DONT JUST WATCH THE VIDEO.YOU'll BE DISSAPOINTED.
Ok, the attached video is NOT a showcase of great level design, or anything like that... it's a demonstration of how to get alot more active hostiles in one room, without losing all your Frames Per Second. (beginner users*, frames per second, or FPS are the speed of the game, if they're low it'll be slow and poopy).
Ok, so the whole concept of combat in FPSC has been bugging me for a while, my two main problems being:
1)Enemies can shoot you through boxes, (or any other form of cover) etc, so there is little point in making cover.
2)Only 2 enemies ever seem to activate at once, and even then the FPS dies.
So, I may have a kind of solution...
Enemies Cannot see through segments.
I started to play around in TGC segment creator, and created some segments, that were only a floor piece, ontop of the floor piece I made a few piles of crates.
The engine now considers the crates to be SOLID, and therefore enemies cannot see or shoot through them. Furthermore, When an active object is behind a segment wall the engine doesn't 'think' about it (render it?) so, when an enemy is behind a crate he deactives, allowing other (visible) enemies a chance to activate.
I made a 7x9 unit room, with 5 enemies in it.
I run a 2ghz AMD with 1G ram and a 256mb graphics card.
>Regular FPS (without my segmentboxes) was about 15-20FPS
>same battle (with segment boxes) was about 26-33FPS
I dont know if this helps others (maybe it's just my PC), but I hope maybe some other people can try it, cuz it could be the way forward y'know.
Anyway, check out the video and see what you think.. you have to admit it looks fun!
*Thought I'd say beginner users insead of noobs. more politically correct?!
Ps, sorry about the jump in the middle of the footage, Fraps benchmarked and the video cut out for a sec
"It's often better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're an idiot, than to open it and confirm their suspisions" - Noel Coward