Console Ps4 and Xbox One Serious framerate choppiness

[consolefreak]

Whenever i move the framerate becomes very choppy. It feels like the game runs in slow motion. Some frames appear normally but other frames seem to appear for a longer duration than others. This causes a very jittery experience.
To reproduce, make a platform of width 100-150 blocks. Then move from one end to another. The faster you move, the more noticeable the choppiness is. Repeat this exercise on the PC or Mobile version and you will instantly feel how smooth they are.
Please note that the framerate does not feel choppy ALL the time. Sometimes it runs normally but then the choppy frames kick in. They seem to be more frequent when i am moving to new areas, that is, i am not just walking back and forth but moving in a certain direction.
You can easily see the choppiness if you focus on the trees in the background when moving. If the frames are appearing normally, the trees will appear to move smoothly. But when the choppiness kicks in, the trees do not move in a fluid motion. It feels like they move, then stop, then move again but very quickly.
It is also worth mentioning that this choppy framerate is not something new introduced in a later update. It has been like this since the very beginning of Ps4 and Xbox One versions. I own Terraria Ps4 version on the latest patch that is the PC equivalent of 1.3.5.

 

[Terrasoldier17]

I don't know how to help honestly...
Because I never experienced and I play with my friends on Xbox!
This really only happens when all of us are using a very fast weapon or when to much stuff is happening at the same time.

Sorry that I can't help...

 

[consolefreak]

I don't know how to help honestly...
Because I never experienced and I play with my friends on Xbox!
This really only happens when all of us are using a very fast weapon or when to much stuff is happening at the same time.

Sorry that I can't help...

Thank you for your reply. Have you ever played the PC or mobile version by any chance?

 

[Terrasoldier17]

Yeah!
I mostly play on those platforms.
But when friends come over, thats what I have to play on.

 

[consolefreak]

you don't feel any different playing terraria on the console vs pc except for the controls? i have seen a large amount of terraria gameplay on xbox at youtube/twitch at 720@60 and i own the ps4 version. The framerate or framepacing is so horrible its unplayable at points. i see the same jitter on the youtube/twitch streams. i have played the PC and Mobile versions and they run completely smooth (jitter free)

 

[KingofDergs2001]

Whenever i move the framerate becomes very choppy. It feels like the game runs in slow motion. Some frames appear normally but other frames seem to appear for a longer duration than others. This causes a very jittery experience.
To reproduce, make a platform of width 100-150 blocks. Then move from one end to another. The faster you move, the more noticeable the choppiness is. Repeat this exercise on the PC or Mobile version and you will instantly feel how smooth they are.
Please note that the framerate does not feel choppy ALL the time. Sometimes it runs normally but then the choppy frames kick in. They seem to be more frequent when i am moving to new areas, that is, i am not just walking back and forth but moving in a certain direction.
You can easily see the choppiness if you focus on the trees in the background when moving. If the frames are appearing normally, the trees will appear to move smoothly. But when the choppiness kicks in, the trees do not move in a fluid motion. It feels like they move, then stop, then move again but very quickly.
It is also worth mentioning that this choppy framerate is not something new introduced in a later update. It has been like this since the very beginning of Ps4 and Xbox One versions. I own Terraria Ps4 version on the latest patch that is the PC equivalent of 1.3.5.

It could possibly be something to do with the rendering method that causes the choppiness. After all, it does basically render on the fly. I have PS4 edition as well, so I am familiar with the choppy framerate issue.
I encountered a glitch that made the gradient (block brightness blending, basically) layer disappear, and I could see the blocks being hidden and shown in real time. It would hide and not render blocks that were at 0% opacity, and when I swung a True Excalibur through a wall in a cavern or brought a light source near, the blocks around the light source would appear depending on the range of said light source. From this we can assume it IS rendering in real time, and because it’s real-time rendering this can cause issues when the player is moving fast.

Okay, so it’s rendering on the fly. So what? It’s a 2D game, the entities, blocks, elements, etc. should NOT be that hard to render. Right?
Well... While it is true that the PS4 is built to handle really complex rendering jobs (an example would be Detroit: Become Human, with its highly detailed 3D models and very complex environments, shaders, particle fx, etc), Terraria is trying to push 16-bit further than ever. The particles, entities, projectiles, and events all need to be tracked at all times. This, and the fact that the entities are constantly moving, being spawned in, AND have to run their own scripts and do their own actions independently, can make things a bit hard on the CPU because there is just so much to keep track of and do all at once.

