itch.io

I know this isn't really the place for this, but I found no other way to contact the dev: I think you need to update Blast-Axis with an age rating over at Steam, because I can't access the store page anymore. Refer to the following link for more information: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/46787682767685...

Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 6x3.60GHz
Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 64 Nitro+ 8GB
16GB Ram
Demo was installed on an SSD

Couldn't find a setting directly related to GPU power mode. The closest thing might be Radeon Chill, which I turned off just to check if it changes anything. Unsurprisingly it doesn't.

I wish I could report that the game runs well now, but it's still pretty much unplayable for me. Performance certainly improved from the last version, but it still stutters and chugs seemingly at random. Also mouse speed feels inconsistent and laggy, but I guess that's caused by the bad performance and not a separate problem. None of my CPU cores were at 100% usage at any time and my GPU even less so.

Well, at least porting is going smoothly. Let's hope it improves things.

Don't worry about it, there's no need to rush things.

It really is incredibly strange how random this whole thing seems to be. Did you notice any similarities between the systems that struggled with the demo?

Okay, I'll make sure to check out the updated demo.

Edit:

Nope, the update didn't really improve performance for me. MAYBE I get a couple of frames more here and there, but it still dips into the 20s. And even when my PC tells me that I'm playing at 40 FPS it just doesn't feel that way. Might there also be a frame pacing issue?

One thing I haven't mentioned yet: When I'm in the main menu everything is buttery smooth, but I guess that's because that's a static scene in the background?

You are absolutely right that people tend to give feedback when something is not working as expected. I still think it's unusual that there's nothing but complaints about bad performance. Then again there's not a whole lot of feedback at all, so it might not be representative. But let's leave it at that. I said I'm trying to be helpful and I meant that. So, is there anything I could try out to get to the bottom of this?

And just for curiosity's sake: Why is Outer Wilds a bad comparison? It constantly shifts gravity and you can walk on walls and ceilings in a couple of places. Is it because there are no enemies and that allows for a different, less CPU-intensive implementation of those features?

Oh, I don't doubt that there are people trying to run this thing on a potato just because it looks like it's from 1996. It's still weird that it runs as bad as it does on modern systems as well.

On Steam you said that all the the gravity and transformation maths might strain the CPU. Are you familiar with Outer Wilds? I admittedly didn't get very far in your demo, but I didn't notice it doing anything that Outer Wilds doesn't also do and that one runs just fine on my PC. It's really puzzling that my system is struggling so much with this.

Is there anything I can do to find out what could be the cause?

As a side note: You're probably overestimating how willing the average Steam user is to provide feedback on their own. Today there are a couple of new threads and once again they all complain about bad performance. Please don't take this as me shitting on your parade. This is me trying to be constructive and helpful because your game looks cool as hell.

Hello there. Just wanted to chime in and let you know that I also have severe performance issues. My drivers are up to date and I did restart my PC. Didn't change anything. I don't know if you looked at your Steam forum, but at this time there are three posts total and all of them complain about bad performance. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with your demo?

I tried to play the new demo, but to be honest I can't get over the bad performance and these weird white artifacts that look like they are caused by occlusion culling. I might just wait for the final release if you are still working on optimization.