SteadyFrame

SteadyFrame makes Valheim smoother on the CPU side: fewer hitches while you run around large bases, less work every frame, and fast portal travel. It is the successor of FastLoading and contains all of it.

Its benefits are shorter transitions, fewer streaming hitches and a lighter per-frame grass and mist pass. Average FPS depends on what limits the scene: measured with grass drawn to 200 m, about 5.5% higher at a Mistlands base and 2-4.5% at Meadows bases, no measurable change at a mountain base with little grass. Saving time in streaming and rebuilds gives little extra FPS when regular updates and rendering dominate.

The visual world, terrain and building support use the game's own objects and calculations. Shortcuts either check against the game's own answer or leave that work to the game.

What it does

Portals and dungeons (from FastLoading)

Prepares the destination's terrain as you walk up to a portal and loads it first during the transition.
Creates the destination faster while the loading screen is up; distant trees and bushes fill in afterwards.
Removes fixed waits (the 8-second floor on portal travel; 2 seconds between teleports becomes 0.5), with the game's area and floor checks kept.
Optional short fade into and out of dungeons.
Multiplayer: with SteadyFrame or FastLoading on the host, the destination's buildings are sent while you walk to the portal, and you arrive once the host confirms they are all with you.

Smoother play around large bases

Skips the game's object create/remove pass while nothing it looks at has changed, and finds objects to unload by zone instead of checking every loaded object.
Places the rooms of a dungeon that loads near you over a few frames instead of one long frame.
Rebuilds grass after the ground changes within a few milliseconds a frame, nearest first, instead of all at once (up to a second at long grass distances). Behind a loading screen it still rebuilds at once.
Keeps ground meshes when a building streaming in or out asks for a rebuild that would change no height.
The terrain builder no longer pauses 10 ms after each zone while more are waiting, so new ground appears sooner when flying, sailing or running into new land.
Remembers which building piece each collider belongs to when pieces check their support.
Draws grass without asking the engine for the camera and each patch's transform thousands of times a frame.
Mistlands mist reads each mist area's position once per update instead of once per particle.
Less garbage from collisions and world-object data.

Fixes

A loading screen that never lifted after an object near the destination was destroyed without the game knowing.
An error when a tar pit that had not finished loading was removed; log lines written every frame or on every chest open.

Requirements

Valheim with BepInEx 5 on Windows.

Install

Close Valheim.
Extract this archive into the Valheim game directory. The DLL should end up at Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/SteadyFrame.dll.
If FastLoading is installed, delete Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/FastLoading.dll. SteadyFrame contains it and does not run while it is present. FastLoading's settings are carried over on SteadyFrame's first start.

Settings

Valheim/BepInEx/config/ru.ivest.steadyframe.cfg, all changeable with Configuration Manager:

1 - General: Enabled.
2 - Modules: Transitions, Object streaming, Terrain, Structures, Grass, Housekeeping (restart required); Reuse collision data, Mist emission lookups.
3 - Transitions: Dungeon fade, Teleport cooldown, Narrow range while loading, Defer distant nature.
4 - Multiplayer: Early object delivery, Send boost.
5 - Object streaming: Skip idle passes, Unload by zone, Dungeon spawn budget (milliseconds a frame; 0 places dungeon rooms the game's way, all at once).
6 - Grass: Rebuild budget (milliseconds a frame; 0 rebuilds grass the game's way, all at once); Lean draw pass; Reuse grass arrays.
7 - Structures: Support lookups.
8 - Terrain: Keep unchanged ground meshes.
9 - Verification: diagnostics that run the game's own computation beside each shortcut and log any difference. Off for play.

Compatibility

Replaces FastLoading; do not install both.
If ValheimCommunityPatch or Valheim Performance Optimizations change the same game code, the overlapping part of SteadyFrame stands down and says so in the log; the rest keeps working.
With ValheimCommunityPatch 0.35 or later, SteadyFrame uses VCP's API: where both do the same job (object creation and unloading, dungeon placement, building support lookups), SteadyFrame's version runs and VCP's is turned off for the session, and the log says so. VCP keeps its terrain builder; SteadyFrame's destination terrain priority, terrain cache and ghost-zone pause go through VCP's API. With an older VCP, the overlapping parts of SteadyFrame stand down as before.
Only errors and such stand-downs are logged.