A post that’s half Games blog, half General blog. Where the hell would I put something like this? Answer: the General blog, as this is about the technical side of a game instead of talking about the gameplay.
So, Planet Crafter. A fun game about taking a lifeless planet and turning it into a tropical paradise, and watching the fruits of your labor happen before your very eyes. But like I said I’m not here to talk about the game, I’m here to talk about the technical side. Since the game is being worked on by a small team, updates take months until they get published.
The 0.7 “Fish and Drones” update brings changes to optimization; an uncontrolled LOD based on your set graphic quality.
If you don’t know what ‘LOD’ is, it stands for Level of Detail. This is a well known way to deal with optimization issues. …Except I feel the devs don’t fully understand what its purpose is actually for. Either that or I myself have mistaken it for Draw Distance. So
what LOD does is take an object and base its graphic quality around the distance the player is looking at it. If the player is far away, it will replace the actual model of the object with a static 2D object, which cuts down on rendering requirements (hence, a smoother framerate as the GPU doesn’t have to render so much).
…This is not what’s actually happening in the game. So, I believe this is draw distance, not LOD. Draw distance makes objects disappear based on the distance of the player. But it does so.. very obsessively.
Exhibit A: Rods disappearing.
Note that I don’t have to go far at all for these rods to disappear, yet the glow of them still exists? This is not LOD, this is draw distance. And this is ridiculous.
And here’s another. Exhibit B: Display screens.
LOD would never do this. It would adjust the graphics quality based on the player’s distance to the object, not completely POOF the object out of existence. And another thing that gets me, why is it only the Power screen on the smaller screens, it attempts to do this on?
“Um…. this is an Early Access game. I’m pretty sure they’re just testing things and it likely will be fixed in a future update,” and your point would be valid. But that still gives me the right to point it out. And I have told them the issue.
With that out of the way, I need to talk about the point of this blog post. And that is how my computer handles this game. Now the framerate isn’t the issue.. it’s the fact my graphics card is getting very close to 90c when in 1080p (1920×1080). I do my best to ignore the fans screaming at me with how fast they have to spin to keep the GPU from dying.
Now I’ve had this happen with other games, but this is the first time I actually reported it as an issue. Mainly because of the ‘LOD’ I thought was going on and how it wasn’t really helping me with my soaring temps. So I assume it was just “this is an Early Access game, so I’ll just report my hardware in their discord server and maybe in the future the devs would fix it”.
I never anticipated the response I would get from a fellow user of the server, who seemed like they were delibertly trying to scare me.. and it also makes me not really want to play anymore as I don’t feel it’s “worth it”. I will explain this later on. The person said the temps are “dangerous”. What really made me sick is them saying “you are running AMD and they are more cheaply made than their Intel counterparts for the same performance”. However I only felt sick for a few moments until I read it again, and felt.. “wait, what? The ‘same performance’?? What the FUCK are you smoking, pal?!”
Intel fanboy detected!! 😂
‘Cheap made’ my ass. Now I could agree with the RX 580 having a lower TDP than
my CPU (which makes no sense as GPUs typically get hotter than CPUs. Though of course that depends if the game’s engine uses the GPU or the CPU more).
The person continued to make confused (to me) blabbing, somehow not just confusing
a GPU with a CPU (saying I should be water cooling my CPU.. when it’s not the problem here), but not even reading how I said “I’m not seeing any thermal throttling”. And
again, more and more people were ignoring this part in my OP. What the HELL.. do I have to put it in fucking neon for them to see it?? Come on!! Please help me figure this shit out!
But nothing happened after that. They stopped responding after I clarified my words, even adding emphasis on the whole “I’m not thermal throttling FFS!!” aspect. But nothing happened. The trolls said their peace and moved on.
Had a guy later this evening, asking me “do you have a Steam Deck, by the way?” I
said “yes”. They said “I run Planet Crafter on a Steam Deck and it runs great! Of course I get less than 60 FPS but I don’t feel the game needs a lot.” ..Huh. Curious, I asked him if they use the Steam Dock as well, as the game doesn’t have 100% compatibility with the deck. They claim you don’t need the dock with this game, but they had to bound
the CTRL key to “one of the unused buttons on the back”.
Huh. Interesting. But.. I dunno. 😞 I dunno if I want to stare at a small screen compared to my monitor. The only way around that is to use the dock, but I would need a cheap keyboard and a monitor. Thought of using my TV as a monitor. Get me a TV stand that will be high enough to clear my legs and put the dock and keyboard there.
…But what about other games? Would I seriously use my deck as a laptop for gaming, just because I’m lowkey scared of my graphics card getting to those high temperatures?
I need to ask someone, or a group of people of my options. If I should be worried, and what I could do to either mitigate the problem, or find a more drastic alternative (such as replacing the card, the case(or adding another outflow fan to my current case), or
both)?
Feel I’m in for a long ride, with lots of troubleshooting. One of those I’m pretty damn sure I’ll be asked (due to the age of the card), is “reapply thermal paste on the GPU”… oh
god.
*flashbacks of trying to put thermal paste on that FX 9590.. and trying to ‘clean it off’ and it going everywhere… and the fact I have to not fail this task with the GPU*
I feel sick thinking about it… rather just pay for a fucking graphics card instead! ANYTHING than having to deal with thermal paste!! 🤮
This is why I don’t really feel like playing anymore. That and I tried to go back to my old resolution (1024×768). The graphics card never hits 80c there, but.. the vertical letterboxing is getting on my nerves (as my monitor resolution is still 1080p).
This feels unfair.
Also, weird glitch happens every time I close the game; it hangs for some reason. That’s also very annoying.