Improving Your Frame-rate in Cities: Skylines

everybody welcome back my name is yumble and today i'd like to talk to you about optimizing your city skylines gameplay not the roads not the the interchanges or anything like that i'd really like to discuss how to optimize the mods that you're using and maybe get a few mods that will help speed up your your game a little bit or at least mitigate the effects of other mods and the thousands of assets that we've all accumulated from playing this game all of the steam workshop links are going to be below in the description listen closely i think you'll find at least one or two things that could help speed up your game substantially thanks for being here let's get into it one thing that i'd like to address immediately before we even start discussing mods or anything like that is the optimization built into city skylines itself ready there isn't any there is no this game is an absolute cpu hog because of the the nature of simulation so there's thousands of sims thousands of vehicles thousands of moving parts being pathed across the map at all times and as your city grows your cpu is going to be taxed there's no real way around that city skylines is also a ram hog due to the nature of of being allowed to download assets in this game as your library grows and as you download more more assets and apply more mods to the game your ram is going to be potentially decimated by this so keep that in mind keep the the specs of your own pc in mind keep in mind that even an optimal computer by today's standards may still have trouble running cities at a good frame rate uh even at a you know once the city gets large enough all computers will have trouble running city skylines so really keep that in mind and manage your expectations um but let's get into it the first mod that i want to go over is loading screen mod this is the options menu for loading screen mod this is a a fundamental mod it's a must-have if you saw my my recommended mods video then you'll you'll remember this from that but to go in a little bit deeper what it's really doing is sharing all of the assets textures if there's textures or pieces of assets that can be shared rather than installed or loaded into ram in duplicate it'll share it it'll load that texture one time and and share it amongst all of the roads buildings props etc that use that that particular texture material mesh thumbnail whatever the case may be it's fantastic so make sure that you have this installed the next thing that loading screen mod does is its namesake it's actually this the uh the reporting here well excuse me not the reporting but in its namesake it replaces the default cities loading screen which once you install mods and assets you're going to be sitting there looking at nothing so what it actually does is adapt the loading screen to show real-time information about what your game is loading it's going to show how much ram you're using how big your page file might be and i do not recommend using a page file some i've seen some people recommend increasing the size of your system's page file do not do that if you want to install more assets in your game you need to install more ram into your computer you know so it's it really becomes finances allowing or maybe you're motherboard allowing you really need to have the amount of ram required like make sure your system is up to par with how much you're trying to run first and foremost loading screen mod will tell you that information i'll tell you how much ram you're using it'll also tell you how much uh if you're missing any assets so if if assets are missing let's say you downloaded a nice building and and that building has a custom tree and a custom prop that belongs with it uh it'll actually show an orange entry on the left side of the screen in the asset loader and that will show you what you're missing essentially or if something fails to load maybe you downloaded a nice train station or a nice bus terminal and for some reason it fails to load it'll give you that information on the left side and now i'm going to show you what you can actually do about that all those missing assets are bogging down your system you can actually navigate to this uh to this designation right here we'll call it uh the file path that's what it's called you can go to your file path um to this file path where the game is installed and there will be an html file as long as you have this box checked save reports in this directory so go to that directory check the html file and it's actually going to show you a list of everything it's going to show you a list of all of your assets that are being used in the city assets that aren't being used in the city assets that are failing to load assets that are missing and you can really optimize your your game a lot by making sure you have the correct assets so don't forget get loading screen mod share as many textures as you can um it'll do it automatically also make sure that if things are failing to load go in and address that and make sure to install the the items that are missing that's i would call this step one in optimizing your game the next thing i'd like to discuss is a mod called ultimate level of detail now in your game every building has a what's called a lot or a level of detail version like let's take a look at this guy here this is a vanilla asset it's a it's a dlc it's a creator pack asset actually it's the art deco creator pack but you'll notice that this building changes if you get far enough away oh did you see that keep your eye on the building i'm going to zoom in one click look at that it's all bright and vibrant and pretty and and shiny and it looks a lot like it does when you're up close but then eventually if you get far enough away one more boom it turns into something slightly different looking you'll notice that for every building every prop every asset there's a level of detail version and that just means that it's a lower poly right lower polygon version of the same asset or maybe the texture is a little bit less expensive on ram or what have you and it's the only way that the game can function when you load when you uh when you zoom out all the way and you're looking at your entire city it would actually be incredibly expensive resource wise to load every asset in the city full full version so what the game does is it cleverly turns into this low poly version what you can actually do using a mod called ultimate level of detail this works both ways now you can you can go uh oh no oh there