A few technical questions about what the editor can handle

[Loony]

Hello All,

I've got a few technical questions concerning the editor and the game in general:

PolyCount

I'm populating a complex interior scene and in the editor the total poly count it reads so far is a little over 3 million, the scene i am making is still in its infancy and well there's a lot of other stuff I want to place inside this interior scene. These objects are not all in one place but different sections of the interior. When I run the game i get 30-40fps on my pc with everything on max and running a few other programs at the same time. I'm worried that later on down the line the editor might start having problems loading the scene or even the game itself wont load the scene. How does oblivion as a game and oblivion as an editor handle things? Is the editor's poly count very durable and able to handle what I have in stored for it next? and as for the game does it only render what the player can see? Or is it loading/rendering all 3mill polys at once? I'm hoping someone can enlighten me when it comes to the technical limitations of the game/editor.

Animations

I wanted to add some idle object animations, like a cup moving across a table and then back to its place and then across the table... you know, loot translation animations. I didnt want to go to maya or max to do this as I've investigated it and it proved near impossible or at least not worth the effort. I wrote a script that does this beautifully and I was wondering, if I have like 20 objects eternally running a script and moving around in the interior, is this heavily damaging and taxing on the game? Or is it not a problem at all?

Cheers and thanks in advance for whoever answers

[InsanitySorrow]

Scripts do not effect performance unless they are very large and running pretty much every frame. Running 20 small scripts to move objects should not have any impact on FPS what so ever, but I would suggest merging the scripts into maybe one quest script that controls them all. This would make things easier for you, but also cut down on the number of required scripts.

[Loony]

yea the scripts were intended just to test the ability to animate via scripting, I can now refine them much more knowing that things wont implode down the line. However when it comes to the script Im basically using the Begin GameMode block with a flag and timers that switches between the animations

life to write the code in pseudo it will look like this:

Begin GameMode

/move from its place

if(stageFlag == 0)

if(timer < 5)

timer = timer - getsecondspassed

position = position + 0.2

cup.setPos X position

else

stageFlag = 1

timer = 5

endif

//move back to its palce

if(stageFlag == 4)

if(timer < 5)

timer = timer - getsecondspassed

position = position - 0.2

cup.setPos X position

else

stageFlag = 0

timer = 5

endif

does that mean the scripts are running at every frame? Is this a bad approach?

Im more worried about the poly count though things seem to be going great in the editor even with 3mill polies and the game still maintains a pretty high frame rate when I am in that area. How do interiors work? Do visible objects only get rendered ? Does that mean I can add as many objects and polygons as I want in the editor as long as the player doesn't see a large number of things?

Thanks again

[InsanitySorrow]

I am unsure about interiors since I really don't deal with them, but IIRC all objects in the interior get rendered, so everything you add will be loaded up by the game when the player enters the interior. I know that most modders keep track of the faces I think it is in the bottom right of the editor screen, I can't remember the exact number given but I did see a recommended amount which I think was about 200,000.

So maybe sticking within that range might be best

[Loony]

Hello Again

I think I might have confused the lingo a bit. When the player enters the interior all the objects are loaded, that is all the objects references that i placed will be there but what im asking is if all the objects are rendered. I dont believe they are by rendered I mean the actual physical model is shown to the player. Similar to exteriors you dont see everything from miles and miles away u see the LOD files for example of trees on a forest and those are rendered but you dont see the critters roaming about, you don't see the grass/rocks/items/plants...etc when you approach that area only then do they become rendered. Im wondering if that is the case with interiors, if it is it might explain how I am getting away with 3 Million (I know where they read the poly count in the editor and so far it says 3022813 which is basically 3mil).

So does anyone have a clue about that?

P.S. i dont think 200K is a very fair number since if you examine some of oblivion's interiors you find 800K 500K 300K and so on

[SickleYield]

When you say they're in different sections of the interior, do you mean just in different areas, or are these actually different cells (i.e. are there loading doors between them)?

[Loony]

No loading doors, it is all part of one cell but the objects are pretty far apart while playing not everything is shown.

[SickleYield]

Yep, that'll be why.

I don't know the exact mechanics of the game engine (I'm just a modeler/texturer), but I do know it doesn't fully render things you're not looking at - just looking away from a mob of baddies that are destroying my framerate can cause it to pick up enough for me to run to where I can't see them all.

Large, stationary hires objects that are not all visible at once are less apt to be a problem than small, animated hires objects that are in a visible array, is what I'm saying. You might need to put a rider in the readme with your own system specs and "don't play this with Oldblivion," but otherwise I wouldn't worry.

[peachykeen]

It has to do with culling. I know Morrowind had a strong culling engine, and I think Oblivion (and possibly anything Gamebryo) follows that trend. The general idea is the less you can see at once, the faster it runs. NPCs still have their AI processed when you can see them, but statics (walls and such) only need to be processed either when you can see them or some physics object can interact. Most/all physics engines (Havok and PhysX included) have a second level of physics culling, where still objects are disabled after a time.

All in all, just make sure you visually break up the cell enough, and you should be good. Load-doors are also good, just to reduce strain further (and speed up load times, 10 little cells looks like it loads faster than 1 big one).

[SickleYield]

Culling! Yes!

-Has learned a new term-

-Does a little dance-

[Loony]

Yea I figured as much, thanks SickleYield and peachykeen

im trying to avoid loading screens as much as possible in my game specially in interiors. I'll just make sure things are easily spaced and test it out on several PCs.

Thanks again

[shadeMe]

Take a look at the armor test warehouse - That should give you a good example. The cell is crammed full and the culling is quite obvious.

[Loony]

Thanks, Ill give it a look