Scene editing: is lag a problem?

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I am currently working on a settlement where the city is quite dense. Many houses, tight streets and such. I am considering adding alot of clutter (brooms, small crates, broken items, etc. etc. etc)
I think it will make the city look more alive, but Im worrying about lag. Will many small items make a lot of lag when you are in the settlement or make a long loading time to enter it?

I just want to hear what ppl know about this, cuz I dont want to do a lot of work that will just cause lag for everyone who uses my settlement when its done.
 
In my experience these settlements have a longer loading time but I had no lag after that.
But I can't tell you how much is too much. If you enter Falconpass with e1+ you will see a field of wheat, it's made out of 200 plants or so and I added dozens of grapes and weapons and armor and so on, so I think you can still place many items before loading time is too long. If clutter makes the map look better - add it.
But the problem with the tight streets will be the wandering peasants, they are not that good at navigating (unless you restrict them to the market place).
 
Making alot of items won't make lagg fast but making an field of wheat like i got in my settlement(cuijk)
Then it will carry lagg when your near it.
 
Berpol, Ive already noticed the problem with NPCs getting stuck. Think that AI limiters will help a little bit with that.
Well the conclusion will be that I'll add lots of clutter, and cut a bit down on the wheat field I was planning...
 
Diavolo said:
...and cut a bit down on the wheat field I was planning...
Or don't use wheat. One reason I added the grapes was that you can fill a lot more space with them than with wheat (the other was the terrain).
 
In my scene building & game play experience, more objects simply means a slightly longer loading time - although most of the time it's not even noticeable.

Lag only becomes an issue when you have lots of light sources acting on many many "clusters" of smaller objects at once. This too however, is relatively minor. The situation worsens when you have lots of "plants" (most things under that category,  for some reason or another, tend to do drain performance more heavily than normal props). And the ultimate cause in lag is water (due to the reflections that need to be generated).

In reality though, using one or more of these aspects in your scene is fine; just try to keep instances where you have Tons of clutter objects + Light sources + water all within the same proximity. (The light will need to act on the plants which will cast their own shadows which will all be reflected by the water).

If you spread out such "overlap" situations, you can actually put in a great deal of "lag-heavy" things (i.e plants) into one scene and come out just fine!

 
Diavolo said:
Berpol, Ive already noticed the problem with NPCs getting stuck. Think that AI limiters will help a little bit with that.
Well the conclusion will be that I'll add lots of clutter, and cut a bit down on the wheat field I was planning...
Don't use AI limiters.

If NPCs are getting stuck move their entrypoints to get paths that don't get them stuck.  AI limiters restrict the players horse, so they're horrible for outdoor scenes.
The only time AI limiters are good are for deep water or steep hills, as the player and NPCs shouldn't go there.

Use AI meshes if you can, but if you can't, then simply choose better paths for the entrypoints.  I don't want invisible walls around that also affect the players while theyre riding.
 
Diavolo said:
I understand, I'll only use AI limiters on places where noone are supposed to go.
And then work on placing the entry points on perfect places to prevent stuckness.

you can use ai meshes to deal with pathing problems. they're really easy to use once you get into it.
just use "create AI mesh" if you have not done so before. the result is a "net" of meshes
filling the whole map. in this state the ai will go everywhere (so it's the same as before).
now you just have to remove "faces" in places where you DON'T want the ai to go in the future (like buildings, walls etc.)
and move the remaining around a bit.
just make sure to save often, because the ai mesh editing mode likes to crash in certain situations.

ai meshes example:

mb13.jpg
 
Diavolo said:
nice, Ill give it a try. Maybe I'll interrogate you a bit later if I cant figure it out.  :mrgreen:

np, just ask if you have a question.  :smile:
as a second note, be careful not to remove too much, especially outside the town. this can lead to strange behaviour of your companions or troops, when they try to follow you.
i first removed meshes also in places like steep mountains and such, but this just led to troops walking around half the map just because i went down a steep hill...  :roll:
 
mukk, do you have any tips for when placing an AI mesh? I have done one for my e2m2 now, and it is very hard to make it look like it will help. On your picture it looks so perfect, while I just cant get the faces to be where I want them to. Also the biggest problem Im having is that there are so many faces that I have to remove that are underneath houses.

Any tips or techniques you would like to share with an AI mesh n00b?
 
I have suprisingly enugh managed to a certain point to make an AI mesh. Its not perfect, but the AI doesnt walk so into walls, and they can get everywhere they "want" to get on the map.
Have no idea what you can do to avoid crashing, I just pressed edit ai mesh, and then create mesh or what it was, and then removed and fixed everything I had to fix.

how did you do it? and when did it crash? cuz its really good to get the ai mesh, keeps odd behaviour from the npcs to a minimum.  :grin:
 
Diavolo said:
how did you do it? and when did it crash? cuz its really good to get the ai mesh, keeps odd behaviour from the npcs to a minimum.  :grin:
I pressed the button to generate the mesh, it appeared, M&B crashed when I tried to move over the map.
Actually I don't need the mesh, I plan to position the peasants so that they don't have any big obstacle in their way - I was just trying to get a look at it. The problem might be that the map is of maximum size.
 
the big map size might have something to say in the matter. Have noticed that AI mesh takes quite a lot of space, (compared to normal scene files) and that when you remove tiles (to make places the AI cant go), it takes less and less space. So you could make the entire mesh by adding one and one face, but if you dont need it I wouldnt reccomend it since its kinda a lot of work. hehe  :grin:
 
Perhaps in the third one, depending on the complexity of the city.
With number 2 (Staphurt) I will keep all wandering peasants on the market place and out of the back streets.
 
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