it is ultimate level of detail it was the second one it works both ways you can increase the level of detail version and what that will do is is potentially slow down your game or you can lower the level of detail and that means that that that cheaper asset will kick in quicker maybe there's a better way i can say that i'm sure there is so for instance if my tree lod distance is 2000 meters every distance up until 2000 meters is going to be is is going to be the full version of that asset everything beyond 2000 meters as i zoom out like here it says good luck goodbye don't don't don't use these probably really there's a point where it's ridiculous i turn this up to 2000 meters i should probably turn it down to the game default i'd probably see a performance increase if i did that the props i'd probably see a performance increase if i take them from 2000 meters down to 1000 right uh decal prop fade distance that i like a little bit higher it's funny the decals will fade very very early and they'll disappear entirely if you use decals in your city maybe you want to increase that one who knows buildings i have set to 2000 so that's what you were seeing 2000 meters was that magic point where that nice black art deco building turns into i want to say it turns into mush but that's kind of overstating it lads can be done a few different ways in my understanding some content creators will make a content creator like asset creators for cd skylines will make a specific level of detail version of the piece that they've created other times the building may be replaced the building or asset may be recreat replaced with like an automatically generated version of it which usually doesn't look very good from what i understand but you have you have the control here to figure out when at what distance does it turn into the level of detail version of itself i didn't change the buildings at all but i just changed trees so i'll probably see a minor performance increase i do use a lot of trees though um for instance let's just look at this the tree let's see if we can tell when it changes uh i think it changed there but does that really make a difference like let's let's be honest with ourselves this is the full resolution version of this tree at the center of the screen that is the lod um you can see the shadows kind of twitching the the fact that the tree was moving has now changed but does it really make that much of a difference to me certainly not in a in a photograph if i were to screen cap this wouldn't make a difference at all uh if i were to really scrutinize it yeah it's it's different but you can buy yourself a couple extra frames by by paying attention to the level of detail that you're you're viewing your city at this one is by far the easiest to implement in your game i'm talking about fps booster so there was a miniature version of this that came out maybe a year ago and then more recently maybe it was like four or five months ago from the creation of this video that you're watching now the full version came out and it's amazing it's it's literally another no-brainer similar to uh the first two that i said like loading screen mod is a is a super no-brainer ultimate level of detail is is optional but still really good to pay attention to this is an absolute no-brainer um fps booster literally just makes your game run faster i still recommend doing the other things that i'm talking about here but this will enhance that further so the limiter is important i only i record at 60 fps i only run the game at 60 fps like my stuff my monitor i can only see in 60 fps so why would i even like why would i allow it to run amok 144 fps i have one monitor that runs at 144 but my system is not running cities let's be real i've got a i've got a medium system by the way the gameplay that you're seeing right now is on a fairly medium system that was pretty good two years ago but is not does not hold a candle to current processors or current um current graphics cards things like that so 60fps is great for me if i can get it love it why would i let the game run any higher moving on um you can you can affect your your uh the cooldown of all these things you can let your gpu take a break by lowering the frame rate when certain things are going on so when when i'm in the main menu i only want to run the game at 30fps on the loading screen when i'm looking at my loading screen mod 10fps is plenty who cares how like let's let's be honest give your system a break and don't make it refresh 60 frames per second when the game is loading because why would you do that you know it doesn't make any sense when the game is paused i've realized that i actually like it at 60 which is essentially wide open for me there's no way that i'm actually getting 60 but if i if it can run at 60 i'll take it i build with the game paused a lot and i like for the camera to look smooth the in-game in-game options screen is where we are presently actually so this is the options menu i'll let it run at 30. i could probably lower that and still be pretty happy would i notice a difference that's another good question um this one won't affect when you're playing the game like none of these will actually affect while the game is running other than lower frame rate when app loses focus so this is when you click away from the window if you click into another program on your computer or if if cities is in the background even if you can see it on your monitor if it's running in the background it's going to go to 15 fps so i've had a few people ask me about why they're why their game looks like it's running slow when they're recording or something it's because of this it's because you probably have this setting turned on and the content editors you're not even running traffic in the content editors so who really cares how how fast it's running 30fps is plenty when you're making something the only one that i skipped was saving game saving game make this like nothing is there a nothing option i want to see no frames per second when i'm saving my game because i find that if a crash is going to happen if the game is going to fail or a process is going to get hung up on itself it's often while i'm saving the game because of that i've found fps booster to be a great way to to mitigate that and i've i've never seen less crashes honestly i used to have auto save turned on raise your hand you know metaphorically raise your hand you'll know you're raising your hand if you've seen this but you turn auto save on it's auto saving every 10 15 