Hydroneer Tried to Optimize, So I Double Overloaded It on PC AND Console

Hey there, it's Josh.Welcome back to Let's Game It Out.We're checking out some more Hydroneer today, and you might be like, sir, haven't you done enough damage to this game?

After you shoplifted repeatedly, and tormented the villagers, and sent shopping carts into the sky, and blew up so many things?Yeah, you would think we'd be done, but then they released an update letting us know that the game is now on Xbox and PlayStation, which is pretty cool.I'll be doing a little side test on that.But also, they said in the process, they did a bunch of optimizations to the PC version, and we'll be the judge of that, won't we?Oh, and also this video is sponsored by Clash of Critters, but more on that in a little bit.For now, let me show you what this game is all about.

This is Ember Cradle, one of many dig sites in this game, but it's also my favorite.I just like everything about it.You've got two dig sites, you've got a river, and it's also in close proximity to royalty, which doesn't necessarily matter to me, except that this tiny king has an artifact that we're gonna use.Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.Let me show you the core loop of this game.First, let me lay out the tools.

We, of course, have our handy -dandy shovel.as well as a bucket, and a pan, and a brush.First we grab the shovel, use it for shoveling stuff right into the bucket, take the contents of that bucket, drop it into the pan, drop the bucket into the river, watch it do a stunt, and then fill with water.Drop the water in the pan, and then take that brush right there, and give it a scrubby scrub.Behold, we've made magic!And by that I mean, a piece of iron ore.

Can be melted into a bar, or sold to the jeweler.But I don't think we're considering the third option, which is digging for a long time and filling this bucket full of minerals.

Ah yes, we've done good today.While the jeweler lady just stares at it in disbelief.Yes, quite the power move.Also, yes, that's what I look like.It's a long story.Anyway, shocking as it may be, the purpose of this playthrough isn't gonna be to make money.

It's to optimize the process, and by that I mean, can we find new ways to put strain on the game.But for that, we're gonna need to visit the king.

make you aware.You want me to make you a ring with all that stuff?I have a better idea.How about instead, you just let me have what I want, or I'm gonna feed you this mini nuke.Ah, yes, a wise choice.I'll be taking that, thank you.

And I'll be leaving this right here, too, as your most trusted advisor.Okay, now we've got this glorious thing called the Dirt Wand.Creates dirt chunks inside dig sites.And I suppose that last part is the real crux of it.Because if we head on over to our dig site, we can indeed just make dirt from nothing.And that's great and all, but it turns out there are limits to this.

We can basically keep making dirt up to a point, but once we hit that stopping point, this is as far as it'll go.

No matter how hard we try, there's like an invisible wall, which means if we keep trying to build up against it, we end up with something like this.A weird little fortress wall thing, which is kind of exciting if you think about it.It means we can build an entire dome around our dig site.The question of course being, what's that gonna look like?Only one way to find out, and I'm especially excited because it'll be airtight, which means we can keep any kind of critters out.And hey, that reminds me of our sponsor, Clash of Critters.

Alright, so this one's an easy sell.You've got these creatures called the Tatari, but I like to call them meat shields, because we're taking to the field of battle, where they stand there doing what they do best, and keeping you from getting overrun by the bad guys.So that's already a satisfying setup.I like tower defense games and cute little critters, and you know what else I love?This screen, where you level up your dudes via, like, pinballs bouncing all over this Plinko -like board, where crazy crap is happening all over the place, and causing all my synapses to fire.Yes, bounce!

Bounce more!And that's how you level up your dudes and get prizes and stuff.And that's kinda how it goes.Level up your creatures, acquire new ones, get excited for every new creature pull, and rinse and repeat.And look at this map screen.That's a lot of stages, but don't get overwhelmed.

Rounds are quick.If you ramp up the game to 4 -speed, after you've positioned all your dudes with your sharp, strategic mind, takes like ahandful of seconds Which means it's perfect for those few empty moments in your day like on the train or at the urinal Look, I'm just trying to say it doesn't feel like a second job, which is nice unless your second job is evolving your favorite critter I like this guy and his shifty eyes all while drooling just like me and also I love this one called goon bug because its horn looks like candy corn and I love candy corn and this game is free on Android and iOS.And more good news!If you use my link in the description, you'll get a free launch bundle.It gives you this little drooling guy, frugling, and another random rare tatari, as well as a cozy nook for your camp, and also 1 ,000 pinballs.

