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FPSC Classic Product Chat / Low FPS Using FPS Creator

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Daniel Silverman
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Posted: 30th Sep 2005 22:16
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I was testing FPS Creator using the SciFi1 game included and noticed that I was getting very low FPS in the runing game. In most areas the FPS was 17. In the vent areas it was 33. I was using the standard 1024 x 768 screen resolution. Here are my computer specs:

PIV 3.2 GHz w/HT
2GB RAM
GeForce 6800 Ultra (256 MB)
Win XP Pro SP2

Is anyone else having FPS problems with FPS Creator?
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Merranvo
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 00:48
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everyone!!! Expect delays like this, expecally hi-res.

Merranvo, taking over the net, one forum at a time.

"ye oft de adopte early shalt move mountains, and be gods among men"
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Raven
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 00:56
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Daniel, thank you for posting this.
To let you know, 30-35FPS is the Maximum you can get. The System is locked to 30FPS, which I am going to ask to be doubled as modern games should be running at 60FPS.

Especially using the Dark Game Engine as for some reason it doesn't react to FPS under 60 as well as other Engines do.
For example Half-Life 2 is quite smooth at 30FPS, so there are some obvious render<->control issues.

Ignoring that I have discovered several things that will slow down the framerate. Each of these things will be brought to Lee's attention to try and find a quick solution after Dark Basic Professional Update 5.9 is completed next week.

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Zero #43
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:01 Edited at: 1st Oct 2005 01:01
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ummmm.... i usually run at about 20-25 fps... maybbbbe 30 if i am lucky

my specs are:

Dual 3.4ghz Processor Speed (<< Laptop)
1GB RAM
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700 Series (or make it sound cool: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700 PRO)

WINDOWS XP SP 2

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor w/ HT Technology 3.4GHz 800MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache, 1GB DDR PC-2700 at 333MHz - 1x1024 SO-DIMM, ATI RADEON™ 9550 256MB DDR(<<soon ), 80GB Hard Drive
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Merranvo
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:02
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What, excessive objects in an area...
Excessive scripts running in an area

Plr Seeing the running object scripts
Exessive Collsions in an area...


most of the time it is pretty easy to tell what is causing it. Using low res textures generally speeds it up, and they aren't that bad.

Merranvo, taking over the net, one forum at a time.

"ye oft de adopte early shalt move mountains, and be gods among men"
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Zero #43
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:06
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ya thats what i always use that and quick lightmapping

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor w/ HT Technology 3.4GHz 800MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache, 1GB DDR PC-2700 at 333MHz - 1x1024 SO-DIMM, ATI RADEON™ 9550 256MB DDR(<<soon ), 80GB Hard Drive
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Raven
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:13
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Quote: "What, excessive objects in an area...
Excessive scripts running in an area

Plr Seeing the running object scripts
Exessive Collsions in an area..."


In my experience. Z-Buffer errors, caused by the Z-Buffer Range being too small. When Surfaces overlap it eats up extra cycles trying to figure out how to render them.

Another point is the Portal System, which beam casts (as does the physics). This is good but really the levels themselves are always full of leak points. So what that needs is to be made so that it only portalises a collision mesh. Same goes for objects, it would be better rather than the engine doing a Per-Polygon Collision which is slow; you use a Collision Object creator.

So you can make the collision mesh. This is a technique used industry-wide because it's painful colliding with high-polygon scenes.

The entity scripts can be slow too, but far less important than other aspects.

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Cellbloc Studios
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:16
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@Daniel Silverman:

I swear to god you follow me around the internet...

-This...is my boomstick!
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Daniel Silverman
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 01:42
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@Cellbloc Studios,

I am afraid that I do not know who you are (not by this nick, anyway).

@Raven,

Quote: "To let you know, 30-35FPS is the Maximum you can get. The System is locked to 30FPS, which I am going to ask to be doubled as modern games should be running at 60FPS."


I figured that, but this does not explain why throughout most of the level I get 17 FPS.

BTW - I did not build the level myself. Instead I used one of the example levels that shipped with FPS Creator to test the app.

@All Others,

On my PC I can run most 3D games at between 1200 x 1024 to 1600 x 1200 with great frame rates. On test levels built in another engine I can sometimes get more than 200 FPS and I have to lock the FPS down in order to control it better. So I know my system can handle games. Besides that, I create real-time 3D content for a living, so I know a thing or two about RT3D content. I just cannot understand why such a sparce game level like the SciFi1 level would run so slowly.
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uman
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 04:14
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With regard to fps and the cap on it - there should (what needs to be aimed for) be no upward limit - the limit should be one of a minimum limit, whether imposed or by nature of the engine and the content used in a game.

Whatever the pros and cons and dos and donts regarding speed issues in truth a game that falls below 30fps at any stage is not good enough to meet with modern gameplay expectations.

Starting with an empty level at 32 frames per second in FPSC does not give you a lot of leeway when adding content and designing levels. You will need to be very, very clever to create a modern professional quality game at that starting fps and still maintain acceptable fps.

A professional game engine should be limited only (and either) by system capability or alternatively be efficient enough to sustain a high enough base fps to allow creative gamemaking of modern standards without falling through the floor as development progresses.

Theres nothing wrong with capping an actual finished game at 30fps on game run so that anyone with a reasonably modern computer can play it and ensuring that gameplay speeds are consistent across all machines - gameplay as the game designer intended it to be. But capping the designer at 30fps max in a development environment from the start - just kills the game designers potential to be creative. If that is done as it is in FPSC its because the engine has no further capability otherwise it would be released. If you have high enough capability, then the game designer should be given control of the fps in script so as to adjust it to suit the game as development dictates, if you have only 30fps max capability then you have no options at all only the possible falling of fps as your game develops.

