How are some of these maps optimized?

[OverDriven]

I'm curious how some of you guys are optimizing your maps. I recently made one called "Crossfire". It's VERY simple, as it is my first map, and the frame rate I get is a pretty constant 150-170 FPS on my overclocked Core2Duo E4300/Geforce 7600GT on "High" setting at 1280x1024.

Now, I downloaded the "Meatball Grinder" (ik3dm2_nex_r1) map yesterday and it is FAR more complex than my map, plus it has much better lighting, etc. I get a pretty consistent 210-230 FPS in that map! How is that possible?

In my map, I caulked all unseen faces and did everything else I could think of to insure that it was optimized properly according to all the guides I could find. How are these maps that are far more complex getting far higher frame rates than mine? Any tips?

Joe

[sev]

Without having a look at your map it is quite difficult to guess what causes the FPS reduction. Basically, any shaders (esp. water, moving textures, or transparency), moving objects, _norm _bump _glow _gloss -textures, or an unoptimised visibility of different areas (vis) can cause serious FPS drops.

To get an overview of the vis situation, it is always a good idea to make use of the "prtview" Plugin included with GtkRadiant, and to use the commands "r_speeds 1; r_showtris 1; r_showdisabledepthtest 1" in-game (console).

[Strahlemann]

Iirc your map was quite large and open.
Then a larger _blocksize can simplify the bsp-tree that is created by q3map2.

Code: Select all

_blocksize : q3map always splits the BSP tree along the planes X=_blocksize*n and Y=_blocksize*n. Default _blocksize value is 1024. Increase the blocksize using larger powers of 2 to reduce compile times on very large maps with a low structural brush density.

Also having structural brushes blocking the visibility of large parts of the map can increase your fps a lot (e.g. A wall that blocks your sight into the next room etc.) because the geometry doesn't need to be rendered.

About the lighting: As Nexuiz uses static lightmaps for the basic lighting of a map (like all q3 maps do), the quality of the lighting is only achieved during the compile-process. You can have the same map once lit ugly and once lit beautiful and they'll have the same fps ingame.
That's of course not the case as soon as you use/activate dynamic lights in a map.

To get a better insight of how performant maps are built you can check out the sources of all official maps and of most of the custom Nexuiz-maps.