Performance issues appearing mid play through

[DonBonnigan]

I tried my hand at modding FO4 about a month ago and all in all it went well, only a few CTDs and some easily fixable conflicts. My FPS remained at 60fps where I capped it, virtually never dropping below 58-59fps.

 

However, more recently I've had a few performance issues show up which I don't really know the cause of or a fix to.

 

* The first is an infinite loading screen when I'm exiting a building out into the Commonwealth. Notably, the loading screen is black except for the green Vault-Tec loading icon. If I hold down left click and move the mouse I still hear clicking as if I'm moving the model during a normal loading screen. I can get it to load if I alt-tab out, wait a second and then alt tab back in. It's a workable issue but nonetheless annoying.

 

* The second is a frame-rate drop while modifying weapons and armor. While at an armor or weapon bench my FPS drops to and stays at around 40fps. I picks up as soon as I leave the bench. It happens at any workbench, whether it's in a settlement, outdoors or in a building.

 

* Finally, and most recently, I'm noticing small dips in my fps every minute or so, down to around 50 fps. Once again not massive but still annoying. Like the crafting menu fps issue, it happens in and outdoors, but this one happens more often outdoors.

 

Looking for advice on what I should do. I don't know if Sim Settlements might be a cause, right now I have five settlements building via Rise of the Commonwealth, though I'm not sure why that would affect the crafting and minor fps dips which also occur indoors. I also want to reiterate that none of these happened immediately in my playthrough, and only started about ~20 hours in.

 

As a test I disabled all my mods and started a new save with just Start Me Up, and didn't suffer from issues one or two, and had maybe one fps dip over a 20 minute test.

To rule out an issue with my PC itself, I tried some other games and didn't get any fps dipping, including 76 which was smooth for me and never went below 60 in the entire session I played.

 

I'm using a GTX 1080 TI, i7 8700K, 32GB RAM and a SSD.

 

Load Order: https://pastebin.com/ZFfjFFpf

I also have FO4 Seasons: Summer installed in case that helps.

Edited November 18, 2018 by DonBonnigan

[jdrfox]

My workshop/crafting menu started having fps drops after I installed AWKCR, but I kinda just tolerate it because I like what the other stuff Armorsmith Extended does.

 

ROTC definitely caused fps drops for me, since its settlements build beyond the game's building limitations. I uninstalled SIm Settlements + ROTC because it causes consistent crashes when played in Survival. Even the author acknowledged that 'fast traveling' is the best way to let the 'settlements' load, but Survival mode does not allow fast travel.

 

I noticed increase in stutter and load times after I download mods with a lot of 'loose files'. When I archived them into their respective Main/Texture .ba2 files, The issue decreased significantly. If you see 'materials', 'meshes' and 'textures' folder in you Fallout4\Data folder, then those are loose files from mods, and you would want to archive those into .ba2 files.

Edited November 18, 2018 by jdrfox

[DonBonnigan]

Thanks for the response. Interesting about AWKCR lagging the benches. I agree with tolerating it for the benefits.

 

I'm on the fence a bit about RoTC, I did experience some pretty nasty lag in one of my RoTC settlements, though disabling the High Def texture pack and Scrap Everything fixed it. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

 

I'll definitely look into the what loose files I have installed. Do you know if there's a guide for archiving loose files?

[jdrfox]

Regarding loose file archiving, if you have Creation Kit installed, it includes Archive2.exe tool which you will find in your Fallout4\Tools folder.

 

What you do is you create a blank .esp file. I named mine "Un-Loose.ESP" so I'll use it as an example.

 

Then, you open Archive2.exe, create a new archive, select "General" compression. You then go to the 'Archive' tab, click 'select folder' then you select the 'materials' folder in your Fallout 4\Data folder. It will then copy that folder's files. Then Archive > select folder> then select 'meshes' folder in your Fallout 4\Data. It will copy the meshes folder.

 

Then save the new archive as Un-Loose - Main.BA2. There is a space before and after the dash separating your ESP name "Un-Loose" and "Main". This should be done exactly in that format.

 

For Textures:

create a new archive, but this time, select "DDS" for compression. Then archive the 'textures' folder in your Fallout4\Data folder. Save this archive as Un-Loose - Textures.BA2

 

Once it's done saving, move your materials, meshes and textures folder to a backup location somewhere not inside fallout4\data. Enable your Un-Loose.ESP mod and move it at the very bottom of your load order, run game.

Edited November 19, 2018 by jdrfox

[DonBonnigan]

Cheers, thanks for taking the time to write that up, I'll give it a try.

[DonBonnigan]

I gave it a try and I definitely noticed a boost in performance, including very few stutters. Big thanks for your help.

 

I noticed that when I archived the textures, a few files didn't archive since they were in a different file format. Should I just place those back into the data folder, or should I try converting them to .dds and archiving them as well?

[jdrfox]

You can just place them back to the data\texture, since they're too few to matter, anyway.

Edited November 22, 2018 by jdrfox