Random slow-down & lag spikes (possible solutions).

Steam or GOG
Steam
Single Player/Multiplayer
Single
Operating System
Windows 10
Terraria Version
1.4.2.1
Controls Used
Keyboard/Mouse
This is unfortunately one of those few times where screenshots won't help, but I'm convinced it's a bug I've encountered before so I'll provide a video example if it's necessary. There are only certain times within the game that these massive slow-down & lag spikes occur & the solution for them, which is often unrelated, leads me to believe it's the same bug I encountered in 1.3.5. 🧐 🥤


Slow-down causes:
  1. Opening the Researched Items Tab.
  2. Opening chests with a lot of items in them.
  3. Opening up the World Map (where NPCs appear as Icons).
  4. Starting a new World, within the first 2 minutes.
Unrelated solutions:
  1. Toggling video settings, anywhere from Low Quality to High Quality.
  2. Toggling the video setting from frame skipping, on or off.
  3. Opening up chests in a newer Biome.
  4. Warping to a new Biome using Pylons & warping back.
I suspect this is a bug related to reaching the maximum storage capacity in a World, which is around 800 containers? There's a TEdit bug that triggered this same issue, but the solution was to simply delete the World & use a backup copy, seeing as how the memory on the World would always overflow & cause an eventual crash, which wasn't repairable.

I think there's some sort of storage error related to the Researched Items tab & it effects all Worlds once you open it up, even those where this feature doesn't work. This entire issue seemed to start there, when I opened up my Legacy Characters Researched Items Tab (1.4.0). I also believe that having duplicates of Fishing Quest Items plays some small part, which might explain why many older "Builder Maps" are crashing. Let me know if there's anything you need me to do...
 
Last edited:
Can you provide your PC specs please? This sounds less like a bug and moreike your PC struggling to keep up with certain things.
 
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
System: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M (all drivers updated for Windows 10)
Drivers: 387.92


For context, I run several pretty demanding games on my PC, one of them being Cyberpunk 2077. I thought I was pretty clear about identifying when the issue started happening, but I guess we gotta wade through this mess instead. 😒 🤷‍♂️

I really did try to be as specific as I possibly could, because I've run into a similar bug before in 1.3.5 using TEdit. If there's some kind of runaway storage bug going around, it's gonna eventually start crashing the game & corrupting files. I wish I could be of more help, but coding for games isn't my expertise, sorry. I just have a weird ability to spot things, let's just hope it's only me then...
 
tEdit is a third party tool - it's not really relevant here (and if anything would make the report invalid for using it).

I do agree that those specs should be fine. Out of curiosity, are you running Terraria on an HDD or an SSD?
 
tEdit is a third party tool - it's not really relevant here (and if anything would make the report invalid for using it).
I brought up TEdit, only because it's the reason I know about the games Storage Limit being 800 containers, or something similar. There was a bug that made the map exceed the limit of storage space, even if there wasn't anything in the chests, or even if the only chests on the World were naturally generated. I'm not suggesting that TEdit caused this issue I'm addressing now, just that it feels very similar; I'm not sure how the Researched Items tab is treated, seeing as how so many items can exist in it at once, the storage limit bug just seemed like a possible culprit.

I do agree that those specs should be fine. Out of curiosity, are you running Terraria on an HDD or an SSD?
SSD (mSATA)
 
Slow-down causes:
  1. Opening the Researched Items Tab.
  2. Opening chests with a lot of items in them.
In 1.3.x or 1.4 (can't remember which), Terraria changed to a load on demand approach. When you first open a chest, Terraria loads the contents of the chest (which is what causes the pause). I suspect the same is the case with Research. This should only happen the first time you open the chest/tab.
 
In 1.3.x or 1.4 (can't remember which), Terraria changed to a load on demand approach. When you first open a chest, Terraria loads the contents of the chest (which is what causes the pause). I suspect the same is the case with Research. This should only happen the first time you open the chest/tab.
With what you've said, is there any possible way that this type of coding can effect the games performance, even after-the-fact? It's just that, the bug from 1.3.5 was pretty awful, I'm a bit concerned that there's some kind of runaway coding that's gonna start causing crashes, & if left unchecked, corrupted World saves. 🤔🥤
 
I very much doubt this is a bug, especially one that could cause a crash or corrupt saves - those two things usually happen for completley different reasons. It's just slowdown from having to load a bunch of stuff at once, suddenly.
 
I very much doubt this is a bug, especially one that could cause a crash or corrupt saves - those two things usually happen for completley different reasons. It's just slowdown from having to load a bunch of stuff at once, suddenly.
I'm not sure if I was clear, the slowdown doesn't end, is what I'm saying. It's gets worse with each passing day. It's almost as if, once I loaded the thousands of items my Legacy Character had that one time, in a different game World, it's like the game is always trying to load or account for those thousands of items, at random now.

This wasn't an issue before. The game has never run better for me than after the updates, but suddenly, after that huge lag-spike from opening up the Researched Items tab, the game has been running poorly ever since. I'm trying to find the odd relationship between the way the game handles World Storage & a Character's Researched Items, & how that could cause possible performance issues. 🤔🥤

The more I think about it, I'm starting to suspect, from what you've been saying, that the common cause might just be the Resource Packs. I wish I could be of more assistance but, that's about all I can do is try to tack-down the possible cause, from the perspective of a person who doesn't know much about coding.

