That link above should definitely be edited into the OP. This is a very useful article for anyone wanting to build a competitive map.
Definitely. I spent hours taking my map apart trying to find what was causing the lag, its not a big map and there aren't any complex structures so I was completely lost. I had used a BR Tower for each base (more specifically, the top half). I just turned them both over, adjusted the spawns and the lags gone! Now I can get back to rebuilding all the things I thought were responsible!
Truth be told, I thought this thread was forgotten and left behind 10 pages back.. hadn't realised it has been stickied I agree that the link provided is very helpful and I am planning to redo the thread (again) in the next couple of days to make it even easier to understand with all the new information and correct any errors; I'm still not happy with the layout of the thread.
Thanks for the post as I'm having trouble with frame rate on my map at the moment. While there are no issues when I'm forging or playing a custom game by myself or over XBOX live, there are issues when there is more than one player on screen. Is it safe to assume that frame rate will always suffer when there are 2 to 4 players using the same console. Is this true even of the default maps? I'm glad that I haven't run into any issues with a single screen, but it sucks that it will cripple gameplay on anyone that shares a screen. I'm not sure what to remove/block off in this case as there are two or more completely different perspectives.
something i forgot to mention in Original post. Framerate is definitely affected by playing splitscreen, and massively too. The reason: while lights or other objects may increase the likeliness of framerate troubles slightly, playing splitscreen means your xbox has to render twice as much per frame than normal because it is rendering what both players see, instead of what one player sees. Remember, it is the capabilities of the xbox that is the issue, not the game itself, although the coding of the game does contribute to this. Splitscreen on Default maps isn't too bad normally as it is mostly natural geometry pre-made into the environment, which doesn't have as bad effect as forged objects. However, whether you notice it or not, framerate is still halved due to playing splitscreen (or even quartered if you're playing with 4 players). It is just way more noticeable on forged maps.
I think I mentioned that earlier in this thread (if not this one, some other one for sure) - yes, split screen will kill frame rate on most forged maps except the least ambitious ones. The game and/or hardware isn't capable of rendering all these objects at once, so multiple perspectives moving around and seeing a lot of different things simultaneously bogs it down significantly. I first discovered that when putting the finishing touches on Magma, which plays well full screen but has occasional frame rate drops in split screen (I had opened up the second screen for testing game type setups). If you can test it and eliminate it in your forged maps, good for you. But I've decided I'm not going to try. It's hard enough to build an ambitious map with no performance problems for a single player per box; two or four player split screen taxes the maps beyond what I'm willing to compensate for. Luckily I don't play that much split screen any more, but back in the Halo CE and Halo 2 days when I had a weekly LAN party, this would have seriously dampened my enthusiasm for the game (if there had been a forge back then, of course).
Thanks for the help. I've also noticed that the slipscreen frame rate drops happen much more often in Forge mode as opposed to in a Customs game.
Darn, so that's why my Citadel remake runs so slow. This is disappointing too, because there were windows in the original, it saddens me to have to remove them.
it really depends whats visible through the windows. The windows themselves do not cause too much issue, but when you can see a lot of detailed background geometry (e.g. the island), there is more likely to be an issue. If what you can see is just the blue sky, then your windows won't have much effect. [I'm presuming you're talking about windows that show the exterior of the map?] [300th post ]
I know this is pretty obvious but I thought i'd ask just to make sure I was thinking the right thing! but I take frame rate issues are stuff like the forge pieces 'flickering'?! sorry for the silly question! I dont know if this helps at all but it seems even stuff like spawn points seem to affect it. I made a map using Hemorrhage as a starting point (so I had bomb/flag points ect). the pieces on the map would flicker from far away. after going into invasion, so there were no spawnpoints ect, flickering had gone!
You're right. When you add initial spawns and re spawns in forge it will start to affect the framerate. That's because they are visible in Forgeworld, but when you're playing a custom game then they don't cause a problem.
There is a way to stop Z-fighting in most cases. It is done by moving one object in front of the other using coordinates (up/out 0.1 points) and then moving it back that 0.1 point and exiting from the coordinate menu really quickly and releasing the object. Example: You have two walls at a 90 degree angle, like so: _| (imagine them actually connected) You look up at the horizontal wall and it flickers. You coord-move the horizontal wall 0.1 points down, then back up, double press b, and then press a to release it. For all gameplay purposes, the wall is in the same place, so you won't bump up while waking onto it. However, it renders the horizontal wall as slightly below the vertical wall.
That's only a temporary solution. When you save and quit, forge approximates where each piece is placed. So when you start a new forge game on your map, you'll have that same flickering effect again.
It worked for me. I will try downloading the map on my fileshare and do it that way, but reloading it from the menu (not just restarting Forge) left it as it was. EDIT: Just tested it on both the map on my console and the one I downloaded. Both had none of the z-fighting I fixed. Either you are wrong (and I mean that politely), or something in my map is causing it to work successfully. Or it is somehow glitched for me.
It probably depends on how close to a certain position the piece ends up. Basically what you're doing is just an elaborate version of slightly moving one piece off its previous coordinates. Forge will slightly change the positions of a lot of pieces when you save and reload, but depending where your two overlapping pieces are (and WHAT they are), it may move them a little farther apart, or back to overlapping and z-fighting, or not move them at all. Some of the biggest pieces seem to move the most - I've personally had to do a lot of annoying micro-adjusting of coliseum walls to get them into a suitable position every time I load the map, and I've also noticed with a current build that large and x-large platforms like to shift a little bit in rotation (so when I come back in and turn on rotation snapping, just grabbing them causes them to move a little - even though they should have been rotation-snapped already). Because of these funky little peculiarities of forge, there's no way to eliminate z-fighting perfectly and also have the pieces basically still lined up - at least no way that works 100% of the time. You just have to play with it. Personally, I use the left stick/slow movement and a light touch on the bumpers method.
I have noticed the problem described while making a giant box out of Coliseum Walls (you spawn in it and touching the ground kills you. You have unlimited jetpack and swords. It's like being a bee!), bu on another map I have completely removed Z-fighting. It's good I read your post though, I completely forgot about the other map. Maybe I just got lucky this time.
Z-fighting also happens in Google earth 'Z-mapping'; if you look it up I believe you can find a few tips from Google's site
It would be nice if Bungie published a comprehensive manual on how Forge works and how to maximize the potential of a map that we create. I am not crazy about providing or receiving empirical evidence to make claims about how something works. (But I guess having something is better than nothing.)
Is it just me or is there something exceptionally laggy about Bunker Round? When I deleted one on my map, looking in the direction it was dramatically reduced the framerate issue I'm having. I know the glass coverings are having a large effect as well but they are, thus far,so integral to the design. It's frustrating.
Too many teleporters of the same channel in the same area do cause frame rate issues. I am not sure why but in my BTB map I had one area where I wanted the player exiting through a teleporter to be randomized so I placed 4 on the same channel. Viewing that location was already tough on the CPU because it was at the highest point of forge world, but the teleporters killed it. One point of advice is to place walls between major set pieces in your maps. I know this messes with the aesthetics, but if your map is deemed unplayable then aesthetics will not matter much will they? I maximized framerate by testing angles on my map and adjusted the gameplay to fit the requirements of the CPU. If you can't view the entire map on a flat landscape place a hill or wall in the way to break up the map. If you want to overlook a map causing issues move the overlook over less of the map. Also avoid too much decorating... especially in large levels. TIP: You should go into spark/camera mode in forge and fly through your map preferably at a distance, any surface with z-fighting will flicker violently when moving at high speeds.