The Powder Toy

thegamerkid

I have a lot of free time where I don't have access to my desktop and only have my pi 5 or my school chromebook, and I like TPT and all, but it's just not very fast on them. So, I was wondering what the fastest TPT mod was so that I can enjoy TPT on these less powerful devices.

mrpowder1202

This post has been removed by LBPHacker: spam

KyleTheCreator

This post is hidden because the user is banned

TheFPSKiller

jacob1

There aren't any optimization mods for TPT out there, like there are for other games. That could mean our code is efficient already, or nobody that's optimization-savvy has come along to make one. If it did happen someday I'd definitely try to work with that person to merge any useful fixes into vanilla. I think TPT being an open source game means people just try to get their fixes into the official version, instead of a mod.

But there is one mod I want to mention. If you use my mod, it's definitely confirmed to be slower. It's been ever so slightly slower for many years now ...
I still remember the days when it was actually faster, not anymore though.

TheFPSKiller

whatabout the parallel toy ;-;

Saturnity

So, it's interesting because you say you have a pi 5 and a chromebook. TPT is fairly easy to run and I *swear* I remember playing TPT a while back when Chromebooks were first brought to schools and I would get my classwork done early. It is definitely CPU intensive. It's odd because it should run smoothly on a pi 5, so you might be hitting overhead from an unoptimized or emulated package?

You have a few options, realistically. I am not sure what you have done or how you're trying it in the first place, whether it's a generic compilation/web portal/etc etc etc

First is to do a native compilation
Instead of using a generic pre-compiled ARM build, compile the source directly on the pi so it optimizes for the specific CPU architecture.

dependencies
Bash
sudo apt update && sudo apt install git build-essential meson ninja-build libsdl2-dev libbz2-dev zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev liblua5.2-dev

repository
Bash
git clone https://github.com/The-Powder-Toy/The-Powder-Toy.git
cd The-Powder-Toy

Configure specifically for the pi 5

Bash
meson setup build --buildtype=release -Dc_args="-march=native -O3" -Dcpp_args="-march=native -O3"

compile (using all cores for sanity sake)
Bash
ninja -C build

Make sure you include the -march=native flag as it forces the compiler to build specifically for the cortex-A76

Your other option, which might also help for other ventures..
Lakka and Recalbox include The Powder Toy as an integrated Libretro core engine port, put them on a spare SD card, and you also have the bonus of other games.

Lakka 5.0
https://www.lakka.tv/articles/2024/04/13/lakka-5.0/

Recalbox port docs
https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/emulators/ports/the-powder-toy

If you still want to also try the chromebook, I am again, not sure if you're using the web version or a weird android compatibility layer etc etc, but go to settings > advanced > developers and specifically turn on the Linux development environment.

Install the native Linux build using flatpak or w/e package manager

Bash
sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub com.powdertoy.PowderToy

Avoid running the web browser/portal version or the android app compatibility layer, as both are genuinely going to just have a bunch of overhead that will tank the entire game.

Fastest Mod