Do you have Frame Skip on?
This issue isn't about whether or not I increase or lower the video quality, it's the fact that it temporarily fixes the performance issues for some reason or another. Whenever the game is forced to load in/ out any major changes to graphics or storage, it runs smoothly again, but whenever a chest is opened up, or the game has to load the World, the issues start up again.

I don't know any relation between the two, but I'm suspecting now that it might be something going on with the Resource Packs, seeing as how the only common relationship seems to be around "loading in textures" suddenly. I hate to keep making assumptions, but the performance issues are getting worse, & I have a feeling we're gonna start seeing more, similar reports.
 
Ok, so I'm gonna stop muddying the waters & let the professionals do their jobs. I placed a video in the original Bug Report so you can all get an odd example of what I mean. I know it sounds bizarre but... here you are. 😒 🤷‍♂️

 
You don't seem to have a resource pack enabled, so I'm not sure it's anything to do with that. Best not to make random guesses as to what it might be.

I do agree that you should try playing with frame skip turned on and see if you still have issues.
 
You don't seem to have a resource pack enabled, so I'm not sure it's anything to do with that. Best not to make random guesses as to what it might be.
20210408062823_1.jpg
20210408062831_1.jpg

🤦‍♂️ :sigh:

I do agree that you should try playing with frame skip turned on and see if you still have issues.
Already tried playing with the lowest of every kind of setting, the issue still persists. I'm pretty sure I was very specific about what is/ was going on. Also, with my PC specs, suggesting I run the game on a lesser setting seems pretty lazy a solution.

I'm just trying to get ahead of a possible, critical issue, but... I can't care more than the people who know more than me. I'll just play something else until this all hopefully gets resolved. 😒🤷‍♂️
 
Issue Resolved!

After doing some light research, I've found that Workshop Items can have a major impact on your games performance, even if the additions shouldn't, because of how they are implemented. That being the case, I decided to suspend running many of the background programs I'd usually run, just to see if any of these things were having some effect on now textures were being "rendered(??)", still not 100% sure. 🧐 🤷‍♂️
Resource Packs 04-08-2021.png


This Workshop Folder appears to be where all of the sprites, music & SFX from the Resource Packs are stored (all Workshop Items it seems), which leads me to believe that there might be a fragile balancing act going on, seeing as how resources are being stored in separate places, unlike the usual Zip Files from 1.4.1. I don't know what half this stuff means, but this is how I solved the issue.

While using Resource Packs, expect a performance hit, no matter how small.
  1. Try to avoid running any other programs or applications in the background if possible.
  2. If performance issues still exist, we've all agreed to enable Frame Skipping (source).
  3. All Resource Packs aren't created equal, so try Unsubscribing to any newer additions that may cause sudden performance issues.
    • If you need to manually remove any Resource Packs, now you know their locations.
    • It's also possible that some Resource Packs might overlap, as I don't see anything in place that prevents this??
  4. Resource Packs that contain Music Tracks & SFXs can cause your game to crash (confirmed!). Remove them from the Workshop Folder manually if necessary.
 
Last edited:
With what you've said, is there any possible way that this type of coding can effect the games performance, even after-the-fact? It's just that, the bug from 1.3.5 was pretty awful, I'm a bit concerned that there's some kind of runaway coding that's gonna start causing crashes, & if left unchecked, corrupted World saves. 🤔🥤
Speaking as a developer from a general perspective, yes, it would affect the game's performance at the time of loading. If performance issues continued, that might be a symptom of memory exhaustion and hitting the page file.

Having said that, I am not a Terraria developer so I cannot comment on whether this might be the case for Terraria.
 
Its worth noting here, all of the scenarios you mentioned, where the FPS spikes were happening? Those are all very resource intensive situations, which are some of the most likely to cause a performance spike.

This is actually part of why we tell people that Terraria's development is reaching its limits; the addition of more and more content is actively causing performance drops in some critical areas.

  1. Opening the Researched Items Tab - This is caused by the game processing and reviewing every single item in the game for being Research or not
  2. Opening chests with a lot of items in them - This is usually caused by the Crafting recipe system "updating" to account for all of the items in the chest. This specific slowdown gets worse the more recipes there are in the game (and 1.4 added a substantial quantity)
  3. Opening up the World Map (where NPCs appear as Icons) - NPCs, and NPC Map Icon generation, are actually surprisingly resource intensive, and its worse the more NPCs there are
  4. Starting a new World, within the first 2 minutes - This one in particular usually has to do with settling liquids and elements of the world loading for the first time
The consideration that the Resource Pack functionality could be exacerbating these symptoms is not surprising at all, but these scenarios you described are exactly where I might expect to see performance hits start to show up. Literally, 1, 2 and 3 are issues that get worse every time we add Items, Recipes, or NPCs respectively. When we tell people "we can't just keep adding stuff to Terraria forever, its starting to show technical limitations", we really weren't kidding.
 
This is actually part of why we tell people that Terraria's development is reaching its limits; the addition of more and more content is actively causing performance drops in some critical areas.
Thanks for the clarification! I did find a reliable workaround for these issues, but knowing that they're all separate but multilayered, explains a LOT, so thank you again! 🙏😊

For what it's worth, you all have done a fine job; stuffing as much meaningful content into 1.4+ as humanly possible! The game feels especially complete, one of the few I play where I would argue there's actually too much content. Even if it's hard to tell at times, we appreciate you all, at Re-Logic; I personally wish you all well in your next venture!
 
Back
Top Bottom