Performance issue with several buildings
by Angelo Coccettini · in RTS Starter Kit · 08/31/2005 (2:38 pm) · 5 replies
Hello everybody,
still struggling in order to evaluate the possibility to write the game of my dream: a caesar III style city management. With my rules and options.
Well, now the topic of my post. I have created a very, very stupid and simple building, something that recall the fortress in Caesar. This building is a 152 polygons model. It is very simple but it does the trick. With some texture it could also appear nice...
Well, now the test: I have placed an array of buildings, something like 3 rows by 7 columns, for a total of 24 building. After the creation of the array, the engine slowed down very badly. I experienced some bad lag and the placing of other building becomes very very slow. Something like I click on the terrain and the building is placed after 20 seconds. The thing change if I go in a "clean" area or I place the building quite spreadly, that is with some distance between them the game appears more reactive and fast. For those interested, I can send the DTS file by mail. Just drop me few lines in a mail and I will reply back. It has no textures, for the moment, so don't expect the ultimate RTS Stronghold...!
As I am starting to have some concern about the possibility to create an RTS with a high number of buildings, it would be very interesting to hear from the other members of this forum. May be it is something I am doing badly with the engine. It would be interesting to know other tests/experiences, I could better direct my research in the good direction.
Thank you for your valuable feedback, all I know about Torque is what I have learned through the posts in these forums.
Best regards
Angelo
still struggling in order to evaluate the possibility to write the game of my dream: a caesar III style city management. With my rules and options.
Well, now the topic of my post. I have created a very, very stupid and simple building, something that recall the fortress in Caesar. This building is a 152 polygons model. It is very simple but it does the trick. With some texture it could also appear nice...
Well, now the test: I have placed an array of buildings, something like 3 rows by 7 columns, for a total of 24 building. After the creation of the array, the engine slowed down very badly. I experienced some bad lag and the placing of other building becomes very very slow. Something like I click on the terrain and the building is placed after 20 seconds. The thing change if I go in a "clean" area or I place the building quite spreadly, that is with some distance between them the game appears more reactive and fast. For those interested, I can send the DTS file by mail. Just drop me few lines in a mail and I will reply back. It has no textures, for the moment, so don't expect the ultimate RTS Stronghold...!
As I am starting to have some concern about the possibility to create an RTS with a high number of buildings, it would be very interesting to hear from the other members of this forum. May be it is something I am doing badly with the engine. It would be interesting to know other tests/experiences, I could better direct my research in the good direction.
Thank you for your valuable feedback, all I know about Torque is what I have learned through the posts in these forums.
Best regards
Angelo
About the author
#2
09/01/2005 (2:34 am)
I've built mini-cities with 20+ buildings and 150+ units and had little slow down. What is your development system specifications, video card/driver, and are you using the provided executable, a modified version you compiled yourself, and DEBUG or RELEASE build flag?
#3
thank you for your reply. I have not ran the profiler yet, I should admit I am still discovering this amazing software, and almost all the support tools are still unknown to me. My system is a Pentium IV 2.66 GHz, 1 GB of Ram, video card NVidia GeForce 6200, the driver are the last version downloaded from the NVidia site.
The Torque version I am using is a compiled by myself with the DEBUG flag.
What I am trying to determine withe these posts is if I can continue to develop this project with Torque, or may be I need to change my game type and go for a FPS, and understand that the apparently limited performances are due to a lack of knowledge of the whole system, or just to wait that Garagegames will do some revamping/tuning in order to be productively used for RTS games. Thanks again, I am going to see the profiler...
Regards
09/02/2005 (1:56 pm)
Hello Ben & Stephen,thank you for your reply. I have not ran the profiler yet, I should admit I am still discovering this amazing software, and almost all the support tools are still unknown to me. My system is a Pentium IV 2.66 GHz, 1 GB of Ram, video card NVidia GeForce 6200, the driver are the last version downloaded from the NVidia site.
The Torque version I am using is a compiled by myself with the DEBUG flag.
What I am trying to determine withe these posts is if I can continue to develop this project with Torque, or may be I need to change my game type and go for a FPS, and understand that the apparently limited performances are due to a lack of knowledge of the whole system, or just to wait that Garagegames will do some revamping/tuning in order to be productively used for RTS games. Thanks again, I am going to see the profiler...
Regards
#4
Unfortunately, I don't think any of those areas (except possible the visManager) are really associated with your problem.
You absolutely want to see if you are getting the same type of issues with a RELEASE build--the DEBUG built is quite a bit slower due to the amount of data it tracks and the extra code involved. It's also possible that your drivers for that particular card are causing issues--some manufacturers simply don't provide strong drivers in their "latest" versions for various cards--you may want to fallback a version and see if there is any change.
Finally, you may want to try a similar object load in the FPS starter kit, and see what your performance is there.
09/02/2005 (2:54 pm)
One of the major performance areas that can use optimization is the visManager, and there is in fact some new tech in the works for this (still in dev, hasn't been stress tested yet, so I can't make any promises), but there are other areas as well that can help out with performance.Unfortunately, I don't think any of those areas (except possible the visManager) are really associated with your problem.
You absolutely want to see if you are getting the same type of issues with a RELEASE build--the DEBUG built is quite a bit slower due to the amount of data it tracks and the extra code involved. It's also possible that your drivers for that particular card are causing issues--some manufacturers simply don't provide strong drivers in their "latest" versions for various cards--you may want to fallback a version and see if there is any change.
Finally, you may want to try a similar object load in the FPS starter kit, and see what your performance is there.
#5
09/02/2005 (3:08 pm)
All I know is that I have a P4 2.8 ghz, 512mb ram and GeForce 5700. I have placed about 20 diffs in the game with no loss of perfomance. I have viewed them all at the same time. I can not say the same for .DTS Building, because I have not tried. 
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