20 30 minutes whatever you're building something you're just living your life you're you're doing doing the best and all of a sudden the game decides to save your frame rate tanks your everything stutters the game stops responding your system flags it and goes hey here's a win here's a little window that says cities.exe has stopped has stopped functioning it's because the game was trying to do too much because saving is a really um system intensive process it's brief but intensive and if the simulation is running wide open at the same time that's not good so i strongly recommend upon game save pause your game when you're saving but also turn this to 10 fps and you may just avoid a crash look at this beautiful little scene this is this is an incomplete area of the city so there's not much going on here simulation wise and there's not much going on here rendering wise so what you're seeing is my game running probably wide open this is probably very very very close to 60 fps looks nice right that's why i'm using it for an example for the next one because there's nothing on the screen so excuse these barren areas that this is where we're going to live for a little while the next one is speed slider you can see i'm running my game at 90 speed 100 is default so i can turn it to 100 no noticeable difference but i have found that it buys a few extra frames if you run your game at a lower setting 80 80 i can kind of see a difference though let's be let's be real with ourselves we're gonna render a little bit extra to see this does this look that slow honestly frames wise it looks ideal but but let's compare the the rate that the vehicles are slowing down and speeding up accelerating and decelerating compare that to real life and that actually looks pretty good if i do say so myself so i'd recommend running this at 80 to 90 percent potentially and that's just an ambient like by virtue of slowing down the simulation you buy yourself a couple of extra frames because your your machine has that much extra time to figure itself out because really like losing frames is when the the game get the simulation and the game running gets ahead of your system right so this is a good way to kind of mitigate that and make sure that your your game is still looking good without over taxing your system and i'll just leave this on all the time that's just you'll see in the bottom left if i didn't make that clear that that slider down there is what controls it the difference between 80 and 90 is almost nothing the difference between 90 and 100 is imperceptible to me but it matters to your system and it might just help your game run a little bit faster this will be my final entry on the list for this video it's called load order mod it's currently in beta but what this actually does is it changes the order that the mods you have installed load in it comes with a a program that actually accomplishes this and i would call this kind of a medium level thing maybe a high level thing as far as using it goes if you're comfortable going to certain folders on your computer and turning on um [Music] turning on certain administ administrative privileges and allowing the mod to change these folders then this might be a good mod for you if what i just said sounds ridiculous and you don't want to go into your city skylines files and alter them with administrator privileges you're not going to want to do this but if you're like if you're if you're into following instructions and maybe getting your game to load a little bit faster or also combat certain errors that have happened what this actually does is it affects the like it says it's the load order mod so it's the the order that mods are loaded in as it turns out harmony which is important to a whole host of of city skylines mods this is harmony is crucial for a series of some of the most important skylines mods and and it affects it's like a library that a bunch of other mods draw from and apparently if those mods load in the incorrect order it will cause errors or your game may not be able to load so load order mod manually changes the order that city skylines loads your mods into the game i think i just said the same thing like three or four times but that's that's the reality is it's it's related to harmony and it's related to the order that the mods are loaded into the game you have to load another mod to use it you'll have to read the description you will have to go to the wiki so this is crucial go to the wiki and follow the instructions this game this mod does not work without activating it and activating the program that comes with it crucial but it may save you a bunch of errors it may save you some time when it comes to loading your game especially on more extended loads or if you have extra errors things like that this might be the answer for you and that is it those are my tips and tricks on how i keep my game running smoothly or how i uh how i attempt to improve my frame rate as i said earlier my pc is not like the optimal super computer it's it's pretty good it's a it's a decent machine it's two years old but there's always ways to optimize things i think i even improved my frame rate while making this by decreasing my tree lod so really keep an eye on those lots i understated that earlier how much that can help but yeah use all of these tips together also make sure to delete any unnecessary assets that you don't use don't run programs in the background there's a bunch of system level stuff that you can do too but as i said earlier do not run cities off your page file make sure that you have ample resources so if you're running skylines make sure a city skylines make sure you have a good processor for this make sure you have enough ram for this make sure your gpu is on point to render all of these assets that you've downloaded but that's it that's the long and short of it i've been yumble i really appreciate you watching i'm building this city currently on twitch the city of rolling waters which is the name of the map but i'm building it currently on twitch i stream twice a week feel free to subscribe to me here feel free to follow me there we also have a community discord where we're always discussing skylines and pictures of our cities and memes and stuff but i really appreciate you hanging out i've been yumble i'll see you in the next stream or the next video

Channel: YUMBLtv

Views: 59,952

Keywords: city skylines, mods, framerate, running slow, improve frames

Id: VSV4jY-U8v8

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021