You can also use gift code HelloTatari for more exclusive stuff, and code GoonBug to get that candy corn monster directly.So if this sounds good to you, check out that link in the description.And thanks again to Clash of Critters for sponsoring.And that should about do it.Okay, we did it.And did what, you might ask?

Oh, just putting some finishing touches on the roof.

You know, after making sure to secure all four sides of the building first.In all of its amazing glory.And oh my goodness, we can see so much from up here.And it feels like kind of a long way down.Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me give you the grand tour.This is it.It basically looks like this on all sides, making sure of course to cut through the river, and half swallowing these trees, and so on and so forth.And I do so love this wall texture, as it presses so perfectly against the barrier like this.Oh, but that's the outside.I wonder what it looks like inside.

So let's take this pickaxe I have lying around, and let's carve our way inside.Or it turns out this tool doesn't work, since I'm not on the diggable ground.What if I just shove my face all the way into this and then try?Okay, I guess I'm inside the line where you can do digging.Good to know.Oh, would you look at that?

We can carve our way in here and it looks so magical.I simply must see more.and now that I've carved myself a perfect little doorway let's take a closer look inside behold my Terrarium completely sealed from the outside world and yet still gloriously lit, but I don't know I kind of like it nice vibrant river textured walls.I feel so secure in my fallout shelter anyway It's nice to have this but it's probably not gonna mean much until we can build some stuff and for that Let's go ahead and take our vehicle here and go get some supplies.Oh, it looks like our new building has created some choke points Oh, well, no problem.We'll just struggle to go around.

Hopefully easy easy easy See, no big deal.We'll be back, Mysterious Cube.We need to head to the big city to buy some stuff.And by that I mean it's time to visit the lovely city of - Owww.

And by that I mean the lovely city of Bridgeport.And now it's time to do some shopping!Behold!Conveyor Nation!For all your conveyor belt needs.And I think we're gonna need, well, probably all of this.

And now that we've got those, it's onward to this store.Tools and something.Which is where we're gonna go to get all of this stuff.Pipes, pipes, and more pipes.And then maybe other stuff, I don't know yet.But pipes we're definitely gonna take.

Oh, and I should mention I'm playing this in creative mode right now.Which means shoplifting is legal.And it also means that we can wander around to stuff like housing and just take what we need as well.And after all, we'll probably want some stuff like this.I guess we're about to find out.Oh boy, I can't wait to decorate this thing.

What the hell are you doing?Why are you staring like that?Sir?Herbert?Are you okay?Oh, he wants soup or something.

Yeah, I'm good.I don't want to do that.Yeah, you just keep waiting there.Why not?I promise nothing bad will happen to you, especially not in the next like three seconds.Well, I guess that took care of that problem.

That'll teach them to ask me for things.Anyway, here we are at the entrance.Okay, let's see.If I want to decorate this stuff, how would I do it?Well, first we need to put a door on this, right?Wait, will this work?

work?I mean, I guess kinda.There's a little draft underneath, but whatever.It's like a public bathroom stall, that's fine.The point is that it somehow actually works.But we don't want to make it too easy, so I added a couple extra doors.

That way when you close it, you have no idea which door it's gonna be.It's certainly not that one anymore, but I guarantee you it's gotta be one of these.Ah, Ember Cradle.You're looking more like a self -storage facility all the time.It's this one, by the way.This one second from the end.

I wanted to have that Gandalf experience for when he goes into a hobbit house and has to like duck and cover when he goes inside.Anyway, now that that problem is solved, we have one other thing we need to do, which is give ourselves roof access.Right now I have no way to get up there, but luckily I think I've got an elegant solution for that too.Yes, elegant we shall call it.Me and this tin sheet ramp.That would normally look a little something like this.

Look how handy that is.So now all I need to do is apply this same principle, except for all the way up there.And this may take me a second to figure out.So while I'm doing this, let's do a quick test on the PlayStation version.We're not doing anything super fancy, but as you can see the PS5 version looks pretty much just like the PC version, which means let's test it when we build a bunch of machines and have it start churning out a bunch of materials.That's usually what makes it start lagging.

Wait, what's this?High item alert?High number of items detected, please reduce the amount.

And my options are clear all raw resources, clear all dirt chunks, or continue.Well, of course we're just gonna continue.You think I'm gonna give up that easily?No way, we're not deleting any items, not for anything.Oh, the alert's back.Except this time, there's no continue option.

