So I've been getting some frame rate lag on Erosion lately. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this? Only at about 8000 budget, and only have a few windows, and I thought Halo 4 was supposed to be better with this than Reach. Honestly, this is kinda ridiculous. This is literally one of the only things I felt Halo 4 didn't mess up, and one of the few reasons I've stuck around through this abomination of a game, and now this is shot too. I'm so close to switching back to Reach now.
8000 used, or 8000 remaining? Cause if you've placed 8000 dollars worth of stuff that's not much of a surprise.
Reach's forge is better than Halo 4's. Hands down. Reach had fine tuning but Halo 4 has magnets, which I personally never use because they just don't work for me. You could zoom in and out of objects when you grabbed them in Reach, but you can't in H4, which tweaks the player like crazy often throwing a player across the map. Reach had much more consistent lightmapping. H4 has dynamic lighting but of course that came with it's own problems. It destroys indoor maps aesthetically and also breaks itself if you overload the map. With Reach you only had to worry about framerate. Now in H4 you have to worry about your lightmapping AND framerate. It's funny because before H4 dropped people were upset that we were going from Forge 2.0 to 2.5 but really we went from Forge 2.0 to 1.5.
8000 used. The thing is, the lag never happened at this point in Reach unless I had like 30 windows. I only have 7. I really agree, Halo 4 took a step backwards. I mean, magnets and duplicate are great additions, that I hope stick in future forge as I use them both all the time; but the loss of precision editing, zoom, and good forge environments really outweighs those things. Also, while dynamic lighting is great, the inability to disable it or place light sources for indoor maps makes it more of a drawback than an addition, making indoor maps bleak and overly dark. It astonishes me how Certain Affinity could mess up something as simple as forge. At least they're working on fixing some of the bigger problems (like precision editing) for an upcoming TU, unlike 343 with their countless ****ups.
Could you post a picture of your map? I'd like to see your design and piece usage, since it's not just the amount of glass that causes framerate drop. Object choice and object density contribute as well. If you used a lot of decoratives (which have complex geometry and many polygons) then the former is likely, and if you used a lot of basic pieces (blocks, rocks, bridges and ramps, which you can max easily) then there's a strong possibility of the latter.
Remember the good ol' days when 8000 was seen as a fairly light budget to use? When Tempest came out a lot of people didn't want to even try to forge on it because the 7500 budget was seen as too restrictive. lulz. I don't know if an 8000 budget is a problem in and of itself, which is why Mock's suggestion of screenshots is a good one. It just depends on object usage and density. One thing Halo 4 seems to have a problem with just like Reach did is having a lot of objects (especially complex ones, but really any objects) in the player's field of vision simultaneously. If your map has 8000 budget and you can see most of it all at once from certain places, that will be problematic. The best approach is to simplify your object usage wherever possible, and use line-of-sight breakers in key positions to segment up the map a little more, and block off the most open points of view.
The problem is that you actually get more map for your money in H4 because of the map-specific, Extraction, and Dominion palettes. Everything in them is cheaper than Decoratives, (except on Ravine) so you can very easily overload your map with objects without breaking the budget. Impact is the worst for this, because the map-specific objects are so cheap and useful that oftentimes you can max out a map with like 3000 or even 4000 remaining.
are they normal windows or col windows? Because I noticed a huge drop in framerate when i added some col windows
It is different, better in some ways, worse in others. I miss the pristine gray and the fine editing in Reach. That is all I miss. I have gotten used to not using zoom, so I cannot say I miss it any longer. Magnets rock! I can building structures 10 times faster using magnets than I could ever think in Reach. This means if I don't like where I put a structure I can easily rebuild it. And I have on a number of occasions. Magnets work best with curved structures, where you are not interested in trying to figure out the coordinates of a block at a strange angle (like 26 degrees from the last block). I would disagree on this as well. Lighting is critical for orientation. You may not realize it, it may be very subtle, but it does help people orientate themselves. I have come to feel it is one of the best additions to forging, though it can be a pain at times to work with in forge. (I thought they said that you could turn off the lighting feature while in forge if you wanted to, but if you can I don't know how.) To me this is forge 2.1... As for 8000 budget used, I would cringe. I try to stay below 5000. When I get past 6500 I start to wonder if I have lost track of what I am doing... Edited by merge: This is the key. I only see FR when I am in a position to see most blocks on my maps.
I like Halo 4's Forge more as it is easier to use (I'm a noob) but I do see the complaints people have as being very reasonable. Forge 3.0 should be in Halo 5 and it should include: * Precision Editing again * Magnets * Dupe Object * Zooming in * But it should also have a "fuse" option which allows you to 'fuse' two or more objects together so when you grab and move one of the pieces, the others come along as if it was one piece... imagine how much faster you'd build a symmetrical map (and have it be exactly symmetrical) or like..build a really nice base once, fuse all the pieces together, then move it to where you want, then dupe the fused object and voila! TWO identical bases for the time it took to make one.
