The Lone Programmer,
There are a lot of threads at this forum regarding speed issue posted over a long period of time - many of them quote well known principles of good BSP type level design which is fair comment perhaps.
However BSP and engines in general and machines specs have moved on somewhat over the years since the bsp format was invented such good design principles became well known.
FPSC by and large does not utilise the level rendering of process efficiently, has some bugs and the engine is slow, there are also specic issues to FPSC regarding the capabilities it has with AI thoght process handling which are quite inefficient.
Having said all this there are ways specifically in indoor levels at least to keep levels at high fps. These are most directly "in my experience" and I stress that point, seemingly most related to the sealing of level completely - that means every instance of any possibility of any leak wherever it may occur. This relates to the point of good level design, particularly important here. That does not mean it has to be always unduely resrtrictive.
As an example which may be helpful to all and relates specifically to static world objects of any nature. (segments or static entities)
For example if you take a curved or corner wall segment. Never, ever place this alone but always insert an outer series of normal wall segments which will encompass the curved walls and form an outer surrounding room which even if never seen in gameplay, nevertheless seals the level part off and prevents leaks. This principle goes for all building structures and is particularly releveant also to other potential offending objects such as door areas, windows - and corridor and duct areas that can it seems lead to leakages. Seal it all off and you will save fps.
Dynamic entities and particularly AI thinking enemies are another matter - actually AI thinking and thought processes are a well known drain in all engines - Advanced AI requires a lot of math - the more sphisticated the AI processes including pathfinding the bigger the drain and engine designers are all always under pressure find the best solution to their particular engine needs. FPSC is not well optimised for this and as a result AI enemies are a big drain on fps. This is not really particular to FPSC as an engine - though the point could be made that if you need and include AI and pathfinding which would be a good idea in an FPS engine, then that capability should be just that - capable. Suffice to say many users will find that they cant utilise the number of dynamic entities especially enemies they may like to see in their games.
FPSC is capable within limits - what those limits are exactly in various scenarios I personally have not fully come to a conclusion on.
By and large I am only now when getting to stages of coming close to pushing FPSC to limits how optimising can best be achieved and where the user in fact cannot achieve possibly by any means the kind of efficiencies required in large complex levels. My assessments continue.
Needless to say in theory the better your system the better FPSC games should run. In reality thats not always the case as it depends much upon a particular system design at the manufacturer core component side as much as it does with the user influence and how and what software technologies etc have been installed or added.
I can say that I have two main systems I have tested where I can run games on made with FPSC. One is approximately twice the age and power of the other, yet it runs FPSC in both editor development and final gameplay more smoothy than the newer more powerful machine. Clearly a difference in machine manufacture or FPSC preference or both, nothing more that I can ascertain as both machines run the same user software installations. FPSC is much happier on one machine than another despite a vast difference in power and more modern hardware - it prefers the lesser, older machine.
In my opinion not agreed with by many I know. Engine Quality should in theory not necessarily have anything to do with the price of the software. However in reality thats invariably not the case.
Certainly FPSC is a slow engine overall for a variety of reasons and is both memory and cpu intensive being a very agressive program suggests the code is somewhat inefficient and or the engine struggles to keep up with the math much of the time. One cannot expect to run it on a low spec machine. That said it seems that the results are somewhat erratic across a wide variety of systems.
If an individual as in your case cannot run FPSC efficiently enough to make gameplay viable - then you have only a couple of options. Keep the level content minimal, optimise everything and use the good design parctices mentioned and if that fails then you have no option but a better machine, with no guarantee that in fact that will solve the problems but should certainly help somewhat towards your goal of smooth gameplay speeds.
Effectively FPSC games require more of everything (higher system specs and more hard work from the gamemaker) than AAA titles by and large to succeed during gameplay as the engine is just not as efficient as that used in the making of High End commercial titles.