Okay, console version, you win this time, but I will find a way to slow you down.Ah, there we go.

A ramp for all seasons.Perfect not just for us to walk up, but for our vehicles as well.Here, let me show you.So all we have to do is turn this around like this, then head for the thing like this, and then easy, easy.See ya, car!be more simple it'll be worth it to deal with all these little back leggy kicks just to have all your supplies with you at the top after all doesn't this look fun almost there and there couldn't be more simple let's pull out of the back the next thing we're gonna do behold the iron drill basically we take this thing and we put it down kind of like this and then once we give it power we'll turn this thing on and dirt will come out of there although that's not happening yet because we haven't plugged it in see that right there we have to feed it water and that's what powers it I also noticed I can take these things and just tack them to the side and while I sure would love to operate it off the side like this unfortunately this particular setup won't work because it draws dirt from underneath on that spot right there and I have done this before where you just take a clump of dirt and shove it underneath but we can't do that here because we're already up against the dirt boundary so let's do second best first we'll make sure they're on solid ground just conveniently placed on the very edge like this yeah I think that That'll work.

Now let's just add a couple more.There, that's more like it.

A lot more.So many more.193 of them to be exact.Bordering the entire top of the cube.Yes, this is the good stuff.Okay, that's step one ready to go.

Now all we need to do is worry about plugging them in, which if you'll recall, we've got water right in our base.Wait, no, I missed.Let me try that reveal again.Luckily, if you recall, we've got water in our base.Yeah, see?There it is.

So I think that means if we just drop in through here, we can tap this river and just feed it all the way back up there.So first, let's put down our intake pipe.And you can tell it's working as intended because of this heavenly dripping noise.Mmm, music to my ears.Now we'll just connect one of these, and another one like this, and then another one, and we'll just connect all of this like this, and now we've got a beautiful pipe system.That's going all the way up there.

Boy, howdy, I think we're ready to go.Basically, the water comes up here, and this valve is our on and off switch, and this thing here is designed to keep the pressurehigh in all of the pipes.It's filled with a bar of, like, magic stuff.It's probably a compressed ghost, what do I know?

And then we follow all the pipes over to what looks like a giant mess!We love it!Nah, this is just my way of getting everything connected.This one pipe goes all the way to the end here, where the pipe system in the front is connecting to all the drills.Meanwhile, this other one down below, once it reaches the end, does another two -split thing, and so on and so forth.is that everything now has water, which means now it's time to turn everything on and see what happens.

Fingers crossed.Well, there they go.They're definitely pumping, dropping crappy dirt all over the place.And at least so far, the game is handling it like a champ.But don't worry, we're not even close to done.We have to let them run for a bit first, you know, just to test the optimization.

And while we wait for this thing to build up, let's try another something in the PlayStation 5 version.Okay, so for this attempt, I think I know what we need to do.If I recall, the game had kind of a hard time with too many sprinklers.So let's go ahead and use these and give it a shot.Okay, I feel pretty good about this.How many are here, you ask?

2 ,565.So let's see if this will knock down the frame rate.Fingers crossed.Let's see how this goes.Okay, it's going.It's going.

Oh, yeah.Now that's more like it.Choppy as hell?Sure.Playable by my standards?Absolutely.

That's the spirit.Bask in your accomplishments.Well, I've got some good news.By my estimate, there was only so many optimizations they could do to all this dirt.But hey, my PC's still chugging along, So whatever.It's kinda like I have a moat.

You know, just without the water.Or any sense of usefulness.Okay, but that was just a test.We have a lot more to build and with this low of a framerate it's gonna take forever.And yeah, I know it feels like sacrilege, but we're gonna clear all the dirt chunks.Don't worry, there's more where that came from.

So basically what we need now is to collect all the dirt before it sails down below.Which is no problem.That's what these are for.Our good ol' friends the conveyor belts.Guess I could just go ahead and add it kinda like this.

Yeah! no mind to him.face We're excited to give you the grand tour.Oh, but let's start at the beginning.You may notice that we have more valves than we did before.We have this one in the back, which I'm going to be honest, I can't remember why I ran this one.And this one here is what turns on and off all of the drills.

And then we have this one right here that sends water all the way down this pipe and then straight down this hole, leading briefly down into our facility before exiting out again.And then from here, the pipe goes back out and connects to all the things above.And I do mean all of it.And believe me, there's lots of conveyor belts.Oh, but let me just turn the whole thing on.That'll be easier.

