One More Day - Performance Updates
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One More Day - Performance Updates
So it’s been a while since my last blog update on One More Day but recently I had a look to see if I could do anything with improving the performance of the game. As it turns out there were still some optimisations to be made that have helped boost performance.
V0.1.6 on the Game Launcher
Here are the main performance related changes I’ve made which were recently published to the Game Launcher:
- I changed some of the furniture models to lower poly versions. Some of these models were about 3000polys and are now replaced with lower poly versions with no real visual difference in-game. So about 10 or so models that were repeated more than once around the level were shaved in poly detail by about a third.
- I halved the draw distance on camera range and increased the fog a bit to compensate. I believe this helped more for when you are some distance outside the town but less so when you are in the town.
- I removed some rogue geometry in the map (wasn’t much), and also a few objects that weren’t really needed.
- I went back over every object to ensure it’s viewing range was as minimal as I could afford without creating too much pop-up. This is something I have always done but still sometimes you end up missing a few things.
- I spaced out some detailed areas on the map (ie. the power station got moved out further) to try to reduce the number of objects being shown at any one time.
- I made sure physics shapes set in model viewer were as simple as possible and removed collision from some small objects.
- I removed some workshop objects that had very big textures.
All these changes stacked on to the latest version of Leadwerks which also includes performance improvements have given a noticeable performance improvement to the game.
One thing I had to add in (sparingly) was some grass using the vegetation system as I felt it added nice detail to the level and was worth a small performance hit. That’s what makes optimising the game hard, trying to balance between good visuals, content and good performance. Unfortunately sometimes sacrifices have to be made. But even with the grass added the new version is running better than before. I would like to add volumetric spot lights for light coming in the windows but for now I resist that temptation as they would add up to a significant performance hit. Maybe I will add them as a high graphics option in the future.
Other Improvements
As well as performance improvements the game download size is now smaller thanks to the newly added ogg support and also removal of some unused files that were being published. One thing I noticed when publishing a game in Leadwerks is that if you have files with the same filename in two different folders both files will be packaged even if only one of them is used. So there were some unneeded texture files etc. being packaged from unused workshop content. Going forward I will have to keep an eye out for duplicate filenames.
More performance in the works
The following changes are in my current dev build which hasn’t been released yet but are showing even more performance increases:
- Converted the CSG houses and bungalows to models. Simplifying and reducing object/entity count. This should allow me to add more houses to the map with less of a performance impact.
- Further reduced the camera range and increased the fog to compensate. This allows me to reduce the view range on many bigger outdoor objects and buildings from Max to Far whilst minimizing popup and also reduce the vegetation view range. This will result in a much more foggy look to the game (see screenshot) which will create a slightly different atmosphere than previous versions and with less viewing distance it might make approaching zombies a bit more dangerous.
- I identified SSAO was making quite a performance impact so I have disabled this for now and might re-introduce it as a high graphics option when I get around to creating an options menu. For outdoor map SSAO is probably not as important or worth the hit but it is nice to have when inside the buildings.
After all these performance improvements and v1.7 is released I am optimistic that most people should get at least a 30fps game experience with OMD. Fingers crossed!
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