Another Day Older and deeper in Debt.
by Donald Teal · 03/21/2011 (7:35 am) · 7 comments
But on to brighter things. My focus for a while has been the single player aspect of Valhyre. Multiplayer battle has been worked out for a while, but one thing that was lacking was a single player draw.
Of course I never do anything small so my single player arena turned into a huge sprawling mine complex and is still growing.
We did get the pathshape resource implemented so player can enjoy a nice leasurly ride around in the mine cart. I still have some bugs to work out with that setup, such as keeping the cart from going through terrain, or staying pointed in the right direction.
My biggest problem was performance. During initial design of the complex polycounts were normally over 4mil with draw calls averaging 2300. While beautiful, a slide show was not acceptable.
Well after creating LODs for everything on 7 different levels, retexturing everything so it uses one material instead of multiple textures I now have polycounts under 1mil drawcalls are consistantly under 1000 and my FPS on even my outdated system stay around 40fps. If anyone has an idea on how to eek out more performance let me know.
I also need help on getting the pathshape resource to work a little better. If anyone has a good grasp of the vehicle code I need a little help in that area too. my dirigible works and you can fly, just not exactly the way I would like.
Well a blog talking about progress is useless with out pics or a video. so here we go
#2
I really like the waterfall at the start, how did you do that?
03/21/2011 (10:14 am)
Optimization is always a soul sucking time eater, it's always a lot more fun making new levels, unfortunately it's a 'necessary evil'.I really like the waterfall at the start, how did you do that?
#3
with the foam settings turned WAY up. it looked a lot better before beta3 cause for some reason the foam isnt working right in beta 3
03/21/2011 (11:42 am)
the waterfall at the start is basically a river block turned on its endwith the foam settings turned WAY up. it looked a lot better before beta3 cause for some reason the foam isnt working right in beta 3
#4
Actually, it sounds like you're doing everything except possibly what Steve mentioned from the art end to make things go faster. You just have to suffer through the 80/20 rule....
03/21/2011 (7:08 pm)
You can gain a huge performance increase if you keep every object under 10 polys, have not more than 10 objects in the scene and just don't do anything hasty. Enormous framerates are within reach!Actually, it sounds like you're doing everything except possibly what Steve mentioned from the art end to make things go faster. You just have to suffer through the 80/20 rule....
#5
03/21/2011 (8:10 pm)
nice scene. when it comes to squeezing out more performance, Id say ditch the dynamic shadows. they don't add much to the scene and are known framerate killers. 
#6
03/22/2011 (3:13 am)
Yea, the FPS fight can be hard. The scene looks good. 
#7
03/22/2011 (10:39 am)
Those little grasslits don't seem to add much either. You have built quite a nice story around the way you raised the terrain and placed your objects. 
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
Performance might be aided if you used less instances of objects - mainly make that huge bridge one object rather than half-a-gazzillion sections.