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+---- Thread: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue (/thread-9668.html)
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Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Your Computer - 08-09-2011
I know the engine is fully capable of handling what my maps currently hold, so long as the user's vision is blocked from seeing some of the map. However, it would appear there is an issue where, though you (the actual user) cannot see through a wall, the game seems to think that the player can really see through it. This is the only logical conclusion i could up with, as this issue isn't making much sense to me, at least from what can be visually derived by me.
This issue has also caused me a be of a fright, knowing that a monster is locked up inside a closed building, while i am outside walking through the town and noticing my vision become blurry when i'm not even staring in the direction of the monster! Do you know how creepy that is!? (Temporarily disabling the monster made the blurry vision go away when staring down the same spot.)
Thinking back on this, i remember having an issue where if the user stared somewhere near the direction of a Script Area that is outside the building and the user is inside the building, the game would activate the callback function set by SetEntityPlayerLookAtCallback(). I didn't think much of it back then since i was able to fix the problem by adding more decorations around the door where the issue was detected.
As for my current issue, i was able to achieve expected performance by placing black planes in certain areas. However, this is proving to be impractical as this could not solve all performance issues for all the noticeable areas. I can only imagine what kind of performance issues i'll be having for my next map, which is expected to be about twice as big as my current map.
If anyone could provide some insight on this, it would be much appreciated. I will continue trying to figure out the main source of the issue in so far as i am willing to, but this is constantly proving to be futile!
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Your Computer - 08-09-2011
It seems having World Reflection enabled decreased performance in some areas. However, disabling it does not improve performance all around; some of the same areas still reduce frame rates by half. I'll mess around with a few more things, but some insight is still appreciated.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Tanshaydar - 08-09-2011
I have some serious performance issues in very specific places too. What I tried is that covering the areas around with black planes. I tried many many things, even the 'bald' environment proved to be problematic.
I don't have any useful information, though I'd appreciate if I could learn.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Phoroneus - 08-09-2011
Unorthodox architecture tends to cause problems, like if you have too many indirect routes open to an out-of-view area, it will be rendered anyway. In a recent map experiment, I made the internal walls of a dungeon about a meter shorter than the ceiling, giving a clear space overhead. The result was a huge drop in performance, which was instanly resolved when I lowered the ceiling to be level with the tops of the walls.
Without knowing how the engine calculates what to render, I'm not sure anyone can help further beyond personal experience. I remember some games I used to map for had clip brushes that would act as solid objects (even though they were non-solid and invisible) in order to split large planes and block areas from being rendered before the player actually got to them (like areas beyond fog, around yet-unreachable corners, et cetera). I don't think HPL has anything equivalent, unfortunately.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Your Computer - 08-26-2011
I've made a wiki article on potential solutions for performance issues based on some tests i've done:
http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/amnesia/performance
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Tanshaydar - 08-26-2011
Wow, thanks, I'll take a look at it.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Acies - 08-26-2011
I came across one weird performance issue around half a year ago. I don't think I never got it fully answered.
"RE: Water reflection of world
Now I've found the issue. It was quite strange. It has to do with walls I have added on the map. As soon as I remove them the water starts reflecting the world again. But when I add them the water doesn't reflect the world any more. It doesn't matter where I add these walls. I don't know if this is a bug jens, perhaps I should send the map so that you may look at it?
Edit: Worked around it & made the map work."
The walls were 4: wall_corner_concave_round_1 found in the sanctumbase set.
If someone would like to try it out it's map "Area3.map" in the belphegor story.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Tanshaydar - 08-26-2011
I reconstructed one of the largest map in my mod. Imagine the frustration.
Sill, performance issues started to arise, even without objects placed...
Might it be related to textures?
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - plutomaniac - 08-26-2011
(08-26-2011, 03:14 PM)Tanshaydar Wrote: I reconstructed one of the largest map in my mod. Imagine the frustration.
Sill, performance issues started to arise, even without objects placed...
Might it be related to textures?
How big are your maps? Maybe your graphics card is not strong enough. Even without objects and stuff it lags? Maybe a custom wall or model does that. Sometimes I notice lags when using some converted models that generate lots of bad normal and errors at HPL.log. But that's because I add objects.
RE: Potentially seeing through walls: a performance issue - Acies - 08-26-2011
(08-26-2011, 03:14 PM)Tanshaydar Wrote: I reconstructed one of the largest map in my mod. Imagine the frustration.
Sill, performance issues started to arise, even without objects placed...
Might it be related to textures?
You have a lot of imported textures/models? Have you made any custom textures yourself?
If they are in the same layout as the amnesia textures that could perhaps increase performance.