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DIF and .DTS cpu drainage

by Ted Lilljegren · in Technical Issues · 11/02/2007 (3:21 pm) · 8 replies

On all the demos, trees and builidngs are used quite sparringly, is this for estetic reasons only, or is it because too many buildings n trees n stuff will lower performance? Also: if i have 2 dif objects that go togheter, like maybe a roar or something, is it beter to have one big dif file and not make too many objects of that dif file, or is it smarter to have lots of small objects making up the wanted graphical element? Also please post any usefull comments here regerading performance related to game content, and smart ways to circumvent these problems.
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Torque Owner Nathan Kent
#1
11/03/2007 (3:21 pm)
What do you mean by "a roar"? Personally, I would use one bif DIF, and make use of portals. I'm a programmer, so I have no clue if that would be better or not, but regardless, use portals.

Torque Owner Ted Lilljegren
#2
11/03/2007 (5:26 pm)
Road, misspeled, what is a portal?

Torque Owner Nathan Kent
#3
11/04/2007 (6:34 am)
You could just use textures for roads.

Portals are something you can add to DIF's to cut them into sections, optimizing frame rates. I could go into more detail, but I don't want to right now.

Torque Owner Ted Lilljegren
#4
11/05/2007 (9:28 am)
I was about to add: of course its a road with depth, otherwise i could use textures.

Torque 3D Owner Andrew Brady
#5
11/05/2007 (5:14 pm)
To put it simply, portals are used to block VIS.. in other words an example would be if you are making an interior section with difs, you can effectively place a portal into a given area/hallway etc "sealing" that area off from being rendered once the player leaves the general line of site. Appropriate portal use can drastically increase/improve framerates since only the portaled section you are in, and those you have a line of site into are ever rendered at one time. Structural brushes in this engine do NOT block draw, unless a portal is placed into it which as I said, "seals" it tight.

Thats not very technical, but it probably gives the general idea much easier.

Torque Owner Ted Lilljegren
#6
11/06/2007 (5:52 am)
That sounds really nifty. Is this portal function normal in video games? The use of portal pretty much means that the user HAS to be in a dif interior, and is not watching the difs from a distance? Unless said distance is included in a really big interior or something

Torque 3D Owner mb
#7
11/06/2007 (6:22 am)
@ TedJHehdjehdkj

Yeh portal is used in almost all 3D games.. anything that uses bsp anyways. I think it was called 'clip' in half-life and quake (or maybe that was just worldcraft/quark it's been a while).

btw: if the dif is at a distance you can also use lod.

btwbtw: that's a very interesting name ted.

Torque 3D Owner Andrew Brady
#8
11/06/2007 (10:41 pm)
Portals, sectors, hint, subtle hints, structural, area portals.... yea, various engines have their own versions and names for very similar things. The trick is, keeping the various names strait in your head because what one thing may be called in one engine, may have nothing to do with anything in another.

As mb stated, you can use lod (level of detail) to help, you can adjust the viewable distance.. etc.. there's afew ways to increase fps if you look hard enough.