The people running many role play servers have the belief that foundations cause more lag than other building pieces. Some even say to build with floor pieces placed on pillars.
Is there any truth to this? I’m looking for a definitive answer, either from a developer or from a rigorous series of tests proving an outcome to the question.
I recall patch notes a long time ago, more than a year I think, where there was mention of optimising something that I took as the 3d model of foundation block. So to my fuzzy memory, if there ever was an issue, I believe it got patched.
What causes lag or slow down of the game near large builds? I’d like to know authoritavely, from a technical perspective.
I know that when I had the game installed on a spindle hard drive years ago, I could wait minutes to be able to move when spawning near large builds. Now, it is much better running the game from an SSD. From this, I know that the game client running on my PC must be loaded huge amount of data from hard drive.
I suspect Conan Exiles and Unreal games use mega textures that are massive files which must be loaded off disk. Is that true? Is it the load of objects plus textures from local hard disk?
So what drives what we call “lag” sometimes, that game slowdown when we go near big builds? I can’t see that it would be too much data being transmitted in packets. The server must be sending locations and properties of objects you come close to ingame, of course.
I am in the common belief its the placeables that is the bigger cause. Especially having tons of containers. I had a bit of issue in 2019 when I had stocks and stocks of containers which I relocated a good chunk to another place in the far corner of the map as vaults (they were smaller containers before).
Most of the lag issues is the client side. For example, I run through my old city back in 2019 that had 34k blocks (not sure on placeables number) and had no issues of lag but others with lower versions of PC lagged a bit to a bunch in my city. The city is gone now. I lagged a tiny bit in another player’s heavy placeables with modded water effects (water falls, moving water) when I approached his base. Once it loaded then I was fine, but others had major issues going there. So I say placeables especially light sources, moving ones can cause more issues than not.
Any building blocks where there are so many in a tiny area can cause issues as well so each item has to be drawn in. Although foundations tend to be same so there is one texture so they can draw hundreds at once. Placeables tend to be unique and a bit more graphically designed so they will take bit more to place. Light sources especially to many is known to cause lag. Has to account for light direction, shadows and such. More work than ones without light emanated from it.
No. A common belief that is not in any way shape or form true. Forgive my unwillingness to go into deep detail, just have had too many conversations where ive explained why foundations arent the boogyman people think they are only for people to plug their ears anyways. (Ive worked on building mods for 4.5 years)
There are many sources of lag, client and server are different. There is not one end all to be all lag source, let alone foundations being it (or even a major contributing factor).
Foundation stacking is the problem. Each foundation stacked higher and higher has it’s own process to stabilize the other building pieces. There is no need to stack foundations except laziness.
Yes, I made sure we can still build good bases with only one foundation underneath it all. It’s a little tricky going downhill.
Its a rumor started by I -think- some artifact (as in some leftover piece of code or unused file) in the devkit back in CE beta. Someone saw something attached to the foundation blueprint and concluded it was a cause of lag. It wasn’t. And if the glitch, leftover code, or unused file was actually there, it was very quickly removed. Now I was never able to confirm this event actually happened this way. Some of the more experience modders who were modding around the time could probably clarify this a bit.
What I do know is the Foundation, the Pillar, and the Fence Foundation all have the same property when it comes to landclaim and its effect on the server. Stacking 4 foundations on top of each other contributes the same as 4 pillars doing the same.
This goes for stacking 40 foundations or 40 pillars being the same. Or 400 for that matter.
Placing foundations on each other does not, and has never contributed to server lag.
This goes for their effect compared to walls, doors, roofs, everything. The only reason for a RP server to wish to restrict foundations is for PVP purposes, and for aesthetic purposes. That is it. Nothing more. If they say anything else, they are being dishonest.
Also I will second what Multigun has to say on the subject. I do not know of any one who knows the building system inside and out as much as he does. His statements about his own qualifications are entirely too modest.
I was playing with @sestus2009 recently. In his clan he had a guy that he was claiming that the fire standing torches was causing him rendering issues because of the animation of the fire. So he was not using anymore these standing torches, he was using the dregs torches. I went to his base that was quite big and truly I didn’t had rendering issues at all, yet…
He fixed all the perimeter of his base with foundations, placed the walls 7 to 8 high, fixed his ceilings to divide floors etc but his ground floor had only the perimeter foundations, the lobby was desert sand. Ofcurce I am speaking for Playstation that probably have different behavior from pc, what @Multigun says is always valid, always. Not to mention that in every discord he participates he has direct respond from devs and not only.
I don’t know what exactly causes lags or rendering issues, I have no technical opinion, yet…
My gaming experience showed me that, first candle abuse in my bases are causing me huge issues, weapon racks, carpets and filled chests.
More than a year now I have changed totally my playstyle because of these issues, @Marcospt is calling me hobo , I prefer to sleep away from base than in it sometimes.
You have a ps5 machine, a tv set bomb and an internet line for serious gaming, plus gadgets.
You paid your right to enjoy this game correctly, why should I be the reason for you to have less. I am happy when my friends are, keep decorating please, use some taxidermy too, it’s awesome man awesome, I love the bats
Radium torches cause crazy lag if you line the outside of your base with them, seen it happen once only realised what did it when using them to build a sortof lighthouse
When it comes to foundations, I have found that its best to think of them like grains of sand. You can walk along a beach full of sand and it doesn’t slow you down. But go up into the dunes where there’s a mountain of grains of sand, and your movement will slow. So if you are talking about a few hundred foundations, you should be fine. But if you are talking about thousands and thousands of foundations, then yes, there is a noticeable affect. But you really have to “over do it” to get to that point (I’m talking about being able to see your ‘base’ from orbit spanning an entire map grid). As @Usernameextra pointed out, torches are far more likely to cause lag than foundations (because of the animation attached with them - that eats up lots of computation – the dancing of the flame itself as well as the constant changing of lighting, reflections, and shadow generation [back and forth] as each animation changes).
Probably important to distinguish between server and client side lag. The thing I always notice is chest upon chest of crap lag… foundations are just unsightly… but I guess enough of anything can cause lag.
Now I have always been told that Radium torches cause the least amount of lag and I have seen servers that even require you to use them exclusively. Granted, if you spam any light source you are going to cause lag, but radium torches tend to give off the most light and thus require the least actual light sources to provide the same amount of coverage. However, others may have more knowledge on the subject of torches such as @Multigun and @Taemien as their knowledge of these things far exceed my own.
I have been replacing torches with the Khitan ceiling lamps anyone have options on that gives good light without glaring. They are placed on 2 to 3 high ceilings
I can fill a room with just about any light source, but for some reason (my platform is xbox, maybe its different) if you have 10 within the same few blocks i start lagging for 2-3 seconds at a time
I usually use tons of braziers, because i love the look
Client lag: The CPU or GPU is not up to the task of rendering at the settings you have set.
Server lag: The server needs to send and receive more packets than it is capable of given it’s current load. That can be because too many people are requesting too many things at once, or one person is requesting too many things at once, and the server can’t keep up.
Some combination of any of those three.
I haven’t tested too many other placeables but I have various torches and a lot of different building pieces. I think 8000 of each IIRC - I know it was 8k lights for sure - maybe it was more of each of the building blocks. No one particular building set piece seemed to cause more “lag” than another. Torches OTOH produced considerably more client lag than did any specific building piece.
Radium torches probably cause a slightly less amount of client side lag than normal torches since they aren’t animated objects. But will cause a tinsy amount of server load since they are containers.
In either case, you want to use as little as you need. Having hundreds in an area isn’t a great idea for clients.