Honestly, I'd rather not post pics, as I don't like to give away map designs before I'm ready to release it. I know, it's not that serious a situation, but still. I only have regular Window Doubles on, no Window Coliseums. I only have about 30 decoratives total on the map. The room where the frame rate lag happens is small & has no long sight lines. The room is made of very few objects - about 30 building blocks/inclines. No lights on the map. 1 Grav lift in the room. 5 Erosion specific objects in the whole map. No spawns/objectives/kill barriers etc... have been placed yet, only structural objects. It's really frustrating, as I'm familiar with typical frame rate lag of forge, and what causes it, but this seems to be happening for no reason. I can delete like 10 blocks and it goes away, but then there's not even enough blocks to build a small room. On another note, I've been having another glitch on the same map. When I view certain Wall Colosseums from certain angles they disappear. The only fix is to delete them and replace them. I know this happens while merged into an object sometimes, but this is happening when they're not even merged into anything! And about the TU I said earlier, I should clarify: I do not mean the upcoming TU. In fact, I'm not sure when or if the TU for forge will even come, I just know Certain Affinity has said on multiple occasions that they're working on fixing some of forge's problems and will try to patch them, but it's ultimately 343's decision when and if it happens.
RegardlessDolan - you should try to invite a forge expert into a session with you to take a look. I've volunteer but I'm not really as expert as many and I'm not online half as much as I'd like to be, either.
Well, I got it worked out. Apparently it's actually part of the Erosion map that lags. Even when everything is deleted it still happens. Quite odd indeed.
is it part of the default archetecture that's present on Erosion that is visible in your map or what? so far I have avoided Erosion because of lack of flat land to build on... but if I do venture onto Erosion for some reason, it would be good to know where this laggy area is. thanks.
Would like to know which section of the map you are talking about bud? Yeah...Erosion is the trickiest map to Forge on. The terrain design is horrible outside as it is slanted like a hill. Which means one team spawns on top and one on bottom...bottom gets raped everytime. There isn't really enough room to spawn the teams on the sides of the terrain either... and outside of the terrain and even inside most of it, there is no dynamic lighting. Only in the small center is a patch of dynamic lighting and these brown pieces look pretty dull and ugly without any lighting. It's gonna take an expert to make a map that looks and plays good on Erosion's outside terrain area.
FWIW, you coudl spawn both teams inside the griffball court, because there are two doorways. simply wall off the middle of the court to prevent them from starting to battle immediately when the game starts. then have enough of a barrier at the top of the hill to encourage both teams to venture deeper into the map for the main battles... it could work, just sayin' but yea, the ugliness turns me off for the most part. only maps that are supposed to look dingy should be made there.
Well, I just went into a blank Erosion map to take a screenshot of the area, and now it's NOT happening. I honestly have no clue what the **** is going on here. On my map I can delete EVERYTHING, and the FRL is still there. Perhaps something went buggy while saving it at some point or something, it's really the only thing I can think of. The area of the map is the back corner of the cave area on the water, underneath the undeletable structure. For clarification too, it's not MASSIVE lag, but still enough to make getting consistent headshots near impossible. I've pretty much given up on the idea of salvaging it, I've brought in a bunch of my friends who are really good with forge as well, and they're all stumped. I've started remaking the entire map from scratch (in the same area but on a different Erosion slate) to see if it happens still, or if it really was just a glitch with that particular save. I agree, building on the outdoor area of Erosion is very difficult. Not much you can really make there as all the land is preformed in an odd way. Even the on-disc map there is horrible.
well sorry about the map man, really sucks when you put time into a map that you have to scrap. Yeah, I tried making something on Erosion utilizing the grifball court as well as the outside but not enough pre-planning and had to scrap it. Unfortunately, there is only 2 doors leading to and from the grifball court, and you need 3 ways to get in a base. JKAddict: That is a good idea but you wouldn't be able to use the grifball court as bases, just a starting spawn only. Wouldn't even be able to use respawns in there with that method cause one team can just block the others exit. Erosion pisses me off because it could have been done much better but seriously Certain Affinity sucks at map making, well they suck compared to Bungie that is for sure. I like Big open maps like Hemorrhage, Valhalla, Sand Trap, and Sand Box....but I think we will never see anything like that again unless it is a remake.
I've found that budget or specific pieces have little to do with lag issues (with a few obvious exceptions) but more to do with how many pieces are on your screen at a given time. If you're working on something as big or as detailed that it requires $8,000+, it really needs to be spread out with no points near the ends that you can see the whole map from. That's been my experience anyway. Good luck!