FPS sub 20 on some areas - no idea why?

[JohnnySix]

So I've tried removing animated lights, animated textures and reducing the number of transparent surfaces ( Lava had a 'translucent' layer and a 'modulated' layer ) - but I still get a crazy FPS drop looking across the map.


Have included a download here: http://extremew00t.com/dl/CTF-Beta-02-L ... etw00t.unr

Quick video of the level, with FPS


Should I kill some of the lighting / polygon count , make the lava opaque etc?

[Red_Fist]

Seems it's when all 3 towers are in view.

507 lights is a lot of lights. and you have to see a ton of them at once, as opposed to a huge map with rooms and hallways.

Is there fog in there ?

[GingerCat]

It's your mesh count. Try deleting all the sconce and flames meshes and see what happens. Exactly why they are the cause, I couldn't tell you. But start there...   
Auto merged new post submitted 49 minutes later

---

Very cool map btw. I had no idea you could get bots to do this They are a little hard top see against the black sky...

[Swanky]

The lightcount shouldn't be the problem by itself. Maybe if all of them are visible at the same time, or if all of them are dynamic. Meshes could be a potential problem, no idea how the engine handles those, or high counts of them.
However, I took a brief look over the attached file and noticed some insane poly counts depending from where you were looking - up to 1500 ppv. Iirc vanilla maps stayed around 300-400 in the visible range most of the time, and I remember anything beyond 800 becoming a gamble depending on the system, but could easily stutter as well, especially when turning around - the engine just wasn't built for that. Anything beyond, problems and almost guaranteed stutter.

[GingerCat]

It's your mesh count. Try deleting all the sconce and flames meshes and see what happens. Exactly why they are the cause, I couldn't tell you. But start there...   
Auto merged new post submitted 49 minutes later

---

Very cool map btw. I had no idea you could get bots to do this They are a little hard top see against the black sky...

I wasn't very clear in this post, sorry. I have already deleted the meshes and it solves the issue. Perhaps there are other problems, but this is the big one for sure.

[JohnnySix]

Wow thanks @GingerCat & @Swanky - I'll look at removing the sconces and checking the lights aren't dynamic.

I've forgotten so much, especially the level stats on the build options.

There's probably some geometry that could be cut down and replaced with textures etc. It was playing reasonably quickly until I started adding trim / lighting . Since much of the gameplay is centered around air control skills, with heavy focus on the centre section, I'll make some optimisations. I'd rather it play well than throw in excessive geometry.

Btw @Swanky - I've been playing through some of your old maps recently, really amazed at the level of detail and such clean geometry in your designs. My favourite is CTF-FoT-Selket - amazing design and attention to consistency in theme / detail overall.

For your curved meshes and more detailed stuff - were you importing brushes from an external tool ?

   
Auto merged new post submitted 22 hours 39 minutes later

---

I removed most of the Torchlights, set the remaining to static ,removed a bunch of geometry and made a few changes to the skybox. Just need to redo some of the lighting, but fps is more consistent now.

http://extremew00t.com/dl/CTF-Beta-03-L ... etw00t.unr

[GingerCat]

Some of those torches still had a light effect and it leads to stuttering. There's something fishy about how they work when you set the brush to a light source. For each brush, I stopped the brush from emitting light and added a light actor using the same values and effect, and now there is no stuttering. However, I did manage to break the skybox in DX9??? It works, kind of, in DX11. In DX9 the ceiling of the lightbox is a HOM. Switching to DX11, without rebuilding the map, corrects the issue but the masking texture no longer works properly    
Auto merged new post submitted 2 minutes later

---

Quite a cool skybox btw

[Swanky]

Wow thanks @GingerCat & @Swanky - I'll look at removing the sconces and checking the lights aren't dynamic.

I've forgotten so much, especially the level stats on the build options.

There's probably some geometry that could be cut down and replaced with textures etc. It was playing reasonably quickly until I started adding trim / lighting . Since much of the gameplay is centered around air control skills, with heavy focus on the centre section, I'll make some optimisations. I'd rather it play well than throw in excessive geometry.

Btw @Swanky - I've been playing through some of your old maps recently, really amazed at the level of detail and such clean geometry in your designs. My favourite is CTF-FoT-Selket - amazing design and attention to consistency in theme / detail overall.

For your curved meshes and more detailed stuff - were you importing brushes from an external tool ?

   
Auto merged new post submitted 22 hours 39 minutes later

---

I removed most of the Torchlights, set the remaining to static ,removed a bunch of geometry and made a few changes to the skybox. Just need to redo some of the lighting, but fps is more consistent now.

Thank you, appreciate the compliments. As far as I remember it was all done in editor / engine. I used the 2D Shape Editor with an imported texture to have a base to work around. I've barely used meshes in general, it should all be BSP.
Just really happy FnB did find a way to make the bots work as they do on Selket, otherwise it wouldn't have been as spread out as they do now.

Happy to read you were able to fix that map of yours.
€ Just an idea that occured to me: If you wanted to keep the trim you could merge the different brushes, then align the floor / ceiling parts of the trim and merge their polys as well. Should work because the those parts are just metal, not angled beams or anything, so wouldn't change much from the visuals as they are now while keeping the fidelity and clean look. Just a good bit of work going through each section and merging trim BSP. I've attached a screenshot - the example saves 3 polys. >.<
PS: Those jumppads look awesome. They're real polygon hungry, too.

[n1v]

i see 1600 polys

[Higor]

Mesh is fine, BSP occlusion is what's killing the framerate.
Edit: this on a Ryzen 7700X + Intel Arc B580

Shot00028.jpg

What I'd do:


- Merge into a single brush (merge the surfaces too):

Capture.JPG

- Too many BSP polys on the jump pad, turn them into meshes.
I used XC_Engine for this and conversion isn't perfect (there's some tiny gaps), but doing this will simplify the BSP tree a lot.
Load JumpPads.unr, copy the pads and then load your level.
One pad is tiled to allow texture to go over the UV limits, the other one is untiled (has lower polycount, but textures are clamped to 0,1)

Capture.JPG

JumpPads.unr

- Turn these into semisolids:

Capture.JPG

Capture.JPG

- Lower light detail on the lava texture (and maybe the pillars):
Trick: ticking both high and low detail = ultra low detail, i'd do this for the lava

Capture.JPG

[JohnnySix]

I updated the map - thanks for all the feedback @Higor ! Making some changes, particularly the shadow-detail ( which I think I'd just spanked everything on 'high' thinking it'd be cool now in 2025 ) made a massive difference. There's definitely no stutted using the w00t pad behind the flag and seeing the whole map now.

If anything the poly-count has gone way up adding in a big crater - with not as noticeable a lag as was previously

So as not to cross-post- the latest map-pack is here : viewtopic.php?p=152922#p152922

Screenshot 2025-09-28 200007.png