What causes the Biggest FPS Drop?

Headlong is basically ready for a Beta 2, except for one thing. The FPS on the level is quite low. On CMT snow Grove, I was averaging 100-150FPS, and on Headlong Im getting 90-120FPS, with Vsync on on a Radeon X1950pro. I am not real happy with these numbers, so what can I do?

-Shader details are on high with alpha maps controlling a cubemap (on 70% of them)
-I have alot of vehicles. 2 warthogs, 2 ghosts, a banshee, a scorpion, a wraith, and about 10 crates)
-I have a pretty decent amount of scenery. Including vehicle barriers, the light fixtures, the billboards, the palm-trees, the red triangle cones, the larger crates, etc....
-I have portalled it well, this is not an issue...

I am looking toward CMT and ZTeam, because of the quality of your maps. What can I do that would be most effective at increasing the FPS?

portalling and LOD's

ok....LODs? could someone give me an example of what numbers whould go in the pixel cutoffs? Also, do i need to export the superhigh, high, medium, low, for those to work? Or can i only use the one i have.....

lods are exported as such:
*permutation name* superhigh
*permutation name* high
*permutation name* medium
*permutation name* low
*permutation name* superlow

setting the lod cutoffs i usually set my values like:
200
150
100
50
0

sometimes you'll need to fool with the values to get a smoother transition between lod's.

Jeeze, my FPS is always around 30. That bad?

30 is the native framerate.

Yea mine used to be like that until I changed the FPS settings in the video option (I seriously never knew about it haha...). Now the game runs as smooth as butter now a days. :)

Lol, if you have seen a single CMT tag, you wouldn't be saying the things are quality.
But anyway, 90-120 FPS is actually about what my real Headlong on H2 runs on.
I know you probably don't want to do this, but you could make the crates a scenery item, meaning the game has to do less calculations for the physics and whatnot, but I'm not sure if you want to sacrifice the H2 feel for better FPS.
Try making LODs, and if that doesn't help, it looks like you'll have to take it from there.

On that FPS rate, you could make it feel like H2V...

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Originally Posted by Jay2645

Lol, if you have seen a single CMT tag, you wouldn't be saying the things are quality.

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WTF does that have anything to do with this topic?

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Originally Posted by Jay2645

Lol, if you have seen a single CMT tag, you wouldn't be saying the things are quality.

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Only the ones masters touches. :smirk:

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Originally Posted by CtrlAltDestroy

Only the ones masters touches. :smirk:

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All I have to say is tee hee


Vaginal Centipedes

My biggest FPS problem is with Very nice lighting and a bunch of bump maps and stuffs, like church

atmospheric effects can cut me down to like 20 FPS, but then again I have some shitty variety of onboard craphics.

Church gives me no FPS loss on this computer, but on my laptop, I can't play it, too much FPS loss.

I get 300/400 fps in Church. But, I think it's particles, atmospheric volume, bump maps, and lack of LODs that cause the most fps drop.

I get 30fps in Church. :downs:

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Originally Posted by STLRamsFan

Yea mine used to be like that until I changed the FPS settings in the video option (I seriously never knew about it haha...). Now the game runs as smooth as butter now a days. :)

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Rofl, I get 20 FPS on snowgrove if Im lucky.

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Originally Posted by selentic

Rofl, I get 20 FPS on snowgrove if Im lucky.

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as do I, outside that is, its that damn snow. D=<

crap, i had vsync off, when i tunred it on it shot up to around 150 fps on snowgrove, didnt try church yet

framedrop really depends on your hardware.

of youve got a shit 3d card, a higher polycount in your map will slow shit down.

if youve got low ram, and you play on high resolution and textures etc on high, you're also screwing yourself.

if your pricessor is the weak link, then youll be looking at amounts of objects, alot of projectiles, vehicles, characters, PARTICLES, and dynamic lights will slow it down. (atmospheric effects are also particles)

in MOST maps, simply portalling a map properly does wonders.
adding fog helps too.

scenery, and lightfixtures, device_machines stuff like that doesnt cause lag. those are all instanced, and are not rendered when you're not looking at them. i think the same goes for vehicles, but im not sure about that

I'm pretty sure vehicles are not instanced in Halo 1, as they require many calculations at all times for the physics and such. If they were indexed, vehicles wouldn't sync.
Halo 3, though, instances everything, from bullets to weapons to vehicles. That's one of the reasons they can make the graphics so good without FPS drop.

it's "instanced" not indexed.

and they're propably not instanced, in fact, im pretty sure theyre not, or it'd defear the whole purpose of having vehicles, but they're not rendeed when you dont see em, and thats what matters k.

A video tip: Always use vsync. Don't lock at 30 fps because that's a low fps. Don't turn off vsync or you are going to get mad page tearing.

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Originally Posted by FlamingRain

A video tip: Always use vsync. Don't lock at 30 fps because that's a low fps. Don't turn off vsync or you are going to get mad page tearing.

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30 FPS is what Halo was built to run at. Anything over really can present messy animations.

no hes right. locking at 30 fps causes it to not feel very smooth at all. Vsync is the best....

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Originally Posted by kenney001

no hes right. locking at 30 fps causes it to not feel very smooth at all. Vsync is the best....

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When you're used to high fps, 30 is very strange, I know. But, if you've played at 30 for a long matter of time, it feels normal.

Dynamic lighting is what will kill you, be easy on that (along with gel maps) and you'll be fine.