kaiyouw wrote:Hello folks
2- Whats better for FPS: using models or brushes? (for example, should I make a table using regular blocks with texture, or use an ASE model?)
4- Is there a way to illuminate a whole room without using lamps?
5- Does mirrors and rotating-doors affects FPS a lot? what about water and breakables?
2- For the renderer (display), it is the same.
However, high polycount models + some simple weaponclip is really is really faster than high polycount brushwork for the
physics.
Why ?
Because each time someone shoot in an area, the trace is tested against all the brush in that area (and eventually some others), and since models does not exist for the physical engine (except if you use spawnflags 2 or a special shader), only its weaponclip brushes are tested.
In fact my advice is simple: never ever use brushwork for hi polycount or tiny mapobject.
4 - I really hate minlight, it flatten the light and shade in dark area... Consider using _ambient 8 instead of _minlight 15.
Minlight 15 say that everything that would normally receive less than "15" luminosity will be finally lighted with 15. For example, you will not see shadows between place normally ligthed with a value of 4 and place lighted with a value of 12, it will be changed for 15 for both.
Ambient 8 will ADD 8 to the light value, in the previous example, the 2 places will be lighted with a value of 12 and 20: it keeps the contrast in dark place.
However, be carefull with _ambient, cause it affect the whole map, that's why you should use only low value. 8 is a good value.
Anyway, the perfect combo is to use a small value for _ambient AND to add light entity in your map. Don't be lazzy
IMO, lighting count as 33% of the visual quality of a map.
I you want good practice example, look at
Steve's map, you will notice how good it is to use as many light entity as you can.
5 - Mirror affect it a lot: a whole scene is rendered into a texture first, before the real screen rendering. Breakable affect FPS when they are broken in a lot of gibs (it launch a lot of trace).
Doors does not affect FPS too much, I mean, it is an entity, so it cost more CPU than things in the worldspawn, but it does not cost more CPU than any other entity (train, rotating, pendulum, ...).
Water add rendering stage like any surfaces with alpha-transparencies (glasses, ...), not a big deal for newer computer (the bottleneck is the polycount of the map ATM). But it can moderately affect old computer.