FuXor3d Framerate

So, you want to know about frame rate and what will cause problems in your Urban Terror map? That’s good, because NRGizeR is here to offer up some information on how to prevent killing your frame rate. Here are a few questions that seem to come up often [this time from nova] when creating a level:

1) Can anybody list the most important determinants of frame rate. I imagine the number of brushes in current view are important, but I was wondering about texture pixel sizes. Does it slow the frame-rate down to have a large texture on a small brush even if just a small portion of the original texture is visible? What do you do to speed up your frame-rates?

2) What brush do you put the breakable transparent window texture? I’ve been using caulk and it’s working fine. Dunno if nodraw will work cuz then they might not be able to receive impact and brake, or what?

3) Can I use the official UT-map skybox textures without a special permission? What about other official UT-textures from the mapmedia.pk3 file?

Here is some information which may help you mappers:

1) Actually the brushes in your view isn’t what causes low FPS, but the polys generated. (to view all the polys start your map with /devmap yourmap and then r_showtris 1) I’m saying this because a structure brush can often generate much more polys than just two as a detail brush does (per face).

Other stuff that can affect your FPS are transparencies. Lots of transparent shaders will cause low FPS, this is why the FPS outside swim are low, since the snow is really just a bunch of crossed over transparent shaders.

Texture doesn’t lower your FPS as long as they fit into the texture memory of your Graphics card. If this limit is passed, the computer will have to start swapping, and thus lower the FPS somewhat.

To speed up your map you either have to have a good layout that will be good at blocking VIS, or you will have to help the engine out by placing hint brushes at strategical places. You can also lower r_speeds (polycount) by intelligent use of detail brushes and caulks.

2) You shouldn’t use any nodraw or caulk on your glass, since the backside of the glass is automatically removed (with cull back) in the shader. So you will gain nothing from caulking/nodrawing any side of the glass, as long as you’re using urban_terror3/glass_clear for your glass.

3) You can use all of the shaders/textures/skies/sounds and all other stuff that you might find in the official UT .pk3’s as long as they are used for UT maps. If you’re planning on using the mapmedia from UT for a different game or MOD you will have to ask permission from the authors of the files you want to use.

I will be gone, so chances are there will be no new news for tomorrow. That is what there are two updated for Monday, the 5th of February. Look for a new review this week, along with more new screen shots of up and coming levels for Urban Terror. Hopefully the resident expert, NRGizeR will be able to drop in and give some more mapping information to assist in your creations.

The Link of the Day comes from Bar-B-Q, who was interested in this job posting. If you are out of work or looking for work, Click here to fill the position. Thanks for the heads up, Q!