Subnautica's main curse

The_Shark

So, I've been playing SN for quite some time now, and I've come to a conclusion. Subnautica's main curse is, and likely always will be, performance. I'm currently running a computer that is capable of running War Thunder on Movie settings, while having a YouTube video and a few wiki pages open in the background, at 60 fps. But Subnautica gives it more trouble than I've ever had with a game.

Whenever I go to build a dream base, it ends up tanking. I've hardly built an assortment of a few hundred corridors, windows, connectors, hatches, rooms, and the like before it simply crashes outright. The pure beauty of the game is what prevents me from enjoying it to the fullest.

So, if I were to make a suggestion to UWE, it would to be to focus on optimization of performance above all else. One idea I came up with is a halt of simulation. If you're in your base, then any other sections of it that aren't separated will be simulated fully. But if a part is separated by a ladder, a bulkhead, et cetera, then the simulation could be minimized to only show the outermost model of that part. I don't want the Seamoth on the other side of my base to be modeled if it's going to crash the game, and almost the entire computer.

If you're outside your base, maybe it could have a smaller modeling distance. Currently, I can see my base in the central pool of Floater Isle before I can see the island itself when I approach. I'm thinking that the base's simulation, like that of land, could be nonexistent at extreme distances (say 0.9 times that of landmasses), minimized at long distances (anything beyond 100 meters or so), and normal once you close to close range. And maybe if there's a landmass completely blocking your vision of a particular section of the base, it could cut off the simulation entirely, not even modeling the outer texture.

Anyway, these are just a few ideas I had while running SN at two fps, and then freezing for two and a half minutes, and finally having to simply close the game in the task manager. All of this happened about ten minutes ago.

If anyone has any feedback (or other optimization ideas), I'd love to hear it.

Zergonuz

Biggest elephant in the room; what are your computer specs? Depending on what you got then you could play with some settings in or outside of the game. Personally, I play Subnautica on Experimental 1080p Max Settings with average of 45-50 FPS with some lower dips here and there even with average sized bases.

Here is the Alpha spiel...

Optimization in an Alpha game isn't a top priority whatsoever until it is getting very close to being released. They make it as playable as possible; many alphas don't even keep it remotely as enjoyable as Subnautica does while still in development. The goal of Alpha is to introduce all the main features they want in a game and test them out on each other to make sure they all play nice. Additionally they have testers ensure it is actually enjoyable as some features are great on paper and terrible in practice. That is the most important part of this phase of development. After they have the foundation and framework all set, then they can polish it to a shine and make it work smoothly on as many configurations as possible. They do work on this throughout Alpha, just very minimally in comparison to new content.

The_Shark

Zergonuz wrote: »

Biggest elephant in the room; what are your computer specs?

I don't know my exact specs (or how to check them. Thanks, Windows 10...), but as I said. I can run War Thunder on Movie settings, a level of detail infamous for causing lag, and a YouTube Video, and a Word document, and three or more Wiki pages, without dropping below sixty frames with a 50-millisecond ping.

And yes, I'm aware that this is an Alpha build, and that Alpha games usually don't run this well. I'm just anticipating a long-term issue in advance (something I don't do well, admittedly), and suggesting some possible ways to ease the pain. I'm just saying, that with a game as gorgeous as SN, this is going to be a long-term problem.

Requiemfang

do you have a search function? try typing in dxdiag and that will give you a neat little file that shows you your specs.

here's a link

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/open-and-run-dxdiagexe

Myrm

Agree wholeheartedly with The_Shark here.

I run a computer that can play Far Cry 4, Skyrim, GTA V and Elite Dangerous Horizons with no proplems at all on their highest graphical settings. Yet Subnautica suffers pretty badly on 'recommended' settings.

I totally get that the game is in alpha and that optimisation won't come until later. But, boy, I really hope they sort it out before it gets officially released.

Kouji_San

Early Access Games tend to not be fully optimized, so your comparison that you're able to run this and that game on super epic settings usually has no bearing on anything... Optimisations are not effective during development when adding features and content, as it tends to complicate code, making it harder to work with

paradine

If they were to allow the game to completely disable the oculus (VR) system when it doesn't find the device, then it would be able to run both faster and on lower spec machines. This would reduce the total amount of work the computer has to due by as much as 50%.

Obraxis

Performance will come. We've not done a great deal of optimization as we need to put most things we want in the game and see what it would take to improve it.

We have a few big optimizations coming in the future which should help performance (especially the map stuttering) but these are complex, custom made and wont be for a little while. But they will be before 1.0.

Sidchicken

The_Shark wrote: »

I'm currently running a computer that is capable of running War Thunder on Movie settings, while having a YouTube video and a few wiki pages open in the background, at 60 fps. But Subnautica gives it more trouble than I've ever had with a game.

That's odd... my rig only handles War Thunder on "high" settings, and I don't have much trouble with subnautica.

paradine

@Obraxis
Could I suggest you see about getting a couple of guys (or gals) to start on optimizing the stuff that is already in the game while the rest of you keep doing what your already doing. This will allow them to optimize one thing at a time so that when your ready to do the major optimizing there will be less to do. At the same time it will also improve the performance of the game on our systems and make it easier to find the bugs that are currently present in the game (they would end up finding some of them while doing the optimizing). If you do start this I would recommend starting on the background stuff first since that will change the least as you add more to the game.

Obraxis

paradine wrote: »

@Obraxis
Could I suggest you see about getting a couple of guys (or gals) to start on optimizing the stuff that is already in the game while the rest of you keep doing what your already doing. .

We don't have 'a couple of guys/gals' to spare right now. But we will optimize as and when we can.

paradine

sounds fair (was just tossing an idea)
<--former software developer