Optimize or Not Optimize that is the question

Oct 6, 2008
1,947
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Hmmm I'm looking at stage 2 of my map:

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=3438&page=517

I was running at about 298 fps - now I'm down to 150 - all I've done is to make sure I have nodraw items inside my displcements.

This stage of the map is fairly tight - bascially in one box with a couple of offshoots for spawn rooms and the two small sections on the cliff so I'm really not seeing how nodraw items in the displacements is going to help me out in this case.

Since the combat is basically going to happening in this one room for the entire stage do you see any real point in trying to optimize this stage? Everthing will be pretty much rendered from the get go.

I'm thinking of just area portals for the spawn and maybe the cliff room but unsure for the rest of it.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
What GFX card are you running? I don't see why that room should be anything less than 300 FPS unless there are way more of those particle flame effects than any one screenshot can show.

Also, there is never a reason not to optimise.
 

Jeremy

L11: Posh Member
Oct 24, 2010
829
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I don't see why that room should be anything less than 300 FPS...
My computer's terrible. A well-optimised map will only run at around 60fps :]

But yeah, you should optimise everything in your map, no exceptions.
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
I have radeon 4800.

Any ideas on how to do this type of map? I totally suck at optization but do you think I am doing it right or approaching it in the right fashion by:

I'm thinking of area portals for the spawn rooms - door closed - portal closed - door open portal open

a - Image 1:
- hint brush accross the lake hint side up?
b - Image 2:
- hint brushes main tracks hint brush either side of the tunnel with hint facing out
- cliffs on the right - hint facing out
c- Image 3:
- center pillar hint brush either side hint side facing out
d-Image 4:
- area portal in the gate on the right and the hole (that's in the darkness there)
- area portal or area portal window < it is a window but I've never used a ap_window - I'm thinking it might be better to put in 1 big ap near the striped line to the right of the light
e- Image 5:
- the center column on the left - hint brush either side facing out and 1 diagonal from the corner of it to the blue arrow top left.

Does this sound like I'm doing it the right way? Maps with halls tunnels, etc I do well on mut when I get to the big open spaces - I usually mess it up. Should I do one then run full vis or fast and then check it in game using a mat_wireframe to see how it's working?
 
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xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
Does this sound like I'm doing it the right way? Maps with halls tunnels, etc I do well on mut when I get to the big open spaces - I usually mess it up. Should I do one then run full vis or fast and then check it in game using a mat_wireframe to see how it's working?

Do full vis when optimizing, fast takes some shortcuts and doesn't give you an accurate idea of what's wrong in your map.

Hinting won't do much for you on a map like you've designed it. The best you could hope for is some areaportals on the spawn rooms, but all that's going to save you is the spawn rooms themselves.

What resolution are your displacements? If you set them to a really high power, you may have more triangles than you need. You could probably save some processing by using a lower resolution.

Take a look at Upward for some clues on how to handle wide open spaces. The basic idea is to use large structures to divide the play area.. with some clever design you can keep the player from ever realizing they're being penned in.
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
Not sure I understand the resolution thing.

I have textures set to (in the texture window)

left column
x: .5
Y: 1.6

Middle column
x: 512
Y: -300
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
3,315
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What power do you have you displacements set to? Like when you go to :faceedittool: and hit displacements, under attributes it will say Power and then a value, that value is what we were looking for. The higher that is, the more detailed your displacements are, but the harder they are on the system because of the complexity.
 
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Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
Ok got it - 2's and 3's no 4's

Map is back up to about 298 - occasional (and I mean rare) spike down to 175 - avg rate is 275-298

Thanks for the help as always :)
 
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Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
Ok,

This stage of the map started at about 300 fps to start.

When I blocked it out in dev colours - everything inside the box became a displacement. I'm not saying to do this in your maps in my case this stage is very spcific - it basically takes place all within ONE box.

The issue of the dropping framerate started to occur when I was putting in the nodraws back in to optimize it further. Again, with this type of layout I had serious questions about how to actually optimize it.

So after I had it drop to 150 fps I brought it back up mainly via the use of area portals.

Spawn rooms (and the tunnels behind them) all blocked via closed and open portals (portals open when door opens).

The two stage cliff and the tunnel in the column - Used 1 portal to seal room inside the cliff on the left up top, 1 portal to seal right side of the cliff area and one very large portal covering the 1st/2nd floor of the cliff. Inside the tunnel on that cliff i used one brush to fill in the entire whole - applied skip to all of it and then for the two faces that are on the tunnel entrance/exit, I placed the Hint texture.

That's it so far, I haven't placed any nodraws inside some of the displacements as there's no need to - i.e. the cliff in the corner behind the ramp with the barrels on it.

Oh alomost forgot, I made all the wood ramps, func_details to save rendering.

One tools that I found useful was the load_portal (under edit in hammer) showed me what was drawing portals and I was able to clean them up a lot - this tool is good - can show you items sitting out in the middle of nowhere that aren't needed to block vis. Case in point - I missed a section of one of my ramps that was causing extra protals to be made when they didn't need to be so I func_detailed it.

sv_cheats 1 (0 for off) and mat_wireframe 3 (0 for off) helped too.

Still looking at possibly doing other things to help it out more but am unsure at writing this if it would actually help out any further.

Hope that helps! :)
 
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