FTB Performance over the years

[midgreezy]

I have been playing modded Minecraft since the initial release of Better Than Wolves back in 2011, through the original Tekkit pack, and many FTB packs. Easily totaling well over 10k hours played. Please don't blow this off as just some noob and/or user-error.

I like new content as much as any player, that's why I play FTB over vanilla. That said, I'd like to bring up a concern of mine that performance has seemingly taken backseat to just adding more and newer mods. As far as I can tell, from an end-user perspective, this has always been the case, but has gotten to the point that the game becomes less and less enjoyable, earlier and earlier in a playthrough, with every new mod-pack. And after Revelation I doubt I will come back to FTB.

We all know what the first responses will be to this - "You need a better cpu", "You should build more server-friendly", and of course "Blame Java!". So I'd like to address these, cause frankly they're getting old.

"You need a better cpu"

I have a i7-8700k @4.7ghz. What this response is really saying is "I'm more PCMR than you" and isn't really a solution.​

"You should build more server-friendly"

I try, but with more and more mods come more and more complex builds. Besides, this is effectively just telling players to limit their builds. "Maybe don't use X mod or X item"... Then why are they added to new packs? Whats the point in having all this shiny stuff if the end-user has to tip-toe around them constantly?​

"Blame Java!"

Everyone's favorite retort. If Java is so limited, then none of the other excuses matter. It's a foregone
conclusion. No matter what the end-user does performance will always suffer. I realize this is anecdotal but I doubt this is the case as I've played older packs on lesser machines and performance was much less of an issue. And like I said it seems to be worse with every new release.​

Seeing new packs released with "This is not a lightweight pack" in the description only says that devs are aware of the problem but are more concerned with pushing new content than addressing the issue. Resulting in more and more of the player-base not being able to enjoy the game. I get it. It's a hobby. Making new content is more interesting than optimization.

I love modded MC, thats why I opened with the history of my playtime/experience. And I truly appreciate the work devs have done to build FTB over these many years, for free, in their spare time. I do acknowledge and appreciate that, but I hate to see something I enjoy so much die and FTB will suffer as more and more player leave.

I wouldn't complain if I didn't care. Thanks for all the good times.

TL;DR - Packs are sacrificing performance for new content

 

[Pyure]

Its an interesting conversation.

I'm looking back at some flagship packs such as FTB Ultimate. Which was so stupidly popular that its still played today. And that giant pack had....49 mods according to FTB Wiki (No idea if that's really accurate, but I'll just assume it didn't have 80+) Contrast that with just about any popular pack today: everything has over 100. Revelation, which you mentioned, cites 180.

I feel like the more mods you put into a pack, the more passively consumed resources you're going to see (in some cases) and the more mod-interaction-consumption you're going to see (where mods need to accommodate more and more edge-cases to work friendly with others and not just crash).

I can't tell if your concern is more with the Packs getting too big, or if you feel that mod-devs are getting more lax in their ability to build performance-friendly mods. While I'd agree with the former, the impression I get is that mods in general are actually factoring performance into the equation more strongly than before.

It may simply be that your primary interest lies in smaller (lite) packs. And unfortunately that's a niche market. But its beneficial to let the FTB team know that the market is definitely there

 

[Cpt_gloval]

Not really sure how to respond to this. Over all I would say that I get, today, the same average 60-90 fps throughout my various modpacks as I did back in the 1.25-1.7.10 days.
Granted I now need to allocate 8GB of RAM to the instance instead of 2GB, but it is comparable because back then my processor was at least half as powerful as my current.

I will agree that some mods, when overused, or in some cases highly used, do cause the late game to dip more towards the 60fps range rather than the 90fps it pack stated at but 60 is still very smooth. Do I get the occasional lag spike to lock up? Of course! Does my game occasionally crash to desk top for some inexplicable reason? Yes. Over all though I have not played a pack in a while that I would list as unplayable due to content/size of build.

TL;DR - I don;t feel I can vote as I do not agree that content /= performance.

 

[Pyure]

TL;DR - I don;t feel I can vote as I do not agree that content /= performance.

This is really good point. The premise of the vote is that they're mutually exclusive. I would have maybe preferred to vote on whether I agree that's the case: "Do you feel that all the extra content is made at the sacrifice of performance"

 

[Hambeau]

In my opinion, a problem lies not WTH Java, but how Minecraft was written. The story I heard/read was that Notch was learning Java (and possibly programming in general) while he wrote Minecraft. A fantastic feat in and of itself, but also indicating less than optimal design.

Considering that Mojang has been replacing major portions of the base Vanilla code since before Microsoft bought them, they realize the code has lots of room for optimization and modernization. For example, IIRC one of the big changes for 1.8.x was to replace MC's routine to render blocks (Re-render everything down to bedrock) with the more streamlined MC Pocket Edition routine to only re-render what was in line of sight. This routine was originally written in C++ by people familiar with the language. Mojang got the code and rewrote it in Java.

This process is taking so long because people want upgrades and Mojang doesn't want to say "Play the old version for a year while we clean things up" and would rather make small focused code replacements.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

It's not a matter of newer mods, it's a matter of newer versions of Minecraft.

