Running Insanely Laggy on Mac

12 votes

I've downloaded the latest early access build (as of 9/22), running on an 18 month old MacBook Air that far exceeds the minimum specs and matches or exceeds the recommended specs. On launch, the game seems to have issues loading Steam achievements as there was quite a lot of glitchy flashing from the bottom right corner at what I assume was the achievement for playing the game for the first time. Upon loading the game, clicks and map movements were pretty unresponsive (and my laptop's fan started going full bore). There was a lag of several seconds after clicking any menu item and moving the map via keypad took even longer. In the current state it's not actually possible to play, at least on Mac machines. I'm not sure if this will be a game I can play or just a cool TV show that I enjoy watching YouTubers with gaming PCs play, but the dev team should really look at the Mac specs and decide whether they are realistic or if what you really need is a $5000 Mac Pro to run this game.

Under consideration Performance Suggested by: JK (22 Sep, '21) • Upvoted: 23 Aug, '23 • Comments: 13

Comments: 13

23 Sep, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
MacBooks with x86 processors generally have bad cooling and should be considered to have a poor performance hardware unfit for gaming. Still specific OS performance can be in place, so we'll have devs take a look.
I can confirm game runs acceptably on Linux system with entry-level 2014 Graphics Card for ~140$
28 Sep, '21
Stephanie
I'm having the same issue. I tried restarting my computer, but it didn't really help. My mac can run Sims 4 no problem, and that's a much bigger game with more requirements for memory storage, more Ghz for processing, and has the same RAM requirements. Additionally, I can play Sims 4 all day without issue as long as my computer's plugged in. I hope this lag issue is fixed because I really like this game, but I won't be recommending it to my friends (most have macs) until it is :(
28 Sep, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
@ Stephanie, Sims 4 is very old game with very few objects requiring pathfinding and no water physics, it can't be compared to Timberborn, despite being AAA title (kind of?).
I'm not saying it purely because of Mac hardware, I also suspect Windows runs it better than Linux, so performance report stays open, but don't expect too much from those laptops.
16 Nov, '21
Hannah
I am having the same issue with this game on my iMac (2020)...unfortunately, it is making it completely annoying to play. Lag time is about 4-5 seconds and builds as you play the game. Very unfortunate.
06 Dec, '21
Mutdogus
FPS drops to 1 when I get about 200 beavers around the 3 settlement mark. It’s basically unplayable.

I have an M1 MacBook Pro. I can do a 2000 SPM mega base in factorio without dropping below 60 FPS /60 UPS.

Is this normal to have 1 FPS for a settlement like this?
06 Dec, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
Mutdogus, yes you can't just randomly compare games with completely different mechanics. Have you tried experimental native M1 version on steam?
08 Dec, '21
Ysalas
Hello, I have the same issue with the glitchy window and the lagging.
I found those two other reports that show this same glitch so it seems to be quite a recurring issue (https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/222860/screen-glitches and https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/232580/glitch-bottom-right).

Also I wonder, why would the game be made available on Mac if it's so unsuitable to play as you say... ? I know it's an early release, but I wouldn't have bought it if I had known it would be so unplayable on my laptop...
16 Jan, '22
KassandraK
The game appears to possibly be only using a single CPU core. I have a screenshot where my system is only at about 25% overall CPU usage and 41% GPU usage but the game is running extremely laggy. This is a save with about 140 beavers.
The CPU for the game process shows 100% on an 8 core system (800% available total).
This is an M1 Macbook Pro.
Thanks,
Kassandra
04 Apr, '22
DeltaFirst
Whilst I do appreciate that comparing Timberborn to other games may feel unfair, this is still what any user will do. Especially when the game end up with a very low FPS rate for a relatively smallish settlement.

I will not attempt to pretend this or that could be optimize, I believe the devs have far greater insight in this regard. What I'm wondering is more:

- Is this really mac (i.e. platform) specific or is more a hardware limitation?
- Is there any plan to make it better? As a random example, blowing up explosives or selecting a tree cutting area is massively laggy and I cannot (and hope) believe this is a desired behavior and that there is nothing that can be optimized there.
- Is there any known specific item that makes it incredibly demanding? I tried to tune down the graphics (usually I always turn off the shadows at the very least, it often helps), but I can see no difference in Timberborn.
05 Apr, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin
DeltaFirst
> Is this really mac (i.e. platform) specific or is more a hardware limitation?
- What is exactly? Impossible to tell without knowing at least the problem manifestation. Given feedback, apparently game generally runs fine on all 3 major platforms, even officially not supported Linux, but some more system-specific issues may present on all of them
> Is there any plan to make it better?
- Number of optimizations is planned, but devs don't give details. Tree cutting overlay issue should have been improved, I'm not aware if they are tuning it further.
> Is there any known specific item that makes it incredibly demanding?
- Yes, one known big issue is pathfinding, it's not multi-threaded (apparently it's non-trivial to parallel this load) and causes huge load on CPU the more beavers and paths you have. Game shouldn't be much demanding on GPU part, which correlates with your words.
06 Nov, '22
Rod Merged
Tried to play the game once again, to see if the update resolved the lag I was experiencing last time. Unfortunately, the game started to get laggy soon after I started playing a new game. The FPS counter was showing 3/3, 3/0, 3/2, etc.

I am using a MacBook Pro 2019
Procesor: 2,3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
Memory: 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
12 Nov, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Unable to play due to lag" (suggested by Rod on 2022-11-06), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
09 Dec, '22
Jordan
FWIW, Peeps with M1's, I had to uninstall the Rosetta / Intel version and reinstall it to get the M1/ARM based version. Normal updates did not replace the Intel version with the ARM version. Performance greatly improved. Like others I had a hard time playing past ~200 beaver sized colonies on the lowest settings. After the update, I'm able to play on max settings and haven't hit a limit yet beyond some light stuttering when panning quickly.