Frame rate hit caused by jungle

[Nicholas Bell 0]

My map of Bluefields, Nicaragua although small (5 km x 5 km) and over half water, is 2/3rds covered with jungle (most of the rest is the built-up area of the city). I have been using the random object placement script with 50-75% density and it looks pretty good, even if not quite heavy enough for real jungle. I am using a combination of trees and bushes to create the effect.

Although it works fine roaming around on my own, just having a a few dozen men and 8 vehicles standing around chops the frame rate on my 3+ year old single-core P4 3.6 Ghz (2 Gb RAM with NVidia 7950 GT 512mb video with graphic options on High). Flying over it is great, except for the 10 FPS! The map is not much use if one cannot put forces on it and play it reasonably smooth.

Any fellow long-suffering map makers willing to take a look at my map in-game and make some suggestions? Maybe set up a quick mission around the airstrip in the south to Maybe it's just my system and it will be useable. I suppose I could decrease the plant density and the number of species, but then it would hardly qualify as jungle, IMO. Considering the amount of time I've put into learning how to do this it would seem a terrible waste to walk away from it, but maybe that's the best choice. Maybe this is why there is such a plethora of desert terrain islands/maps - the system can't handle much more... I love the idea of fighting on actual terrain (within system constraints) but desert is desert, and we have plenty of that already. I've got a 10 km x 10 km height map of actual terrain in Germany ready to go, but if I can't model forests properly, there's no point...

I would appreciate your advice. The pbo file is available here:Bluefields Map on FileFront

[phaeden 0]

One thing you can do, which will require more work or asking nicely, is to make custom plants with considerably lower poly counts.  With so many on screen, it won't look bad, just run better.

I am downloading your map and will give it a go to see if there are any other recommendations.

[phaeden 0]

Ok, I played with the island for a bit and here are my observations:

1. It looks great

2. It plays like shit - I did get decent framerates when I dropped the viewdistance to less than 900m.

3. The jungle areas are very thick - this looks great but it also drastically limits the 'playable' space of the island. As it is right now, there is simply no way for anyone to engage in combat operations within the jungle - you would never find the enemy.

I recmomend thinning out the jungle areas a bit. Still keep enough to show how thick it is but cut out long swaths and put in some "open ground." While this may mean that is its not "true" jungle, it will make it much more playable. On other jungle islands in the past, much of the fighting and missions occur in places where you can find and engage the enemy.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Thanks for your time and effort to look at this. Much appreciated. I'll give your suggestions a try!

[opteryx 1562]

I have two suggestions!

1) Do as Phaeden suggested and reduce density by at least, 50%, however BIS shaders lags like Hell, even a single bush can kill my frame rate on high shaders with a 8800gts.

2) There was a jungle vegetation pack released for ArmA some time ago, I believe there were two versions, one (the first) which did not have shaders, this one I recall filling out Rahmadi pretty dense and still have it playable when I had a 6600 gt. as for the second I never tried, but I bet the shaders added lower frame rate.

PS: Can't wait to see a city come to life on this map!

[Allie 0]

I'll d:l it too, i wanne see this.

I know default arma vegetation is indeed very heavy on ur machine

Running Q6600 at 3.05Ghz, 4 Gigs of ramm, and a gtx8800, i still have framerate loss on northen part of default sarani.

Dont give up.

Later,

Allie

[hedcrusha 0]

I did an island simler! I used the jungle vegetation pack and clutter the area using 40% and i made it dam thick. It ran ok on my machine but not great (mine is about the same as Allie's except i have a E6600) due to shadows and shaders but i quit finishing it as i think it would be TOO heavy on mid range machines.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

I've reworked the jungle areas using 50% coverage with a lot of clearings. I also limited the plant species in the jungles to palms, bananas, one bush and 2 other tree types. It runs okay now on the ground. When flying it still is a little slower, but then the map is so small I don't think anyone will be flying much. Flying low over the trees does remind me a lot of a few helicopter trips I took in training.

It's not much of a jungle (I have done some hiking in Hawaii) - more like a garden. Better than nothing. There's enough vegetation to limit LOS and make stumbling into a patrol an exciting event. And it's easy to get lost without using the map.

[phaeden 0]

Cool. One of the challenges of making a game is to also keep it more or less entertaining for the player. A real jungle basically sucks - too hot, too buggy, too much shit to see through - no fun any way you look at it. A game jungle should give players the perseption that they are surrounded by vegetation, insect (sound plays a major role here), and limited visibility (fog could also be useful inside the jungle areas - just script it to the island itself). Let me know when you repost and I'll gladly look at it again.

Cheers

[rstratton 0]

u say it runs fine without ai? i get the samei ssue with sakakah , it runs great untill i put some ai in the city. maybe its an ai pathfinding issue eating up all ur cpu cycles

[hypno toad 0]

Very pretty.

As for the FPS problem, if you remove 50% of the trees, it will look better, plus run better, the jungle right now looks good from the outside, but the inside is over dense.

This is coming from a guy who lives next to one of the worlds rainforests.

As a tip (if you can create models)

you should make some low poly underbrush clusters that do not generate shadows.

