Lift causing FPS hit even when not used?

[nick_op]

Originally posted by SACarrow
[*]An actual animated drawbridge, though the FPS issues that the lift apparently introduced into the Garden might make this idea infeasible.

Is it the lift causing the FPS issues? That sounds a little extreme. To be honest, though, I never got a chance to test it in game before slinging it over to Razorwing.

I do recall Koniption mentioning that the number of transform keys in the animation had balloned from the 3 that were in Max (probably on export).

[Koniption]

Originally posted by nick_op

Originally posted by SACarrow
[*]An actual animated drawbridge, though the FPS issues that the lift apparently introduced into the Garden might make this idea infeasible.

Is it the lift causing the FPS issues? That sounds a little extreme. To be honest, though, I never got a chance to test it in game before slinging it over to Razorwing.

I do recall Koniption mentioning that the number of transform keys in the animation had balloned from the 3 that were in Max (probably on export).

Yes, instead of the lift having 2 transform keys for "start" and "end" of the animation, it had 160 keys, for each the "up" and "down" animations. That's a huge jump in keys. I only redid and exported the collision for the lift, and never touched the animation part, though I took a peak at it.

Koniption

[SACarrow]

My question about the lift FPS hit is why it would happen if the lift is not being used? I can certainly understand the hit while it is being used, but when it is just sitting? Of course I know nothing about the AI involved either.

Steve

[nick_op]

Originally posted by SACarrow
My question about the lift FPS hit is why it would happen if the lift is not being used? I can certainly understand the hit while it is being used, but when it is just sitting? Of course I know nothing about the AI involved either.

Steve

There is no AI involved with the lift. It should just be a simple PlayGroup command called from a script.

Steve, could you think of anything in the exporter that might cause the amount of transform keys to balloon like that? I'm pretty sure I used NifTools for the transform stuff for the lift (and CivIV for the TextureTransform parts of the anim).

[sandor]

Originally posted by nick_op

Originally posted by SACarrow
An actual animated drawbridge, though the FPS issues that the lift apparently introduced into the Garden might make this idea infeasible.

Is it the lift causing the FPS issues? That sounds a little extreme.

Our play-tests (even with a stripped island, garden teaser mod) confirmed that without the lift the FPS improved drastically (on several places).

I play-tested over 250 possibilities (two comps), only after removing the lift it was playable. Zurke confirmed this as well.

Of course more play-testing by others would be appreciated.

In short, without the lift the FPS improved to >25.
With the lift it dropped to 1-2, when activating the lift --> It stayed the same.
It also affected two other areas on the island (FPS 1-2).

If the model is fine, what's causing the problems?
An interaction with something else?

EDIT
I also removed the scripts related to the lift and the levers, to no avail.

EDIT2
I tested the lift after I deleted everything around the lift area.
The FPS didn't improve.

[SACarrow]

Nick,

Could you drop off the Max scene for the lift? I know that tazpn had implemented interpolation in order to implement more intricate animation, but a lift should be pretty straightforward. It almost sounds like interpolation run amok.

Steve

[Koniption]

Hey guys,

I've sent a revised lift nif to Sandor and Razorwing. I simplified the 800 triangle + collision on the moving basket frame to just two collision box shapes, or just 24 triangles total (plus the third box shape on floor of lift basket). This might have been the issue, but I won't know til it's tested by them.

Koniption

[sandor]

Originally posted by Koniption
Hey guys,

I've sent a revised lift nif to Sandor and Razorwing. I simplified the 800 triangle + collision on the moving basket frame to just two collision box shapes, or just 24 triangles total (plus the third box shape on floor of lift basket). This might have been the issue, but I won't know til it's tested by them.

Koniption

Thank you, I'll test it right away.

[sandor]

@Koniption
I decided to test the lift in the Steadhelm area.
The new mesh improved the FPS by 2-3 compared to the previous mesh.
The overall FPS was fine (>25) even when using the lift (16-20) which is good.

Thanks for optimizing the nif.

---

blue[/HR]
For the Forgotten Garden everything remained the same. >(

I have no idea why the removal of the lift improves the FPS.

[SACarrow]

A request for either nick_op or Koniption: Could you produce a version of the lift with the same collision but totally static? When I look at the original lift mesh, there are things with the collision that make me suspect that instead of the anims (though K looks like she addressed that in version 2). I'm sure that stripping all anim data from the model can be done in NifSkope, but I'm not at that level of NifSkopery.

As for what I saw, the big thing was the ~800-tri collision mesh for the railings of the hoist. From my work with the rocks, I've seen that un-MOPPed tristrips tend to "leak" a lot in the collision calculations of the engine, and in this case a set of capsules looks like it would fill the bill. A much more minor observation is that all the CM is marked ANIM_STATIC, even the static MOPPed framework. That should only be an issue if the game engine is too "dumb" to see that that part of the mesh is not controlled by the anim manager.

BTW how is the animation for the ropes controlled? Is that with texture animation or actual vertex movement?

All for now,
Steve