Starbound Optimization Guide (Również 1 Core CPU FIX)

Why does Starbound lag

I’m sure anyone who has played Starbound for more than 15 protokół, regardless of mods or not, will have experienced some form of lag/fps stutter/freeze in the game. Whether its the insane fps drops from inside your home base or its stuttering while fighting enemies on unexplored planets, why it may be a simple as picking up an item or said item dropping from a broken chest and your game freezes for a few seconds. This for obvious reasons is not an ideal way of playing through the game as not only would this lead to immersion breaks but its just simply not fun to be in the middle of fight only for the game to freeze, unfreeze and then the fight is already over, you’ve died, back to ship, etc etc. Outlined below are several factors that I have identified as key in causing any individuals game to slow down or invariably freeze, as well as detail fixes for issues that can potentially be corrected.

Issues Inherent With The Game

• The game runs entirely on your CPU – Yeah this is a big one most newcomers might not notice at first, Starbound does not use your GPU. (This means all graphical computation is handled by the CPU, this will be important to understand the next point).
  FIX: You cant, simply put this was how the game was developed.
• V-Sync is enabled by default – So this one is another “unless you’re looking for it” kinda issue and at first glance doesnt seem like a big deal at first, however since Starbound uses the CPU for all processes, having V-Sync enabled gives the CPU a lot more work to do, hence a slow down, and from what i can tell unless youre on a old computer/monitor you dont really need vsync, ive had it off for a long time now and still have not seen a single screen tear.
  FIX: enter your storage folder for your Starbound, typically located (storage with steam games on it)/Steam/steamapps/common/Starbound/storage/ Inside there is your starbound config file, open that up, scroll to the bottom where you will find “vsync” : PRAWDA ,Switch that to “vsync” : FAŁSZ .
• 64 Bit Starbound has a known memory leak – This one i really dont understand why it hasnt been fixed yet, its a known issue that has been around for literal years, it has something to do with Lua scripts and from what i know it gets really bad when you add or remove items from chest, in instances where the game shouldnt be using more than 1 gb of memory it can literally spike to your entire ram load in 1 sec and go back to normal the next or just sit like that for the rest of your play session, funky business.
  FIX:You cant, from my current understanding this is an issue that needs a game update or patch than what any guide or mod could provide, However you can run the game in 32 bit as for some reason the 32 bit version doesnt actually have this issue, this can sometimes make mods not work as fully intended and to remedy that simply boot the game in 64 bit to complete what you cant in 32 bit and then switch back once you’re done.
• This game was originally developed on Linux – this is not a dig at Linux users or the operating system itself, i actually rather enjoy Linux and its many many branches, Starbound was developed on Linux and as such runs much better and more optimized that on windows, why its in this inherent problem list is because most people do not run on Linux, they mostly run either Windows or MacOs meaning the majority of users will be experiencing a less optimized, more problematic play though, as opposed to someone running the game with Linux on that same exact hardware.
  FIX: Run the game on linux, or just play the game on your normal operating system and hope that one day they will fix these issues as mods dont have the engine access to do so.
• The more zoomed out you are, the more the game is required to draw on screen – More things to draw on screen = more things for the cpu to do = more lag etc you get the idea
  FIX: Use the zoom in the settings and play on a larger zoom, i recommend 3x or more.

Issues Potentially Caused By The Player

While some if not all of Starbound’s “Starbound is slow” issues are entirely caused by the way Starbound is designed and implemented, some situations or sources might actually originate from actions the player themselves are making. Here are some that might be causing your game to slow. The simple solution to the majority being, dont do X, X being whatever outlined below.