Those should compensate for the trees you should take away.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Quote[/b] ]insect (sound plays a major role here), and limited visibility (fog could also be useful inside the jungle areas - just script it to the island itself).

Phaeden, these are great ideas, but I have not the foggiest idea on how to do it

Quote[/b] ]As a tip (if you can create models) you should make some low poly underbrush clusters that do not generate shadows.

Absolutely no experience in modeling, unfortunately. Would be useful, especially as I would like to have some industrial type buildings for my next map. But there is only so much time...

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Here is the latest version with thinned out jungles. All areas of major vegetation complete. Next step is buildings and other man-made features.

Bluefields Map

Comments welcome. It works okay with 3 dozen friendlies and 8 tanks moving around on the airfield with the heavy jungle west of the airstrip. Haven't tried force on force yet.

[phaeden 0]

Downloading now. Will take a poke around and see what I can see.

[hypno toad 0]

Quote[/b] ]insect (sound plays a major role here), and limited visibility (fog could also be useful inside the jungle areas - just script it to the island itself).

Phaeden, these are great ideas, but I have not the foggiest idea on how to do it

Quote[/b] ]As a tip (if you can create models) you should make some low poly underbrush clusters that do not generate shadows.

Absolutely no experience in modeling, unfortunately. Would be useful, especially as I would like to have some industrial type buildings for my next map. But there is only so much time...

You should go through some of the building models in the arma editor with this mod:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=392

You would surprised at how many completed building models were never actually used in arma.

There is one model, that is a 2 floor factory, with some sort of offloading ramp that comes out the side that you could use for your industrial building.

EDIT:

I am downloading the alpha map, you should probably use a website like filefront, the one you picked was pretty freaking slow.

[opteryx 1562]

Quote[/b] ]insect (sound plays a major role here), and limited visibility (fog could also be useful inside the jungle areas - just script it to the island itself).

Phaeden, these are great ideas, but I have not the foggiest idea on how to do it

Quote[/b] ]As a tip (if you can create models) you should make some low poly underbrush clusters that do not generate shadows.

Absolutely no experience in modeling, unfortunately. Would be useful, especially as I would like to have some industrial type buildings for my next map. But there is only so much time...

You should go through some of the building models in the arma editor with this mod:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=392

You would surprised at how many completed building models were never actually used in arma.

There is one model, that is a 2 floor factory, with some sort of offloading ramp that comes out the side that you could use for your industrial building.

Why would you need a mod to use those buildings? They're in the buildings.pbo.

[hypno toad 0]

Not to use them, to see what you are using.

It is hard to tell what you are using when the names are in Czechoslovakian (or something like that)

So, in the editor, you can find out what the name is of the building you want, and place it in visitor.

unless there is some way to see what you are highlighting.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Agree that it is a pain not being able to see what your placing before you place it, whether building, road, tree, or what not. I use AS's Visitor manual to help, but not sure if it is really complete. Don't need to read German to use the image index

Is there a list of buildings with interiors? Or do I have to figure that out myself?

[hypno toad 0]

I do believe you have to do it yourself, but you can use that mod, and when you go into the editor, go find a building with an interior (with preview mission mode) and then use your cursor (in editor mode) to find the name of the building by putting your mouse over it.

[phaeden 0]

I played around with the newer version for about 20 minutes. I really like the changes. The island seems much more playable and the framerates are much improved.

Recommendations:

Thin out "clusters" within the denser vegetation and replace areas with more ground clutter (in the island config).

Increase the number of insects (also in config) - I think this will help present a more "jungle" feel.

Flesh out the city areas (I know that is planned) but make sure you help blur the line between city and jungle. Instead of it being a sharp contrast between city and jungle, I think it would look (and play) great if the jungle "crept" into urban areas. In other words, have the plants "finger" out into the city area. Don't go overboard with it and have too many trees inside the city, but give the island that "lived in" feel to it.

Again, I really like this new version a lot more. I know it is a pain in the ass, but you are really onto something great with this map - keep up the excellent work!

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Thanks for checking it out Phaedon - and for your encouragement! May need some help adding more insects and the like if I can't figure it out. Going to work on building up the urban area first.

Good points on bending the built-up area with the jungle. I'm with you on that.

[icebreakr 3157]

Lovely work Nicholas!

http://www.vojak.si/photos/bluefields.jpg

I like it - A LOT! Great stuff... all the roads set, hopefully that won't be a big town there, will it? It would be much cooler to have villages (5-20 buildings). Keep it up!

p.s. do some clearings for our Hueys to land and extract troops, will ya?

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Glad you like the map. It's based on this 1:12,500 scale topo, so the town and clearings will be what is there. I want to make the map as realistic as possible within the limits of the game engine. Don't much care for imaginary terrain, especially unrealistic topography.

This is going to take a while to complete. Placing sidewalks, buildings, etc is extremely time consuming.

[icebreakr 3157]

Excellent! If you need any more betatestings just tell me and I'll put my team in the Bluefields.

[icebreakr 3157]

Nicholas Bell: anything new?