TurtleIsle V1 .......... Released!

[diafero]

There are other examples of huge fan ages like Pre-Swaltu, I don't know how the author overcomed the hugenest of his age but we don't lag in that age and let me tell you, even if you know every secrets of that age, you are in for at least 30 minutes to do the all-around tour.

Pre-Swaltu has (almost) no textures at all, just vertex coloring, and it's using *large* triagnles. So the actual age size is not that big. Just compare the sizes of the prp files of Pre-Swaltu and Turtle Isle

[Egon]

Hi All,
Today I decided to release Turtleisle.

I see what You did there: You overused vertices.
(Actually is just a guest, because importer didn't allowed me to check it, but I'm pretty sure about it).
Unfortunately, age as it is is unplayable.

[ZURI]

I'm thinking the performance could be increased by making all the materials shadeless (with a few exceptions like the Easter Island statues). You've already used lightmaps in many areas, so the visual difference might not be that great. Just a thought.

Edit: BTW, it runs with very little lag on my pc. It's an Phenom X4 9850 , 2 gig ram, HD3870 graphics.

[dendwaler]

overuse of vertices?
depends how how you look to it.
its all low poly for sure.
I need a big main.prp for the age because i cannot divide the area and the area is big.
only the hidden mountain part could be a second prp.
because it is hidden, this is not realy necessary.
As far as my experiencies reaches, the age is playable on a pc with lower specs.
The only thing that counts is the videocard.
Not even the speed of that card.
The amount of memory on the card.
512kb is to less, 1024 is sufficient.
its not clear to me by some of the comments if they have lag or is it slow?
that is completely different.
Thats why i made it available on drizzle either.
So it can be played off line.

[andylegate]

Having different objects in your Age on different Prp files will not keep them from being rendered, unless you use paging with them (like Ae'gura, or Arah Pahts). All the prp's will be loaded and rendered unless you tell them not to.

However, having them on separate prp's will not really decrease any lag if they are all going to be rendered anyway. 2 + 2 + 2 still = 6.

Some things that can increase the performance of your Age:

Lightmaps: Use these only for inside spaces. Using them for large outside areas means having to load large sized textures (the maps). If you shadows are not dynamic, but static, use Vertex Painting to make your shadows.

Vis Regions: If there are areas of your Age that the avatar can not see, then don't have them rendered, except when the avatar is there. This is very important if you have like animations (both object and textures), wavesets, and particles. If you have like a cave or building that the avatar enters, and the outside is no longer visible, then have the game stop rendering it. Same goes for when they are outside: don't have the game render the inside of the cave or building.

Low Poly: keep things that are distant and that the avatar can not get close to very low poly.

I can't remember if the GoW plugin allows use to use LOD, like Max and Cyan's plugin does. you can have objects that are many (flowers, bushes, rocks, sticks, etc), not be rendered while the avatar is far from them. As the avatar get's closer, they will start to be rendered (but the ones the avatar leaves behind will stop being rendered).

Textures: Keep your textures small in size where ever possible. You may have to use a large texture for your sky, but a small rock or tea pot doesn't need a 2048 x 2048 size texture, a 256 or 512 will work just fine.

Shadbuf: Make sure this is turned off for most of your objects (this is for Blender users). Only use it if you absolutely have to in order to have a object cast a shadow. It's a resource hog, and can dramatically affect the performance (and look) of an Age.

Double Verticies: If you've spent a lot of time editing your objects, it's possible to end up with double vertices. Select an object, go to edit mode, Select all the faces then click on Mesh> Veticies > remove Doubles. You'd be surprised at how many meshes end up with these.

Just some suggestions.

[dendwaler]

thx for the advices andy, but i have gone through them all long time ago.

The visregions, are problematic,hard to implement now, i should have done that from the beginning but did not have the knowledge at that time.
this is after all my first age, and it took me two years to build it. most of the time is learning.
Maybe i will try the visregion, but it wil give a quality loss also.
i did not notice any difference with my lightmap or without.
the lightmap is not that big.
but i will alter it to vertex paint, thats not a big problem.
But still i believe many can play this without problems.

[ZURI]

Btw, denDwaler, your age IS beautiful. The attention to detail is high, and the textures look professional! Personally, I only get a touch of lag (choppiness) when first getting close to one of the ponds, inside the silo, and occasionally when running on the island. Otherwise, it runs pretty smooth. The journal cloths are cool, and the music/sound effects are very immersive. I was shocked at first how much time you spent on them. The music in the inner structure is awesome! I hung out in there and just listened to the orchestra music for quite some time. Which score is that?

[dendwaler]

for sound effects i used this site.
http://www.audiomicro.com

but since a short time its not longer possible to download without subscription.
really i forgot which score it was , but it was royalty free.

[Tweek]

Is this downloadable outside of Drizzle?

[dendwaler]

ofcoarse Tweek.
http://rapidshare.com/files/453709236/Turtleisle.7z