So the journey begins with dirt coming out of these machines, which once they get spit out, they make their way up this vertical conveyor belt and then all join on one belt going the same direction.I mean, more or less, as you can see, something exciting awaits.As the minerals travel down the belt, it meets up with a bunch of other vertical belts, which go up and up and up.And of course, their travel isn't done there.They do a quick U -turn and then head up even more vertical belts before they get to this straightaway.And that's when these rocks get where we're trying to get them.

This joining point right here.As you can see, we have rocks being pulled from all sides, and each side is diligently pulling their rocks and bringing them back here.But they all get dropped into this chute.Ha, yes, that's the magic.What a beautiful kaleidoscope -like pattern it's created for us.And that's pretty much how the whole thing works.

And yeah, I'm aware that it's not centered.Just pretend it's like a 3D printer arm, and it's just in the middle of printing something, like our pain.And now that we have all the rocks going into one place, it's time for the next step of our evolution, which is when all this dirt falls down here to the level below, but our plan isn't to just let everything shower down like this.It's making a horrible mess and destroying the frame rate a little too early, and it's also destroying the ambiance, and that makes our guy sad.So instead we're gonna build something up here on the upper levels so that we can capture this fountain of dirt early.So I think for starters we're gonna need to extend out this wall to have a floor, and I think for that we're gonna make good use of our friend the

dirt wand.So give me a second to give this hole a glow up.

Okay, I guess that's about good.I actually did a little bit more while I was up here.This is the machine that's gonna catch all of our dirt.Obviously first the dirt falls in through here, and then swiftly falls into the chute, where four grindy things catch most of everything.And then it pops out of this machine in a way that you can't actually see, and that's because I put a wall piece on it, which I can remove and you the insides see there's the little spot where everything pops out but if we don't keep this thing covered occasionally we get dirt on the conveyor belt but that's not good for anyone so we just put it right back where it was on the plus side it looks kind of like a face see there's the two eyes and there's the mouth vomiting minerals at us as is the case on all four sides of this thing then all of those minerals head down this conveyor belt and then at least for the moment they just go right off the edge oh and look at this more faces it kind of looks like two eyes that are doing a whole lot of crying but we're not gonna leave it there This way as interesting as this is turning out to be due to the clunky frame rate a bunch of interesting things are happening Like look at the perfect arc on this every mineral is like landing around the same place So it's got this perfect arc right into the river Okay, so let me explain what we're gonna do with these conveyor belts as you can see We have a bunch of things coming out of that dirt some gold some iron a couple different types of gems for the moment Just so we can move again.We're gonna clear all the chunks again.

Ah so much better And now we're gonna sort stuff with these things splitter conveyors hooks onto pipes moves resources.And as you can see, it can send things straight down the conveyor belt or pull them off to the side.And basically the way it works is you place the minerals you want it to pass to the side on this little tray up here.And if you had nothing, they should all just...Uh...Why are you pulling some things but not others?

There's nothing on the thing to tell you what to do.What are you doing, making up your own rules?Whatever, let's take this thing and try to fix it by putting some iron ore right there.And now it's like, oh, okay.Now we know to pull only the iron ore.And if we wanted to pull, like, two different things, we could put both of them up here, and now we would pull the iron ore.

Of them, but we want to sort everything individually So we're gonna make each one of these just for one material at a time and oh my goodness There it goes doing what it's supposed to do, which is always kind of a quiet relief You never know how it's gonna react when you treat the whole game like that Crap, but here it's working just great.But, per usual, we're not done yet.Okay, there you go.Off they go off that side.Or if you hang to the right, they're also going off that side.And you might be wondering, where are all the minerals going now?

He certainly wants to know.Well, down this chute, of course.After all, where else would you expect this stuff to go?And once these things tumble down, they hit another conveyor belt, where I'm using this little attachment that straightens them out, and then they drop into these logic -controlled smelters.At least, that's the case for these three things.When it comes to these unpolished gems, well, they find themselves going through a polishing machine just like this, and then they go through this.

A secret technology that we've never seen before.And that's because this is actually a mod.Basically, you have to give it a name, which I'm gonna change to LGIOME, and then I'm gonna set it to send.And now, anything that passes through this blue barrier... is automatically sent to whatever has this same name, but is set to receive.In this case, it's my wanted poster that I'm showering in gems.Reward of 1 billion?

