Question for all of you who have forged extensively in Reach. I am finishing up a map, previewed elsewhere on this page, which has just a few budget dollars left. I'm concerned about lag and framerate issues. In your experience, does exhausting the budget always lead to problems, or is it based on other factors (like which pieces are used/how many polys they have, how much the player is able to see at any one time, etc.)? I'm hoping my map won't be too affected by it. For one thing it's semi-enclosed, so large sections will never be viewed by players (although those tend to just be coliseum walls, large blocks, and the ends of large braces; also about ten large platforms that just make huge support struts underneath the map). I didn't do a ton of merging although there's definitely some - but no places where fifteen pieces are merged together to form a crazy aesthetic idea. I swapped out some pieces that I thought might be a problem, like a dish platform that seemed to cause lag when I was looking at it while running. Also, some of my budget (a small percentage) went to things like increasing maximum weapons and grenades, not adding structure. And I deleted the one light I had. I guess the proof will be in the play test, but do you think it could be OK, or is the budget-taxing going to be a problem no matter what? (The funny thing is, the map itself wouldn't come close to exhausting the budget if I hadn't built a multi-thousand dollar aesthetic piece off to the side. There are shields and a pile of explosives involved, a red light, and almost all of the "nature" objects. Maybe, hopefully, since players won't spend much time looking at that, it won't be a problem.)
To my knowledge, the framerate lag is not directly based on the amount of budget you've used. I've created a map (Besieged, which I will update my preview for soon) where I have less than 500$ in the budget left, but because the map is very big, I haven't found lag to be an issue at all. Other times, I've seen maps that have thousands of budget dollars left have major lag in certain areas, due to the amount and type of the object in those areas. Objects that have numerous polygons cause the framerate lag, to my knowledge, but it's not just what the player actually sees on-screen that will cause the lag. Frm what I've seen and read, it has to do with everything that's in the player's field of view at that point, whether they can physically see it onscreen or not. Since the game loads the map as a whole and not just what you're seeing on-screen, you're not only rendering the room you're in, but the room behind that wall, and the room behind the next one. If all of them have numerous objects with many polygons, it's a bad situation for potential lag issues. That's my understanding of things, at least. Hope this helps, and/or is mostly accurate!
I've played on a couple medium sized maps (4v4 size) that have had some framerate issues. I would then go in forge and delete the lights and the game would run fine after that. I'm not 100% sure, but lights seem to cause framerate issues if most of the budget has been used.
Thanks - that makes sense, although it's hard to figure how that will play out in my own specific case. I guess play testing is the only way to be sure. I've been running around a lot in forge and trying to change up any area that caused a drop in frame rate, but it may be more stressful over Live and with multiple players - that's really what I need to find out. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I was thinking that too which is exactly why I deleted the one light I had in the play area. It wasn't adding much anyway. There's still another light in the aesthetic area but it only affects the render of a handful of rocks, off in the distance - hopefully that won't be a problem.