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I just bought FPS Creator, and I have been messing around making a level. It seems the more I add, the slower the frame rate gets when I test the level. I have converted a lot of Dynamic items into Static, hoping that will cure the problem, but doesn't. I'm pretty sure I have a powerful enough computer ( 1 gig ram, ATI Radion 9200, 2.6 GHz Celeron). What am I doing wrong? I've looked through the instructions, but haven't found anything to fix this problem.... Can anyone help?

get a new graphics card or kill items in your level

I wouldn't call a ATI Radion 9200 and a 2.6 GHz Celeron powerful though. The Celeron I would call decent, but the Radeon 9200 is outdated and lacks serious power, it's more the 5 years old.

Don't just add more and more items to an FPSC level, it just can't handle it. You can create a good and smooth running game, but it takes trial and error. Take your time to learn and browse through the forum, there are lot's of posts on bad frame rates, slow fps, slow games and such and in those threads you gain find lot's of good advice.

Here's some advice.... first of all build your level only with segments, doors, windows, platforms and such. Test it. If it runs 31-33 fps, you're level design is good. If it drops below 31 at this point, the design is bad.

Once the 'empty' level runs smooth, SLOWLY start adding entities and static objects. Make sure you switch physics off on most of the entities. Test again, runs around 30fps, you've done well. Drops under 25 fps, you've already placed to much entities in the level, or to much in one space.

Do not create huge open rooms, with lot's of entities in it, place only a few in it. Do not create small rooms with lot's of entities. Preferable place 2 or 3 at the most.

First, dont use full lightmapping! And try not use to mutch of small entities as bottles, phones etc. Try to spread out the enemys, dont have everybody in the same room. Another thing that slows down FPSC is Walkpoints dont have to many of them eather. But the best thing You can do is to buy DBP and speed up with the source code! Then You shourld have at least 60fps.
And by the way, dont use full shaders!

I courld have! But not to a person that is a thief, You have stolen the name Menu Extreme, change it NOW!!!

Mr. Love,
Please don't start this crap again.
Maybock,
Right click on your static entities and shut the physics off.That might help.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll start making levels and slowly adding to them. I'll get a new graphics card someday.

Mr. Love is right about the lights and stuff. Keep dynamic lighting to a minimum, and update that processor.

check the physics on each entity. many are STATIC with physics set to ON.
very annoying and it will slow you down.

Randbo, I've been thinking about that also, but I'm not 100% sure if that is the case. Wouldn't setting an entity to static bypass the physics alltogether? Anyone know for sure?

I read in another thread somewhere that just because an entity is static does not necessarily mean that its physics is shut off.Think about it this way.Do you trust the game engine to shut off the physics just because it is a static entity.I'm not being critical of FPSC I am just pointing out the only way to make sure is to set the physics to no yourself by editing your static entity.Then you know the physics is turned off.I have found that it does make my game run smoother if I turn off the physics on my static entities.
It will make the game load faster since it has to create less physics.At least that has been my experience.
If we are really nice and say please maybe Uman will pop in and enlighten us.He knows for sure.

I has returned and everyone else,

Sorry I dont post here so often these days.

Unfortuneately I dont know for sure what FPSC does in its internal workings and exactly why it does it. I am not sure anyone does - even TGC and if they do they dont support the user here with their knowledge.

Thus we are left to interpret for ourselves what goes on inside FPSC and how what we do affects actual gameplay.

As you know I have been working with FPSC for - well since the first day of EA release which is over one and a half years or thereabouts and still trying to understand everything and get more out of the product. During that time most of what I have been doing is partly building just a couple of levels and much experimentation with FPSC in as many areas as is possible while I like evryone else await some hopeful improvements in any update.

What I can tell you is as the original poster pointed out:



Quite true and true of all game engines. Quite obviously in an engine that has a capped max fps at around 33 fps this will mean from start of level building in any empty level you have a constant fight on your hands to maintain reasonable fps as you add content - it cant be any other way.

As to what you can do to help maintain that fps - thats complex and well documented by myself and many others here - Unfortunately - stuff does not stay categorised in a well documented manner at this forum so a search is the only option. Everything should be categorised - so for instance all posts about Gameplay speeds should be kept in a forum section of its own and so forth. But that wont happen I guess. We cant all keep writing the same stuff repeatedly.

