Skyrocketing r_speeds!! Created 19 years ago2005-03-29 11:16:48 UTC by Daubster

Hi all!
I've been improving a map of mine (de_watertower, no doubt)and the only problem in my improved version is:
R_SPEEDS! They've skyrocketed!
And when I mean skyrocketing, I mean skyrocketing! In some places the w_poly count goes up to 2900 - 3000. And I've counted a medium of 800-1000 w_poly count in almost all of my areas. Now I tried to tie as much objects to func_wall as possible and my map isn't skyboxed! Actually, I didn't make too much changes to the original, I just changed my light_enviroment pitch to -35 (Sot that it would drop a nice shade) and added some new things, like computers and etc. Aaand i've doubled the max wiewable distance to 8192... WhenI play the lag is TERRIBLE!
Soo any ideas on how to make the wpoly_count smaller? Please help...

Read the tutorials on the website, they help a lot. Especialy using hint and skip textures.

Maybe because you've increased the viewable distance?

Bear in mind that, by my reckoning, a small cube will increase the wpoly count by twelve. You put in twenty computers, with a keyboard, mouse, monitor and base unit ? all just cubes ? and you've got 960 extra polygons there.

True. If the texture applied to it is 64x64 texels at a 1.0 scale:

2 triangles per face, 6 faces = 12 more wpolys.

Having 10 computer monitors in a room with those properties adds 120 wpolys, and so on.

Remember that frames per second are more important than eye candy per second

Plus, if the cubes are larger than 240^3, they'll have four polygons per face, making 24 polygons per cube.

Yea... But if the max. distance is the problem, then how do i make the map more realistic? I mean that it has some open areas and if the max.wiew distance is dealfult, buildings will start to dissapear, and that aint cool-looking :

Oh yea and by the way, the cpus are all func_breakables, and the tables they're on are also func_breakables... Soo that shouldn't be the main problem. Thats cuz I didn't get any lag at all before i upgraded my map... And besides, there are lots of much bigger maps with bigger open areas, with more detail (cs_siege, de_cbble)... So how do such maps keep their r_speeds ok?

1)A map can be realistic while respecting the default max viewable distance. If your are aiming for large outdoor areas, then try mapping for CS:Source if you have that game. HL2 is much better in terms of outdoor mapping.

2) brush entities affect the polygon budget. Never think that just because something is a an entity, it will no longer have an impact on performance. And when those func_breakables break, the gibs they release also have an impact on performace...

3) I doubt siege and cbble reach anything like the 8192 units you mentioned... and if they do, they are properly VIS blocked, either with good layout, hint brushes, or both.
Using a larger scale like 1.5 or 2.0 in terrain type textures can reduce r_speeds drastically while not looking wrong.

Well said on all counts. To my knowledge all the standard CS maps run fine in software, and therefore have wpoly counts below or around 800.

Simple sentence r_speeds.
"If it has a texture on it it will increase the r_speeds."
There are a few exceptions to this rule, specifically those textures that are NOT rendered.
"r" stands for rendering...
Pretty simple really.