Framerates and mapping - need experienced opinions

(BuckT) #1

I have a nice map concept (IMHO), but it occurred to me that frame-rates might be a problem for this map. I’m a noob, but I understand that the amount within view affects frame-rates when playing.

From a key point in the map I have in mind, you would be able to see roughly 70% of the entire map, and I wasn’t sure if that would render it unplayable.

So, hoping for opinions, here is a quick and easy visualization that describes a very similar problem:

Imagine the first half of Fuel Dump, where the Allies build the bridge while the Axis looks down upon them from the ridge. Now imagine that there is no hill in the middle of the map, so that from the Axis ridge you can see the entire valley, all the way to the Allied spawn at the tunnel mouth.

Now, imagine that the valley is filled with tree models. Would the frame rates be acceptable when looking down from the ridge, or would this be too much?

How about if the valley was 50% longer, and still filled with trees, would it still be playable?

Thanks for any opinions.

(kyleb) #2

well you could do it out of giant boxy terain with very simple trees, but it might be tricky to make it look very good.

(weasel) #3

Use farplane culling.

(chavo_one) #4

If you use fog and far-plane culling, then you won’t be able to “see the entire valley, all the way to the Allied spawn at the tunnel mouth.”

Your idea, as written, would probably not work. You would have to cut one or more of those requirements out to get a playable map.

(BuckT) #5

Ok, understand how the fogcull works. Had a good look at the Radar map with all its foliage, and how the fogcull kicks in there.

So, if we envision the same test map - the Fuel dump valley full of trees (above)- do you think I’d be able to set the fog out far enough to just see the other side of the river, for example?

Sorry to be getting so specific, but the map idea I have is useless without foliage, and since I don’t have any experience yet…

Thanks for the help so far.

(chavo_one) #6

OK, I need to refine my earlier statement. I just loaded up fueldump and played around in it using r_showtris, r_speeds, and r_lockpvs.

It appears that there is no outdoors vis blocking going on within an individual map side. So if you stand in the constructible axis mg42 nest, that entire side of the map is visible to you. The same is true for the depot side of the map.

So I guess, if you want to do a level roughly the size of half of fueldump with about the same amount of detail, you would be fine to not use a mountain in the middle.

But if you want to double or triple the number of trees that fueldump has, then you will have to give up something else, be it the open valley or the lack of fog.

(weasel) #7

If you use foliage, it’s no problem, because it draws less foliage as you move away. You could try that with trees. Otherwise, play around with the _farplanedist until the r_speeds are reasonable. You may not need a farplane at all. If it’s just trees and terrain, that’s not as many polys as you may think. Patch meshes drive up the poly count a lot. If you avoid overly complex geometry, it won’t be that bad.

(Lanz) #8

But then again the foliage is horrible in radar on many machines at this point. Personally I think it looks great but is a game killer because of fps drops and should be used very sparsely. I think they went to far with it in that map.