Factorio Forums

I am looking at starting a Pyanodons run, and as such I have installed all of Pyanodons mods. However when starting the game I see that pyanodons mods are putting tremendous strain on my system. I have listed the mods I have active below:

At the moment I dont have many mods active:
Auto research
Belt Immunity
Bottleneck
FNEI
Helmod
Long reach
Miniloader
Nanobots
Py coal
Py fusion
Py HT
Py Industry
Py raw ores
Upgrade planner
Yarm

After factorio has booted and I am at the main menu, my memory usage is as follows (according to win10 resource monitor):
With all mods enabled:
Working set: 1.62 GB
Commit (virtual memory): 13.13 GB
Total = 14.75 GB

When I disable Py's mods (from above set)
Working set: 3.13 GB
Commit: 4.51 GB
Total: 7.64 GB

So Pyanodons mod double the memory load on my system, clogging up my system and almost crashing it. If I would add the Alien Biomes mod for example, Factorio would crash outright. I have 8GB of RAM on my motherboard. Anybody else experiencing such memory loads with Py's mods, or am I an unlucky fellow? Anything that can be done about this load in order to reduce it?

Unfortunately, it's normal with pymods .. Maybe try to disable high res sprites in the settings ?

What gpu do u have. I've found that for some reason directx was giving me ram bloat with pymods where as opengl does not

What gpu do u have. I've found that for some reason directx was giving me ram bloat with pymods where as opengl does not

Where do I check this? Ingame I cannot find an option for this

TheBearKing wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:03 pm

What gpu do u have. I've found that for some reason directx was giving me ram bloat with pymods where as opengl does not

Where do I check this? Ingame I cannot find an option for this

It doesnt show ingame. The log file will say though which one its using

The log file reads: "Initialised Direct3D:...". I am not very knowleadgable on this topic (yet), so does this mean that my gpu is using directX? Any way of changing that option if it does?

Yes. This page from one of the devs has a way to do it

viewtopic.php?t=9300

What worked for me is Options->Graphics->Bottom left change sprite Resolution from High to normal.

This cut my load times from 5+minutes(game was also unplayable due to stuttering) to around 30 seconds(game runs smooth also)

@Cardoyle: I imagine that that is going to work. Unfortunately doesn't this mean that you don't have the nice HR graphics? That would be a shame, in my opinion.

@Kingarthur: Thanks for the response, it has been a huge help. I have done some more testing and here is what I found.
(openGL can be easily enforced via steam: Factorio --> Properties --> Launch settings --> --force-opengl)
With openGL:
With Py's mods enabled:
Startup time (on SSD): 42 seconds
Working set: 4.04 GB
Commit (virtual memory): 6.53 GB
Total = 10.57 GB

Without Py's mods
Startup time (on SSD): 29 seconds
Working set: 0.64 GB
Commit: 2.21 GB
Total: 2.85 GB

With Direct3D:
With Py's mods enabled:
Startup time (on SSD): 6 minutes, 32 seconds (system stalls multiple times during startup, crashing all background programs, leading to the high startup time)
Working set: 1.95 GB
Commit (virtual memory): 14.35 GB
Total = 16.30 GB

Without Py's mods
Startup time (on SSD): 50 seconds
Working set: 3.55 GB
Commit: 5.00 GB
Total: 8.55 GB

Concluding, openGL significantly reduces the memory load of the system, and even slightly reduces the startup time of Factorio. Going off on above results it seems that openGL is the superior choice. Do you know of any signifant drawbacks in using openGL over Direct3D? If not, why is openGL not activated by default?

It's based on system hardware. Gpu speficly. Because I have an AMD card it defaults to opengl. I've never noticed any problems from using opengl but I've never used directx with factorio to compare the difference.

According to rseding91 .17 uses a never version of directx that wont have that memory issue anymore.

Funnily I have an AMD card as well, so somehow my system didn't default to openGL. Well I'll try with the openGL setting, and see if things go worse. My system runs much smoother in any case. Thanks for the help!

TheBearKing wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 30, 2019 5:25 pm

@Cardoyle: I imagine that that is going to work. Unfortunately doesn't this mean that you don't have the nice HR graphics? That would be a shame, in my opinion.

Yeah Unfortunately I do not get to experience the High Res graphics.

I tried messing around with a few settiings(changing to OpenGl) but its prob just my old PC.I am still running on Win 7 with 8GB of ram and a 8GB 1060 GTX.
It's a sacrifice i am willing to take tho if it means i get to keep playing the awesome mod.

by the way, I have the same problem, you need to still make pictures in the CD format, too, as the mod will be finished,
because otherwise, 7 gigabytes is already ripped off, I tried to change the settings if I change 12 gigs altogether
amd 290 radeon

start game!!!
and if it develops further and plays at all a nightmare under 12 gigabytes takes away - this is me at the minimum settings.
You will have to take a new computer for this under 128 gigs of RAM, and then the video card, processor 32 nuclear

Or wait for 0.17 - they made a lot of optimizations there and AFAIK DirectX version won't explode memory like it does now. And texture compression will become better so less VRAM needed since with PY set it's getting overboard now.

I'm in this boat too. Used to play full pY suite, but had to stop due to memory load on my modest desktop with 8gb of RAM.

I'm hopeful though maybe not optimistic to be able to play it again when v0.17 is out (and after mod updates).