Computer Speed for Lounge

[Mr. Giggles]

I thought I'd make a quick pole before moving on with the lounge. Through the use of carefully tested lod, mipmapping, areaportals, occluders, and so on, the lounge could be made heavily detailed with little performance impact.

LoD (Level of Detail) is used in nearly any game, but is used majorly in most valve games. Essentially at X distance (listed in the QC file), the model will swap to a lower lod mesh. It's usually fairly the same as the original model, with a few small details and such removed and the rest made lower poly. Multiple lod models can be used for a single mesh. (Original -> LOD1 (less polys) -> LOD2 (even less polys)), which usually hits a max of 5 or 6 swaps. At larger distances, player models may even collapse the hand into a small single bone (apart from the usual 15), and even swap the eyes to use the face texture as well.

Mipmapping basically scales down your texture for every multiple of 2. In other words, a 512x512 texture will contain the same texture at sizes 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512. The textures are seamlessly swapped at large distance. This is commonly used in modern games.

Area portals are custom source engine entities to prevent props inside a room from being drawn if sealed tight. For instance, if you're in front of the door which is closed, and the door has an areaportal, anything behind it will not be drawn. If the door is open, the items inside will only be drawn if in your line of sight (all will be if you're in the room). This same entity exists for windows (minus the opening/closing). As a fun side-note, if you've ever deleted a closed door in garrysmod and seen the skybox, this is due to an areaportal being closed while the door controlling it is removed.

Occluders are another source entity used to hide props entirely covered by it. This is best used for outdoor areas where areaportals won't help. Let's say you make a box out of a brush. You can copy the box and turn the copy into an occluder (which will be invisible in-game). Any props completely behind the occluder will not be drawn.

How It Works:
Let's take the scene posted in the lounge thread, with the nasty purple lighting. The wall tiles and diamond cushioned wall are 3d in-game. I've set these up so at a distance, they'll reduce polycount and at a large enough distance will become completely flat. Most likely at this distance you'll not be near it or out of the room, where it won't even be drawn. Even if you are at this distance though, it may not be very noticeable unless you sit and stare at the changing.

The point to this is to allow some nice detail without going overboard. The standard method is basically "LOL FLAT EVERYTHING." What I mean here is not to make sure every tiny detail is seen, but to have some of the larger small detail (can't think of a better way to word it) seen nicely instead of being ugly and flat. If you'd rather us use this method anyway, post here (at least include why).

[Stebbzor]

We certainly don't want it flat and ugly, use whatever method is best for making it look appealing but good performance wise.

Testing Spoiler tag
Testing Sp Tag

[Mr. Giggles]

I meant a spoiler tag to toggle visibility
It's not necessary, it's just useful at times like these when you feel the majority of the people may not want to read a large amount of text, so you allow them to hide the "confusing long shit."

[Persious]

Well, my computer run's Crysis fine with max settings, but I haven't tried BF3 yet, so I have no idea.

[Stebbzor]

I meant a spoiler tag to toggle visibility
It's not necessary, it's just useful at times like these when you feel the majority of the people may not want to read a large amount of text, so you allow them to hide the "confusing long shit."

Ah I understand what you mean.

[Mr. Giggles]

Well, my computer run's Crysis fine with max settings, but I haven't tried BF3 yet, so I have no idea.

Those are just examples of what those graphics would be around

[Who]

I don't have either of those. But BF2 I think I ran fine on medium settings, same with DS3.