I think I can top that myself, so long as these things keep joining in.I especially love their jaunty little leap when they fly into the pile.But let's get back over here to these smelters, which are doing a bang -up job.We've got one for iron, gold, and glowy thingy.And we have all of this mirrored on the other side too.And yeah, you would think these pipes are a problem, but nope.

Minerals just pass right through them.goodness once the minerals start flowing they really start flowing and as you can see the minerals definitely stay in their lane but whatever most of it's going in you might be wondering why we're using this big hulking smelting machine instead of something a little more basic and previously the way we would melt things down is we would put down a small furnace and on top of that small furnace we would putcrucible yes perfect and what we would have to do is take our big pieces of ore and drop them into the crucible where they melt and then you would take that hot liquid and you would drop it into a casting mold kind of like this and there you go an amazing gold bar all for you or if we wanted to kick it up a notch we could put down a smelter it's kind of all those things in one like if we take any of these metals and just drop them in it's really easy for us to just tip the whole thing over and it just makes a bar and that's That's pretty great.The one problem is it's not automated.Even if we could have the ore drop in automatically, we still have to click this thing to make the bar.And then the bar just sits there till we're ready.

Which really just leaves us with one last option.The logic smelter that can be automated.While the metals are sitting in there, bubbly and melted, they've required some wiring.Which I did.A lot and a lot and a lot of wiring.So basically, here's how this works.

Each one of these buttons controls one of the smelters.And after you push the button, it sends an electrical signal up the cabling.connecting with the smelter itself, sending a signal, and out comes the bar.So obviously it wouldn't be that much more helpful if once this thing started filling up again, it couldn't just automatically send out a new bar.Except that it can!It just keeps ejecting bars forever, and that's through the magic of some commands we added to the wires.

Here, let me explain how it works.So basically right here, this is where the signal's coming from the button, and it travels through this wire where it's got this arrow telling it it has to travel this way, before hitting this delay that holds the signal for 10 seconds.And then it travels over here, up this wire, and into the machine, where it tries to eject whatever it's got.But meanwhile, because there's a T -junction right here, the signal also travels back this way, where it follows these arrows and hits another 10 second delay, before heading back this way, and then back through the whole thing again.And because of the two 10 second delays and the loop, it'll try to eject a bar every 20 seconds.Which is great, that means I don't actually have to push the button again if I don't want to, and to activate all the smelters, I just have to push all the buttons at least once.

And once I've done that, they should It should all be worth it.Because somewhere in this mess, they all have these delays and commands and stuff.Oh my goodness, look at the size of that gold bar!That's the process working.And as far as I know, there's a lot more you can do with these kinds of delays and logic cables and stuff.But what do I look like, a real civil engineer?

I'm more like a wrecking ball.We should be happy we have anything.But if the whole goal of this is to test their optimization, I would love to tell you that once this machine really, really gets working, it maintains an awesome and great framerate, but I don't know.I don't know if that's true.I am very pleased though that everything is functioning as intended.Minerals come cascading down in plentiful abundance before coming out and being ejected and happily heading over to the teleporter where they go on to a new life.

Actually in hindsight, if all of these things are basically using the same commands, I guess I probably could have just wired all these things to one button and one set of commands.Huh.Eh, well, whatever, I'm not taking it back now.Not after all the threading of this stuff I did.

Alright, anyway, let's talk about where these other teleporters are going.On the right side over here, we have them all set to go to boat me.

The boat being this right here, which is the boat that takes you to the DLC.Although in my case, I set up the teleporters right in front of the entrance.I figured I probably can't sink the boat with all this stuff, but I can certainly prevent people from getting in there.The sign does say no shovels and no vehicles, but they didn't say anything about blocking the door with mystery wealth.And meanwhile, over here on the left side, We have them all set to go to King me which I'm sure is pretty self -explanatory after all I don't want the king to think I'm ungrateful for all his help Yeah, basking all your prizes, slowly compacting all those minerals closer and closer together until they just can't take it anymore.The king completely unaware of what a ticking time bomb this probably is.

Oh, and do you remember how up here I had this one random pipe system?I think I finally know what to use it for.First, let's add some conveyor belts to it.And now let's go ahead and add our teleporter thing.And for the destination, let's set that to zero.Time to send my console counterpart a little present.

Yeah, I'm sure he appreciated that.I want to thank Clash of Critters again for sponsoring this video.Link is in the description if you want to check out the game for yourself.I think testing out the optimization has been a wonderful success on PC and console.So I hope you had fun, I know I did.And I'll see you next time.