As to the relativity of the Physics setting dialogue box in editor - As I understand it from Lees indications regarding the "Always Active" flag in the physics settings for instance - even if Physics is set to No or Off in the dialogue box - the Always Active flag should still work independantly so indicating that even though Phisics is set to OFF all other settings below that flag can still have a bearing on entities. Thus if they are not relative they should be set appropriately to Off or No or zero - Characters work best I find set to weight and friction at 500 or they may have probs moving. The default settings seems to be to heavy for them. By the way the "Alwatys Active" flag seems to be bugged and does not work anyway under user influence and entities are Always Active permanently once their main AI script is called irrespective of player proximity. They never switch off their AI unless you script it so yourself so theres no better reason to remove them on the fly if not needed.

In truth because FPSC is bug ridden no one knows what in some cases actually works as it should and what does not - so it cant be trusted. You either put in the work to ensure entities do what "You" want them to or rely on the engine and its defaults.

It can be a lot of hard work to save a few fps making sure every single entity is controlled manually by you - the tip here is to make your changes or settings to the first entity you place and then just place the rest you need when attached to the cursor - effectively copying them - that way you save going through every single occurance of the same entity individually. Do it once and then copy.

One big help in saving fps and ovecoming lagg in slow areas is to look in wireframe in test run and see what may be rendering outside of the scene in the immediate view - perhaps sometinmes things render even at the other side of a level when they should not. In wireframe you can see that - take steps to stop them rendring or activating. Use the load and unloading of entities method if you have to. If necessary turn static entities to dynamic ones and load unload them on player proximity - it may help - it may not and may waste your time - if you dont try you wont know. Theres not much choice - you take control or you leave it to FPSC defaults.

Dont take it that what FPSC or game engines in general should do is written in stone in this instance - this is FPSC.

Unfortuneately all this can be an unecessary burden on the end user but theres no other way currently until and if we ever get a better, more efficient and faster engine and even then it will never be fast enough (but woould certainly help) and will still require user optimisation to get the best from it.

I dont expect to see that any time soon so I would suggest that unless you want a lot of hard work users stick to making simple games using the default media - I wont but thats another story.

see ya

Thanks,Uman.

Hey op89x, dont You think it will look a bit boring without dynamic lighting? The most important is to turn off the lightmapping! By the way Celeron isnt good when playing 3d games. (That is at least what I have been told.)
I wourld recommend You to buy a Pentium 4. Then You can be sure it will work well!

you can use static lighting to achieve some good effects.

Indeed... I have once used all 100 lights in such a manner that my rooms were all half lit, making a very enticing gaming environment.
On my laptop, I got a decent 20FPS on top, and 30FPS on the bottom... (polyleaks)

Of course, this is pre-enemy.


Now, one of the best ways to get rid of lag, is to use short AI. I might work on it if I can get my mind working right... but it is really a simple concept.

The first problem with AI is that it has some very 'laggy' commands in it, such as plrcanbeseen or plringunsight. What you want to do is reduce the script down to but 6 lines of code, making sure to use plrcanbeseen sparingly... perhapse only activated every 100th random. Just making things stupider, but faster to run.


Another important thing is to remeber turns, keep turning, and you can get faster FPS. Even build mini hallways to allow quick passage between rooms instead of forcing the plr to move though a lagged up area.


The problem with FPSC is that you need to use it alot to finally get to know the engine... sometimes you get areas where you get a COMPLETE stop, typically just deleting and replacing fixes that... but that is just a sample of the things that you will learn.



Also, static objects do not undergo physics reactions except for collisons because they are attached to the map. Dynamic Objects with physics off sometimes still undergo physics reactions... I think it has to do with collisions, but I can't be certain.

I just got FPS Creator and my computer is a 2.0 AMD64, 1.5gb ram, 256mb Gforce 6600 and I got good frame rate for a while but as I added on it got slower and slower and I figured out why, It wasent the dynamic objects or the lighting, it was the doors... I put about 4 fake doors in the level and every time I would fave one the frame rate would drop about 15 frames, the reason is that the door is an entity therefor it is not solid, you may not beable to walk through it but the computer renders the stuff on the otherside of it, it is like a open space, so what I did was cover all the fake doors with a little room so that when you look at the door it just renders that room and not everything outside of it. Same thing with the airvents, just make a room aound it and framerate should boost. It worked for me.