128
128 views
16 places in the valley and 8 camera headings in each, measured the way the player sees them.
Performance challenge · Oct 5, 2026
The valley got beautiful and too heavy
With the woods full and the houses painted, the game fell to 5–30 FPS and took almost 97 seconds to open. In one day we measured, found the causes and closed Build 9B, the Tripothon edition.
Measured full screen, 1920×1080
How fast the valley really ran
Across 128 views of the valley, the game never reached 60 FPS and, in 81 of them, stayed below 15.
5.3
FPS in the worst of 128 views
13.4
FPS in the median view
30.1
FPS in the best view
≈ 97 s
from language choice to walking
The 60 FPS in our history came from Sept 26, in a 1280×720 window with a third of today's woods. The valley grew, the screen moved to 1080p, and the Oct 5 additions pushed the game into the low teens.
Measure before touching
An investigation in one day
Dell G3 laptop, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q, full screen at 1080p: the player's machine, not the developer's.
A/B
On and off
One thing at a time, always interleaved with the baseline to cancel drift. The gain comes out in milliseconds.
3
The frame, split up
Physics, scripts and GPU measured separately: the bottleneck shows up before any change.
2×
Repeated test
A second round, changing nothing, reproduced the first: the square gave 4.8 against 5.3 FPS.
In order of weight, all measured
Eight reasons for the lost frames
Each gain is how much the frame shrinks when the cause is taken out.
01
Too many triangles
−37 msThe woods, the undergrowth and the landscaping add up to 46.7 million triangles, and the distance cull reached the whole valley.
02
Models drawn on both sides
−17 msThe Tripo models ship with back faces turned on. Turning them off changes nothing in the photo.
03
The sun's shadow
−13 msFour cascades out to 180 u redrew 3.7 million triangles every frame.
04
The physics spiral
5 → 13 FPSScripts of up to 22 ms per tick made Godot run up to 8 ticks per frame. In the square, the game sank to 5 FPS.
05
The minimap
−4 msIt redrew the whole valley every frame, just for a 170-pixel map.
06
MSAA 2x at 1080p
−9 msEdge smoothing at full screen cost almost as much as the sun's shadow.
07
No occlusion culling
8.9 MInside the church, facing the wall, the game still draws 8.9 million triangles of the valley outside.
08
The laptop's graphics card
17 of 60 WThe GPU ran at 17 W out of 60 W, held back by the system. Not the game's fault, but it multiplies everything else.
From the click to the first step
The 97 seconds of loading
Almost all the time is the processor building the world in GDScript, not disk or shaders.
0148 → 32 s
A grid rebuilt 23,000 times
A cache bug froze the screen for 19 seconds on every assembly of the valley. Fixed, with an identical result.
022×
The valley built twice
One assembly behind the menu, for the flyover, and another when you click play. Work for after the submission.
0311 s
The terrain on every load
The terrain mesh and collision are generated in GDScript every time the game opens.
048–12 s
Work after 100%
Villagers, creatures and interiors are still born after the bar is full, with a freeze of almost 8 seconds.
In the Tripothon Build 9B
Fixes the player barely sees
Six changes, chosen for the gain measured and for how little they take from the valley's painting.
01
Coastline cache
The coastline grid is now stored per margin: assembling the valley drops from 48 to 32 seconds.
02
Capped physics
At most 3 ticks per frame. Below 20 FPS the game runs in slow motion instead of sinking.
03
Shadow and edges
Sun shadow out to 70 u in 2 cascades, terrain and ribbons casting no shadow, and FXAA instead of MSAA.
04
Half the woods
Half the trees and 12 isolated clearings in the forest, each with a landmark tree of its own species (or a house), stones and a dirt trail to the road.
05
Static minimap
The map no longer redraws the valley every frame: it is a fixed image, with the player on top.
06
Video lobby
The menu no longer builds the 3D valley: a looping painted flyover, made with LTX, sits behind the altarpiece. The 36 s cinematic opens this page.
Drag the line
Almost nothing changes in the photo
On the left, the valley as it was; on the right, with the simulated adjustments. What changes is the sharpness of the edges.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
1 / 3
The build's numbers
What the build gives back to the player
Median from 12.9 to 28.9 FPS and a much shorter load, without changing the valley's look.
| Measure | Before (measured) | After (measured) |
|---|---|---|
| FPS in the worst view | 5.3 | 18.0 |
| FPS in the median view | 12.9 | 28.9 |
| FPS in the best view | 30.1 | 42.8 |
| Triangles per frame (median) | 5.72 million | 1.77 million |
| Physics ticks per frame (median) | 4.6 | 2.1 |
| Valley assembly | 48 s | 29 s |
| Load, from language to walking | ≈ 97 s | ≈ 35 s |
Machine: Dell G3, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q, 1920×1080, 128 views.
Build 9B · group B, locked
For jury evaluation
A locked edition, with no in-game updates and apart from the standard line (currently Build 12). The same demo with the fixes on this page. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
- Version
- v0.1.0-dev
- Build
- 9B
- Date
- Oct 5, 2026
- Size
- 1.0 GB
- SHA-256
- e38ce1e5e1620d45d84e799772a8829efc46c441d42d1cfa217f4a3c2699d0b0