30, especially on the map screen.

The gpu usage and overall performance is lower on the map screen because most objects are beyond the view distance at that height, which is why the view distance setting has such a large effect on fps when the map is closed.

Is your gpu software capping your global framerate at 30?

I must also reiterate that if you are holding a relatively steady fps while gpu usage fluctuates, that's great. High gpu usage isn't necessarily a bad thing if the framerate stays steady. It just means there's a lot of things to draw on the screen. Fps is the primary concern.

It would also be good to set everything to maximum and then check how view distance effects fps.

You should get better fps with everything set to maximum with the lowest view distance than everything set to low with the highest view distance. Although something else is capping your fps at 30 and the lowest it dropped is 29 so not much can be gleaned unless we figure out why your fps is capped.

doej1345672 years ago (1 edit)

> Is your gpu software capping your global framerate at 30?

Im getting up to 85 fps on "Rising Worlds" so defnitly not.

> High gpu usage isn't necessarily a bad thing if the framerate stays steady. It just means there's a lot of things to draw on the screen. Fps is the primary concern.

Well it concerns me. I want to be able to touch my laptop without burning my fingers off, even though I dont have to as I use external input devices and a laptop cooler below it so neither i nor the table need to touch it most of the time. The next point would be the long term health of my laptop. The cooler it is the longer all the components stay in good condition.

> not much can be gleaned unless we figure out why your fps is capped

Maybe another bottleneck? hdd, memory, cpu? I'll look into it later.

itch.io

Viewing post in General Feedback