xtom's Blog

You won't regret investing some time in Blender as you'll be able to go crazy and model anything very fast.

 

It looks good and will look better with vegetation on terrain surroundings.

Yeah with some objects like the doors and windows I exported as obj from leadwerks into blender. It's easier for me this way to test and get the size right and then I can add details if I need to. I think my most complex thing I've modeled so far from scratch in blender is the door handles. I was pretty chuffed with them.

 

The map is still very barren at the moment, lots more needs adding but my frame rates are worrying me with what I have already.

but my frame rates are worrying me with what I have already.

Hide distant lights and distant interiors objects and hide interior Zombies just let them navigate but hide them.

 

You have lot of zombies, so lot of scripts running, perhaps when 5 zombies are going around the player, just make the other roam arund with random destination like stupid zombieswihtout calling navigation functions.

 

If you lower zombies maximum number zombies visibles and make them spawn from hidden points , it should work better.

 

Good luck.

The zombies don't seem to be impacting the fps too much, it's more the buildings are still my fps problem. If I remove all zombies I get average 10/12 fps and if I add 20 zombies I still get about the same 10/12fps.

 

I'm already hiding interior building objects by using the view range setting on the models, lots of them are set to near, but I might have to spread out entry buildings with non-entry buildings or something like that to help more. For example if I walk away from the buildings far away around a mountain the fps goes back up.

Looking good.

 

If you cant see interior objects does that still hinder performance? So items you cant see (behind a wall etc) have to have set to near?

For example if I walk away from the buildings far away around a mountain the fps goes back up.

 

The floors and walls in my buildings I have left as csg, the advantage I see with this is I can easily apply different textures to the walls and floors in the different buildings to add variety

This could be the problem.

Try replacing all CGS by some Blender test model building, i think you'll get really better frame rate.

Yeah I'm going to do some frame rate tests later. Really I would like to see csg performing better because it's just collapsed geometry and not even treated like an entity like the way models are. I would have thought it should be faster but it seems no matter what models are faster in every scenario?

Interested in the results of your testing. My current project is getting larger and I want to get the frame rate as high as possible. I remember Josh saying that each model is one entity and each CSG is one entity so for complex structures you are better off to use a models.

Interested in the results of your testing. My current project is getting larger and I want to get the frame rate as high as possible. I remember Josh saying that each model is one entity and each CSG is one entity so for complex structures you are better off to use a models.

That's not correct. CSG brushes get merged into chunks of geometry when the scene is loaded in the engine.

So are we better to make CSG or models?

They are identical when your game is running, but CSG is an easy way to make your map.

Ok. Thank you.

Hi, Josh as implemented CSG exporting to meshes that you could load in Blender as reference and build over them in more details there.

 

It's best to start with CSG first to test your ideas in gameplay and see if it's fun, then export that as reference to make it pretty when you think the design of the house is adequate for your need.

 

That's a good idea that you created the house in parts, since you will be able to exchanges some parts and create variations.

 

You could keep some of the CSG and use them only for collision. (make them invisible and don't put collision on the blender meshes). Perhaps you won't need them after, seen that Josh added Convex Decomposition that should create a optimized collision models from a mesh automatically. (Not tested it yet)

Yes that's pretty much what I've ended up doing - build and test in leadwerks and then export to obj whatever parts might be better as models. I use the convex decomposition on the furniture models and it's very good. But sometimes for example with the picket fence model I just select the box collision.