Back in the 1.2.5 era, you could run Minecraft on 128 MB. By the time 1.7 came out, you could easily run a Lite mod pack on half a gig of ram. Then the curve hit. By the time 1.10.2 hit, you were needing 2GB just to run vanilla Minecraft, much less a mod pack. 1.12.2 is even worse, if you aren't allocating at least 4 GB, you aren't going to be able to have a playable experience.

So it depends on what era you want to play in. If you want to play 1.2.5, then do so. If you want to play with 1.7.10 era? Do that. If you want to play 1.12.2, you can do that as well, so long as you allocate more RAM to take into consideration mudflation of the base game itself.

 

[Reddis]

Aside from 1 specific pack that I won't mention, I have never had a single problem with stability. I have played on FTB and AT launchers, I've built custom packs, I've played on private servers, public servers, and offline. While my pc is pretty beefy, it isn't as strong as yours, and I've ran Kortex Komplete, All the Mods, and Resonant Rise, likely the 3 beefiest packs ever created.

I saw a similar thread a week or 2 ago where someone posted the opposite of your statement - that developers are afraid to put new mods into modpacks because it creates instability. I love kitchen sink packs, the more mods the merrier. My only wish is that those 200+ mod packs loaded faster initially.

 

[Cpt_gloval]

My only wish is that those 200+ mod packs loaded faster initially.

Amen to that brother! Modern Skyblock 3 was the worst of the slow loaders lately. That thing took upwards of 15 minutes to load for me. Once it was up it played just fine.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Yeah, pack size bloat is a big one, because a lot of mods have big fancy world effects. You notice how a lot of mods have higher quality textures on their ores and items? Load. Multiple mods doing that? Load. Non full blocks? Load. And it all stacks up. Oh, your block is animated, cool. More load. Startlingly as it is, CPU bound isn't always the issue with Minecraft either. Make sure java's running on your dedicated card instead of trying to use the onboard.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people play kitchen sinks 'wrong'. They fire up the pack and load it with all the mods, instead of going in and turning off the mods they know they're not going to use, or ones they've already seen to death. Dire's pack is a good example: He ALWAYS has Botania and TE, and EnderIO, and lately Astral Sorcery, and you can go and disable the ones you're not going to use, or that you've used to death. Play the pack with just EIO and Astral if you always end up using Botania. Just because they are in the pack, doesn't mean you can't remove them. And that will reduce the load. Do be aware FTB usually uses Thermal Foundation for it's Ore Generation, so disabling that might cause problems.

 

[Reddis]

Yeah, pack size bloat is a big one, because a lot of mods have big fancy world effects. You notice how a lot of mods have higher quality textures on their ores and items? Load. Multiple mods doing that? Load. Non full blocks? Load. And it all stacks up. Oh, your block is animated, cool. More load. Startlingly as it is, CPU bound isn't always the issue with Minecraft either. Make sure java's running on your dedicated card instead of trying to use the onboard.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people play kitchen sinks 'wrong'. They fire up the pack and load it with all the mods, instead of going in and turning off the mods they know they're not going to use, or ones they've already seen to death. Dire's pack is a good example: He ALWAYS has Botania and TE, and EnderIO, and lately Astral Sorcery, and you can go and disable the ones you're not going to use, or that you've used to death. Play the pack with just EIO and Astral if you always end up using Botania. Just because they are in the pack, doesn't mean you can't remove them. And that will reduce the load. Do be aware FTB usually uses Thermal Foundation for it's Ore Generation, so disabling that might cause problems.

@KingTriaxx could you explain how to ensure that java is running on my gpu rather than cpu please?

 

[KingTriaxx]

I don't have an onboard GPU so I don't have the ability to walk you through the process unfortunately.

 

[LoGaL]

i thnk you open task manager and see the GPU being used by the process on the right(provided you have a dedicated one, not just the integrated CPU one)

 

[Henry Link]

So, I've been running modded servers on Linux for more than 5 years now. Every couple years I have to update the rig I use for the server just to keep up with the demands. And I can tell you on some packs, I don't care how good your server is, chunk generation will lag the server. There was I pack I ran and the TPS would drop on in heartbeat if someone was boating around generating new chunks due to a lot of terrain generating modifications (thing like RTG, Natura, BOP, climate control, streams, plus all of the ore generation). While it generates a beautiful world you pay for it in the chunk generation.

 

[Golrith]

I'd have to agree with @ShneekeyTheLost, as each MC version is released, with apparently fixes and improvements, performance is a hell of a lot worst.

Started in 1.2.5 days, had a low spec machine, and ran modded with 64x textures. Nowadays under 1.12.2 I've got a much beefier computer, and have to run with 32x textures max.


The other issue is also down to mod duplication. Sure, it's great that we want to play with all these tech mods, but they are all nowadays including their own transport system, ore processing system, etc. You eventually realise that really, you are only using mod X for item Y, and not using the other 90% of content that comes with the mod.


Although, I've recently been made aware of this mod: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/vanillafix which (for me) has made dramatic performance increase, so much so, I've even reduced the amount of ram allocated from 6gig to 4gig in my modpack, and loading time is only about 2 minutes for a 90 mod modpack, and it used to be about 10 minutes.