FPS Drop 3AM-4AM (Game Time)

P

Phoenix357

Refugee
Hello!  New here, I've been having a blast with the game after being introduced to it by a friend.  We've been playing the same game world, hosted on my friend's computer, not a dedicated server, since A19 experimental was released, (that's when I started playing) with relatively few issues, but recently (within the last week, real time) a problem started popping up exclusively for me (my friend reports no issues):

At 3AM game time, my FPS starts to drop noticeably.  By approximately 3:30-3:40AM game time, the FPS has plummeted from my usual 60-80 range all the way down to 10-15.  It remains there until 4:00AM (the time that the game switches from "night" to "day") and then *instantly* pops back up to 60-80 FPS.

We are on day 93 now in game, so I've played this same world for quite a while without any issues, so this seemed odd, but I've tried troubleshooting as best I can so far with these steps:

1) Found a static viewpoint and did not move the character/view for the full in-game hour to see if the issue still occurred.  It does.
2) Asked my friend to send me the save-game file so that I could host the game instead to see if that fixed the issue.  Issue still occurs, and still only for me.
3) Ran a solo game with the same save file to see if the issue occurs.  It does.
4) Turned on Debug Mode in a solo game and immediately after the issue resolved at 4AM, set the time back to just before 3AM to see if the issue would repeat when time is manually adjusted.  It does.
5) Launched a brand new game, advanced time to 3AM.  The issue still occurs, but the effect is less pronounced (starting at around 100 FPS and dropping to about 70)

Now, I have a theory that it *must* be specific to my system, as my friend has reported no such issue - both when he was and was not hosting the game.  Somewhat confusingly, he has a substantially less powerful computer than I do.  My specs are:

Windows 10 
i7-9700K
32 GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 2080 TI
2 TB SSD

Not sure what else might be helpful to troubleshoot this, but I appreciate any input/suggestions!

Here's a YT link to the video of the issue in the game save that I share with my friend.  You can scrub forward to the end to see the FPS jump back up at exactly 4AM:
 


Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.  It's not the end of the world, as far as bugs go, *except* on horde nights since dropping to 10 FPS is a bit... problematic... when being overrun by zombies.

 

 
SOLVED!

I posted too soon, I spent some more time trying to figure this out, and I finally found the culprit:

TREES!

I ran the test a few times in various locations, and noticed that the performance drop was more pronounced in the woodland area - specifically when I was around large amounts of trees.  Then it clicked: in the game world I've been playing we planted a large grove of Oak Trees near our base (which I am standing on top of in the video linked above, with the grove just about 50 blocks behind me).  There were literally 51 full grown trees side by side there, on top of the "normal" trees spawned as part of the world.  I realized that we had added the trees recently (within the last week) and roughly coinciding with the start of the issue (dur).

I cut all of them down, rewound the time to just before 3:00 AM, and while technically a small drop still happens, it never reached under 60 FPS.

So, while I still have no idea what specifically happens between 3 and 4 AM in the game that causes the reduction in performance, apparently trees greatly exacerbate the issue!

 
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Ok, now I understand you have a 2080, and that's great for most games out there. However Unity and the 1080/2080 series GPU's don't get along very well.  (Something I would love to put some work into figuring out, but I can't afford a new GPU.) Plus the game is still in Alpha, and some features haven't been optimized yet.  

Which is most likely your issue.

Set texture filter to High, set texture Quality to medium. Shadows to low, and every feature with the word "reflection" to off.

Bloom is personal preference, as is DoF. They add work, but not likely something that is going to affect your gameplay with that GPU. SSAO is a mixed bag. Some GPU's it gives issues, others it's barely noticeable. 

Oh, and always make sure VSync is turned off. If you want to cap FPS, use your GPU options.

 
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