Great Room of Royal Alchemist's Lab (Patreon)

I've been pulling my hair out (and there's not a lot of it) trying to get this scene from my game working.  Several days ago, I managed to get everything working.  Except for one tiny (and fatal) flaw.  I couldn't get it to go any faster than about 40 frames/second.  Way too slow.  I tried everything including combining textures to make the display process easier, reducing polygon count on objects.  Finally, in desperation, I cut down on the size of the RA's library.  Originally, there were two complete rings at 3m and 6m.  Each had six floor segments and 6 book shelves on each floor segment.  I checked it out and discovered my GPU was smoking to display nearly 4000 items!  First big change was to drop the entire upper ring.  Then I dropped two more segments of the 3m high ring.  Finally I was in the 90 to 100 FPS range.

Anyway, what you see here is the Great Alembic.  It spins and wobbles about making steam and racket.  For most of the game, this will be slow and quiet.  In the final scene, however, the player has to stoke up the fire and feed materials into the Great Alembic to create critical components to the Potion of Youth she's making.  The higher the magic flame (inside the ring under the Great Alembic), the faster and steamier and noisier the the Great Alembic will get.  After a short time, each of the three components will start to drop coloured drops that the player has to catch with a beaker or bucket (haven't quite decided which)