city fighting and performance

[smacker909 3]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this so please feel free to move or remove as you see fit.

I love making simple SP missions where I have lots of AI , 40 to 50 infantry per side ( including some light armor ) converging on a city/town and sticking my self in the middle of it :) Of course the issue is FPS drops once the action heats up.

I keep the waypoints to a minimum , basically a single S&D for each group to the center of the city. It try timing the arrivals to space out the fighting somewhat.

Obviously system specs play a role, mine aren't the best GTX660 and an i7 (something.. can't remember.. but not the latest) I'm getting around 30 fps (at medium settings) before the fighting gets heaving.. then it turns in to slide show at some points if I'm near a vehicle where logs of shelling is occurring.

Any tips for creating this kind of battle without the FPS drops? or is that possible?

[bangabob 45]

You could only spawn units on the map where you can see them. This would increase the performance because there are less units on the map at the same time.

To achieve this use a unit spawning script. Lots around

[smacker909 3]

Thanks BangaBob, do see your point. I have used spawn scripts in the past for more in depth missions over larger areas. This is just simple drop some units on the map in the editor and go. The idea being , which side can take the city! So it's not just about what is directly beside or in front of me.. but also two blocks over. I like all of the ambient fighting too :) I will see if I can do some tweaking using spawn scrips as you mention though. Thanks again!

[katipo66 94]

I like setting up similar missions, maybe try spreading the units out a bit, so that they don't all battle at the same time, sometimes I spread mine to all edges of the map. mix in some guard waypoints for 60-70% of units and sync to detected by trigger, doing that the game will send groups in when required.. Maybe also try using a caching script (search naughts cacheing).

The trick is to try and even out the action I think, probably I'm stating the obvious :D

[champ-1 40]

ALiVE mod has special module which called "profile". Basicly it makes all units which are out of your visual range become virtual and keep figthing in virtual environment. This module increses perfomance greatly.

[smacker909 3]

thanks guys! I took a quick look at alive scared me a little haha

[redarmy 422]

thanks guys! I took a quick look at alive scared me a little haha

Alive is the corner stone of Arma now for performance with far reaching battlefields.I do not know any other method to simulate full scale war in this game and i play SP too. Its scary at first to learn what and how to use all the modules,but after a day or two,and half a dozen questions to the helpful community later,youll be flying and not regretting the time you took to learn it.Im new to arma just two months and iv got it all sussed out now.

The Alive team are great and continue to add new features and improve existing ones all the time.

They r also good at responding on the forums. Give Alive a shot,litteraly,there is nothing not to like about it ;)

[katipo66 94]

I think Alive might be a little over kill for what hes wanting to achieve... here at least, if i read it right i think smacker909 enjoys laying down his own units and constructing hi own custom battles with waypoints and other goodies.

[Doodle 10]

I'd recommend the latest EOS especially if you are just making SP missions - superb performance

[smacker909 3]

I did take another look at alive and got it working - after watching the all of the tutorial videos.. very cool and will def. be diving deeper into it.. but for my fps issue, I'm starting to think I need to upgrade my CPU/GPU. Still have major fps drops with concentrated city fighting :(

[redarmy 422]

I did take another look at alive and got it working - after watching the all of the tutorial videos.. very cool and will def. be diving deeper into it.. but for my fps issue, I'm starting to think I need to upgrade my CPU/GPU. Still have major fps drops with concentrated city fighting :(

Listen smacker, yuor GPU has nothing to do with it really.This game is cpu hungry,i have issues with FPS in towns also.IN fact,i dont know anyone who dosent.you need a monster rig to not have issues in towns.Other maps towns seem to run better than altis,for me at least.

Nothing much you can do about it,try FPS backround booster,fps backround booster, set arma to high priority in task manager,unpark cpu cores etc etc,but you still wont notice much of an improvement.Believe me,iv spent a month trying.I avg around 16vs16 and a veihicle or two in big towns with a frame rate around 45 which is acceptable and my specs are like yours,infact i have a 650gti boost.

A small tip i would give you is this: if your soley fighting in a town,turn your view distance down massivly as you wont need it and it WILL help a little at least.

[Bezzen 11]

I would say UPSOM. And set some WP. In that way you will have no waypoints and a good fighting AI.

And with UPSOM you can sure add up to 80-100 AI instead for 40-50. With less lag. And give you more epic fights! :)

[smacker909 3]

redarmy - I think you are probably correct unfortunately. I've been reading more threads about poor fps in cities with lots of AI :(

[kremator 1065]

ALiVE can do ANY size of battle from the tiny to the largest. If performance is an issue then I would advise ALiVE.

[smacker909 3]

Kremator; I think Alive is great and will def. be messin with it, but I think my issue is general ARMA issue with battles containing high concentration of AI especially in large cities. At least according to some reading over in the tech sup forums.

[barbolani 198]

Maybe I am saying nosense, but my experience with my shit-PC is disabling shadows is making the game much more fluent in those cases (and forests too). It is the most fps-eater parameter, at least on the basic levels.

And honestly, shadows are not a must....

[supergruntsb78 67]

perhaps

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?165089-AI-Spawn-Script-Pack

could be usefull ?