All right, we’ve got a pretty moderately complex rendering method. But you told me only how it renders depending on light near blocks, that doesn’t really tell me anything.
So just a heads up, I don’t know every single in and out about the programming of the game (at least, not yet), so I could be wrong. But I have been programming games for quite a while (about 3 years now), so I think I can safely make an educated guess.
What’s possibly being used here is a method that prerenders a chunk (like a chunk in Minecraft) I’m guessing about 150-200 blocks by 150-200 blocks (dep. on screen width, height, aspect ratio, etc) around the player, then renders the tiles depending on lighting in that chunk. When the player moves close to the edge of the chunk, the next chunk is prerendered. As the player moves away from the old chunk, that old chunk is no longer stored in RAM as it is not prerendered and thus no longer needed. This conserves RAM and CPU useage, because as I said, every entity, particle, projectile, etc in the active chunk(s) has to be kept track of, which is more work for the CPU.
This could be totally wrong, but from what I know, understand, and have experienced, that seems to be the most logical explanation for how that works, and it ties in very well with why the lag is intermittent and occurs as the player is moving fast and for decent distances.

 

[consolefreak]

It could possibly be something to do with the rendering method that causes the choppiness. After all, it does basically render on the fly. I have PS4 edition as well, so I am familiar with the choppy framerate issue.
I encountered a glitch that made the gradient (block brightness blending, basically) layer disappear, and I could see the blocks being hidden and shown in real time. It would hide and not render blocks that were at 0% opacity, and when I swung a True Excalibur through a wall in a cavern or brought a light source near, the blocks around the light source would appear depending on the range of said light source. From this we can assume it IS rendering in real time, and because it’s real-time rendering this can cause issues when the player is moving fast.

Okay, so it’s rendering on the fly. So what? It’s a 2D game, the entities, blocks, elements, etc. should NOT be that hard to render. Right?
Well... While it is true that the PS4 is built to handle really complex rendering jobs (an example would be Detroit: Become Human, with its highly detailed 3D models and very complex environments, shaders, particle fx, etc), Terraria is trying to push 16-bit further than ever. The particles, entities, projectiles, and events all need to be tracked at all times. This, and the fact that the entities are constantly moving, being spawned in, AND have to run their own scripts and do their own actions independently, can make things a bit hard on the CPU because there is just so much to keep track of and do all at once.

All right, we’ve got a pretty moderately complex rendering method. But you told me only how it renders depending on light near blocks, that doesn’t really tell me anything.
So just a heads up, I don’t know every single in and out about the programming of the game (at least, not yet), so I could be wrong. But I have been programming games for quite a while (about 3 years now), so I think I can safely make an educated guess.
What’s possibly being used here is a method that prerenders a chunk (like a chunk in Minecraft) I’m guessing about 150-200 blocks by 150-200 blocks (dep. on screen width, height, aspect ratio, etc) around the player, then renders the tiles depending on lighting in that chunk. When the player moves close to the edge of the chunk, the next chunk is prerendered. As the player moves away from the old chunk, that old chunk is no longer stored in RAM as it is not prerendered and thus no longer needed. This conserves RAM and CPU useage, because as I said, every entity, particle, projectile, etc in the active chunk(s) has to be kept track of, which is more work for the CPU.
This could be totally wrong, but from what I know, understand, and have experienced, that seems to be the most logical explanation for how that works, and it ties in very well with why the lag is intermittent and occurs as the player is moving fast and for decent distances.

Although i am no programmer but i had a similar theory myself. if the lag is caused by rendering in real-time off the hdd, then one might hope that using a ssd or running Terraria on Ps5 will rectify the issue. If the CPU is the culprit, then again Ps5 could help if Terraria is able to run in the native boost mode. Only time will tell. Thank you for your detailed response and interest =)

 

[MBraderz]

Have noticed the same "choppy-ness" today too, happens mainly in my hub world where I have a mansion and a lot of entities on the screen, was initially thinking memory leak but the way rendering occurs could be the issue, its mad how games like Terraria and Minecraft have become the new standard for benchmarking a console

 

[KingofDergs2001]

Have noticed the same "choppy-ness" today too, happens mainly in my hub world where I have a mansion and a lot of entities on the screen, was initially thinking memory leak but the way rendering occurs could be the issue, its mad how games like Terraria and Minecraft have become the new standard for benchmarking a console

Entities also consume a little bit of resources of course, so when you have ~30 or 40+ it can get choppy. This, along with the rendering method, can cause some pretty bad lag spikes at times (though typically entities except for the town NPCs despawn when they are out of frame for a certain period of time or if the number of entities exceeds a certain amount depending on the area, event, spawn limit, etc... Town NPCs stay spawned in but they are not rendered when they are out of frame from what I see.)

I think it really depends on the speed at which the player is moving around through chunks. If the player is moving slower, the new chunks are given time to load quickly without significantly dragging the performance down. However, if the player is moving quickly, the system doesn’t have time to render frames because it is focusing on completing the construction of the new prerendered chunk(s). It uses more resources so it can get it done faster, thus the graphics are not the priority until the prerendering of the new chunk(s) is finished.

So basically resource management.