• Too many quests – The way Starbound handles how quests are checked, especially fetch quests, is that the game is constantly running scripts checking if each quest and its checkpoints have been met, this is insignificant on a small scale of quests accepted such as 5 – 10, however when you start to accept more than 25 or so quests, the lag and slowdown will build up much quicker.
• Filling chests with items that have complex buildscripts – The way Starbound handles how items are represented in chests are varied, with items such as resources, tj. bloki, liquids, crafting materials, codex entries, itp) having simple buildscripts, however when it comes to weapons, zbroja, furniture, mech pieces, saplings and a few sparse other items, these use more complex buildscripts to be represented in the inventory and chest inventories. Modded storage, mass storage, large chests, all of these can be plagued with lag when large amounts of these complex buildscript items are together, ideally one would store their items separately from where they normally are, or not store that many items to begin with.
• Large amounts of NPCs, Farm animals, Wrogowie, Wild Mobs, Tethered Npcs/pets etc. – This one is a bit obvious, any game you play that you go NPC or Entity heavy will eventually cause any game on any pc to slow down, 10 npcs are fine but 100 is stretching it, same with farm-able mobs and enemies. I go over a potentially method later that may allow for more Npc/mobs to be on screen at one time but that varies case by case.
• Rails, like all of em – Yeah if you use unmodded vanilla rails you know exactly whats coming, laggy, skippy, bumpy ride ahead. There are various mods available that attempt to fix this issue, peruse at your own discretion.
• Broken/Outdated Mods – This one is on the player, if you use either broken or outdated mods you are bound to potentially run into issue that are clearly not the mods intended function or outcome, in mild cases, something isn’t craft-able, or a quest isn’t able to be turned in. Najgorszy przypadek? your character and worlds become corrupted and cannot be loaded or the game simply may not even start up.
• Too many mods/Script heavy modsIf you’re using 150+ mods or many script heavy mods, your game will have lag. Okres. If this is your first time modding a game i recommend you read guides and watch videos on how modding works, understanding what your doing and why, as well as what its going to do and its impacts is important before you start modifying the game, as rushing in inexperienced might lead to unintended consequences such as game corruption, missing/inaccessible content, the game not working as intended, or the game failing to start.

It would also be of good note that any mods that claim to Simply “Increase FPS” Lub “Unlock Thread/Cores” are completely fraudulent and/or lying, Starbound mods DO NOT have the kind of engine access required to preform such feats as these mods claim. No matter how plausible it sounds, no matter how much jargon or mumbo jumbo they toss at you, they are incorrect and/or lying about their mod.

1 Core CPU FIX

As stated earlier Starbound only runs on your CPU but that isnt the only quirky thing about it, Starbound also only runs on the first core of your cpu and nothing else, for some reason and i dont really wish to speculate why, the game was designed to only run on that first cpu core, many mods have come up pretending and claiming that their mod was the golden ticket to unlocking the rest of your cores for Starbound to use, however again as stated earlier, these were false. For many years this game has gone unchanged in this regard, at a face value this 2D game doesnt seem like its all that intensive but when you factor in all the computations the GPU would normally be handling is handled by the CPU instead, and everything else such as scripts, mods and their scripts, and the rest of the game in general all being handled on that 1 rdzeń, eventually as you continue through the game modded or not, you will eventually hit a cascade of lag/hard limit when it comes to what you can do in the game. While a change to the game may come one day i for one was not willing to wait and began searching high and low for solutions as to how to really give Starbound that extra CPU power i know it so desperately it could use, and i think i might have found a solution.

Essentially by going into task manager and changing core affinity, you can trick Starbound into using as many cores as you want.To preform this open up your Starbound game in either 32 Bit or 64 Bit then:

• Open your task manager and go to the details tab
• Find Starbound.exe and right click on it
• Go to the set affinity option and open that
• Uncheck your first core (Usually core 0), and any additional cores you may wish to use (its important not to uncheck the all processors as the option to OK will become unselectable)
• Then go back into set affinity after you pressed OK and re-check those cores and press OK again
• Wyniki.

I have been using this for the past couple days and can say i am experiencing way less stutters, zamraża, lag and overall running way smoother than before setting core affinity. I dont know if this is a complete fix as you may still experience lag even in the best of cases, i wouldnt get your hopes up as this isnt the magic cure all that Starbound needs. Best of luck to you all!