The question of FPS has been debated in relation to game engines since the cave man and there are some people for this, some for that. Mostly there are reasons why you cant do this or you cant do that because the engine is not efficient enough. There are slow and slower engines, and fast and even faster engines and this is often reflected in the quality and gameplay speed of games that are made with them.

Dont know about the engines, but I know which games I would rather play.

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Cellbloc Studios
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 04:17
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What I am wondering is when the Source Code is released, what happens when you "uncap" it. More than likely they reason they may have capped it is for timing issues during game play. By setting it at a number, all multiplayer, single player will run at a specific rate.

But we shall see.

-This...is my boomstick!
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Lon
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 06:42
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o.k. listen to this one. I was testing a level a while back and everything all of a sudden went super smooth and ran hyper speed. the movement and sounds also did this it was like being in a fast forward movie and the fps read 80 something. Its only happened a few times. The thing is this proves it can go faster.
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Merranvo
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 06:52
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no, it proves that the program has errors.

You can't get more out of it then possible. 1 law of thermodynamics.

Second, what you said didn't make sense- you would not notice a difference if it runs at 80 or 30... given that it really was 30fps. The human eye can't see faster then 30fps. And sounds would not be effected... movement is okay, that happens when the processor dumps all the data back into the program, kinda after a freeze. But that type of error only last's a few seconds. mabey 3 at max. and is not a good thing. Your computer may not be powerful enough to run it propperly.

Merranvo, taking over the net, one forum at a time.

"ye oft de adopte early shalt move mountains, and be gods among men"
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Pandemoniac
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 07:44
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I had that problem once too Lon... I didn't check the exact FPS but everything started running in fast-forward! very strange.

It doesn't take much to slow it to a crawl usually, and I have a p4 2.8 ghz, 1 gb ram and a GEforce 6800 GT w/ 256mb 1ghz gddr ram... I can run a comfortable average of 35 fps in Doom3, and that's with Ultra quality in 1280x1024 with 4x anti-aliasing!
I'd say there must be some serious efficiency issues that can hopefully be addressed in future updates. It runs ok but it takes far more computing HP than what seems neccessary...
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transient
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 13:01
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If you hit X while profiling test level it syncs the game as fast as possible.

I don't think you can turn the sync off in-game, but it might give you a better indication of fpsc's potential frame rates.

I believe most hard-core gamers would ideally want median frame rates of 60 or more(you can notice the difference - the higher the "average" frame-rate, the less potential for lag).

This would be great for fpsc, but i think it's pretty awesome already.

Just a thought..
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Lon
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 17:12 Edited at: 1st Oct 2005 17:34
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Yep transient, its the x button that does it for me. Try it Merranvo then you'll see what I was trying to explain. The fps goes up to 113 in some cases and is fast as h e double hockey sticks. But it's supposed to do that for testing purposes like it says in the manual. Hitting "t" makes it ho back to normal. For dumb on my part.

Lon
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Daniel Silverman
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 17:29
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Quote: "The human eye can't see faster then 30fps."


This is not actually true. The human eye can indeed see more than 30 FPS. When it comes to TV a speed of about 24 (or so, depending on NTS or PAL) was used because of the display of a TV. The screen resolution of a TV set is very low and the refresh rate of each dot (pixel) is very slow. The result is blurring. This blurring results in fooling the eye into thinking that the images on the TV are moving as one frame is blurred into the next. As a result of the slow refresh rate of a TV set no more than 30 FPS would be needed to simulate smooth motion.

This is not the case with computer monitors. They have much faster refresh rates and higher resolutions. There is less "blurring" (due to the refresh rates) and thus the human eye can see a lot more FPS than on a TV. As a result, most games aim for at least 60+ FPS.

To cap FPS Creator to around 30 is very wrong. If there is to be any upward cap then it should be at 60+. Frankly, they should allow the game designer to set the cap (if any).

Quote: "What I am wondering is when the Source Code is released, what happens when you "uncap" it. More than likely they reason they may have capped it is for timing issues during game play. By setting it at a number, all multiplayer, single player will run at a specific rate."


No. FPS only affects how many frames are being displayed on your monitor. The game engine should use some other timing mechanism for the actual game stuff (i.e. running, firing weapons, etc).

In any caes, my main concern is the overall speed of FPS Creator. I think the tool has potential, but if I am going to get only 17 FPS in a level with very little detail then there seem to be a problem that needs to be addressed.
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Anlino
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 18:05
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I have around 30-33 all the time. 2.4 Ghz Celeron, 512 mb ram, Fx 5200 128 mb. But The computer is new, and the HD is pretty much empty.
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Merranvo
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Posted: 1st Oct 2005 21:45
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Ohh... I was refering to a Problem I had when on an older machien 244mhz... I was running RTCW and would have hold-ups, then speeds increased greatly as it caught up.

Now can some one tell me why lee hasn't made a simple code...

PLRSPEED=100/FPS

this would correct plr slow movement in low FPS realms and plr high movement in HIGH FPS realms.

Merranvo, taking over the net, one forum at a time.

"ye oft de adopte early shalt move mountains, and be gods among men"
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Pulsar Coder
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2005 10:10
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I know I've said it before but don't use venctilation ducts since that would dramatically decrease FPS count, in most of the cases.
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Daniel Silverman
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2005 20:39
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Quote: "I know I've said it before but don't use venctilation ducts since that would dramatically decrease FPS count, in most of the cases."


This is not the case either. It is not the fact that it is a ventilation duct or not. It is how it is constructed (complex geometry or not, etc). In any case, in the level I tested I was getting the best speeds in the ducts (as I would guess because visibility is very limited).
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