15 réponses à ce sujet

[M. Rieder]

I want to make a big battle.  Has anyone experimented with how many creatures can be fighting at once.  Does anyone know any tricks to make it seem like more? 

I was also thinking that if fighting is the only thing that is happening, the AI may be able to be pared down to make things easier, although I hesitate to venture in to the dark wilderness that is AI scripting.

[kamal_]

talk to brianmeyer on irc, he's got a hundred a side with special ability use and everything with his speedy version of tonyk.

[Shaughn78]

One thing that I did in Risen Hero was have an area end battle attack in waves. I used the "ginc_group" so once one wave was done the next would attack. I used this to create a large battle that a lower level party could survive, they would fight 4-6 creatures at a time. With an epic battle the numbers couble be increased and multiple enemies. This will save on the ai performance and allow a larger number of enemies that would normally surround and overwhelm a party.

[The Fred]

I was actually thinking about this sort of thing awhile back. I know with Pain's more efficient AI, you can handle more creatures with the same PC power, but a lot of bad guys just attack and that's pretty much it. You could probably replace their combat round with an "attack nearest enemy" and not notice the difference (a lot of BG's AI scripts were similarily simple, for example), yet you'd be bypassing a lot of unnecessary messy code. I think the OnPerception event is meant to be a big hog with lots of creatures (unlike the others, it scales exponentially rather than linearly) and you might be able to remove that, too, if you spawn the creatures with an immediate instruction to attack.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The Danaan Unvanquished has several battles with around 50-60 creatures total at any given time. Like they said above, use waves, and turn off the perception script where you can. For waves, I like to spawn in creatures one at a time, script-hidden, and then unhide them all at once, to save the frame-rate hit that comes when spawning a bunch at once.

The real trick, though, is using those few dozen creatures in a way that makes the player feel like they're in a bigger battle. Long lines of men look more impressive than bunched mobs, and a short second or third rank can give the impression that there's many more that the player can't see. Also, you have to keep the player focused on a central battlefield that seems to be overflowing. If the battle is going on in scattered pockets, many of them out of the player's immediate view, then all those extra combatants don't count for much. Think of an assault on a breach in a castle wall, there's archers scattered along the wall shooting at something out there, but the breach itself is packed, and you can just barely see the support lines behind the first assault wave.

If you really wanted to do a truly massive battle, you could use the scripthidden functions to keep the fighters hidden until the player came within their line-of-sight, and then re-hide them as the player moves away (this also keeps them from killing each other too quickly). Another trick is to move the NPC's with the PC, so the player always seems to be in the middle of a crowd.

[MasterChanger]

Also, I'd definitely recommend making sure all corpses Decay. Tons of carnage left over afterwards can look impressive, but it will definitely create a performance hit.

[Eguintir Eligard]

The engine isnt as limited as you think. I was able to spawn 50 villagers at once in a script and there wasnt a single bit of lag. You can paint down a LOT of creatures at once even on low machines w hich is why it bugs me so much that nwn2 cities seem so dead (aka all of 7 people outside) when it doesnt change the game requirements on power one bit. You remember islander, I had like 50 guys walking around the market, some drinking beers, it was fine. Only the shadows have any effect on my limit.

[MasterChanger]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

The engine isnt as limited as you think. I was able to spawn 50 villagers at once in a script and there wasnt a single bit of lag. You can paint down a LOT of creatures at once even on low machines w hich is why it bugs me so much that nwn2 cities seem so dead (aka all of 7 people outside) when it doesnt change the game requirements on power one bit. You remember islander, I had like 50 guys walking around the market, some drinking beers, it was fine. Only the shadows have any effect on my limit.

On your machine, maybe. I accepted the peformance hit as a fair compromise for the lively atmosphere it created, but it was not without cost.

[Eguintir Eligard]

on my machine as in yes my desktop and also a laptop with a 6 year old 7600 vid card yes. We cant expect to cater to machines that fail to meet spec (which my laptop does btw, and still has full sucess). 

Also, what slows down one machine also slows down another, the difference is the higher machine has the settings up higher. 8x anti alias vs none and 1/2 the res on my laptop, I still speed up and slow down in the same spots. Everyone assumes for some reason that a high end computer means the user experiences  dozens of FPS faster; that is not the case, we get the same FPS but with more graphics options on, as I certainly did not get a 295 gtx to see non anti aliased shadowless graphics at 120fps when I can do 30fps and max the niceness. We feel the same pain, we just get a prettier view.

I reiterated the point about shadows.... nwn2 is pretty low poly relative to today, and I bet you can get 50 guys fighting smoother with no shadows than 10 with.

Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 10 mai 2011 - 02:34 .

[_Knightmare_]

My very low end laptop (integrated graphics) seems to get a max of (ie. remain playable) up to about 40 combatants all fighting. If they aren't throwing spells and other VFX willy-nilly I can get about 60 all fighting at once - that's with the default game engine.

[Eguintir Eligard]

u can play on a integrated? Yikes

[MasterChanger]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

on my machine as in yes my desktop and also a laptop with a 6 year old 7600 vid card yes. We cant expect to cater to machines that fail to meet spec (which my laptop does btw, and still has full sucess).

You made a blanket statement based on your personal experience and your personal standards. For all either of us knows, the area slowed down equally for both of us (I did not test FPS or anything) and we just have different standards.

Personally, for a battle*, especially with spells being targeted, I have probably fairly high standards regarding how smoothly it plays. It's possible that my standards these days are unrealistic for NWN2; I know I've gotten fed up recently with the engine's lack of responsiveness in general.

For single-player, one can generally pause to issue orders when things get hectic. If you're going MP, that isn't always an option. And on PWs, lag kills.

* I know the area EE was talking about wasn't a battle area, and that's why I accepted that it didn't play as smoothly as I would have liked.

Modifié par MasterChanger, 10 mai 2011 - 07:28 .

[The Fred]

At the end of the day, if you're making a game for other people to play, it's good to be as nice to their PCs as you can. I was never thinking of staging a truly huge battle, not yet anyway, but if I can improve performance then it's all to the better. Obviously it's a question of how easy that is to do. Little tricks like turning off perception events or giving some of the creatures no soundset (apparently sound can cause a lot of slowdown) aren't hard to do so I don't see that they hurt.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Ya NWN2 is dissapointingly a resource hog. I got the GTX 295, the fastest video card in the world a year ago, 4 years after the game came out and u still cant max everything. By the time hardware can handle nwn2, no one will want to.

[likeorasgod]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

u can play on a integrated? Yikes

I have to swtich to intergrated on my Alienware 11mx cause it glitches about the time I hit the graveyard or Fort in the OC.  Even with updated drivers ad all it still does it.  It slows the machine down alot thought and makes things delay graphicaly, but it's better than half the screen going into a white haze blar all over.

[_Knightmare_]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

u can play on a integrated? Yikes

Yeah it works ok. Sure I have to turn down a bunch of graphical things, but that's fine for me. I don't need it to be looking the greatest like some kids today. I grew up on Pong and my Atari and was happy then. Graphics is pretty low on my list of reasons to play/not play any computer game. In fact, I have never based my enjoyment on how the game looked visually.