3D Models are superb, but lower FPS

[FreeLiving]

Hi guys, hope this is the right section, please move if necessary. I recently downloaded the new IWBUMS build, eager to test-out the new 3D models. Whilst they look fantastic, they have significantly lowered my FPS. I don't have the greatest PC in the world, pretty mid-range in terms of gaming, but I was receiving 60 prior to this build, and now when I look directly at a horde of zombies my FPS falls to 30-35. A buddy of mine also owns the game, we tried both single and multiplayer, with the same drops. His PC is slightly worse than mine, and his falls to 20. Oh, and this is with the 3D set to All, having it character-only brings the game back up to 60 for both of us. Hope you guys can fix!

[Rathlord]

Can you post your exact system specs? Thanks.

[lemmy101]

Hi guys, hope this is the right section, please move if necessary. I recently downloaded the new IWBUMS build, eager to test-out the new 3D models. Whilst they look fantastic, they have significantly lowered my FPS. I don't have the greatest PC in the world, pretty mid-range in terms of gaming, but I was receiving 60 prior to this build, and now when I look directly at a horde of zombies my FPS falls to 30-35. A buddy of mine also owns the game, we tried both single and multiplayer, with the same drops. His PC is slightly worse than mine, and his falls to 20. Oh, and this is with the 3D set to All, having it character-only brings the game back up to 60 for both of us. Hope you guys can fix!

 

This is to be expected with zombies on screen on a lower end PC. Zombies were originally done in 2D because it would be impossible to draw a horde in 3D on lower end PCs, the option is only there for better PC set ups.

 

Try lowering it to 1, 5, or 10 and you may have more luck.

 

There'll be optimizations and improvements in future, and if the entire engine was in 3D it may be more feasible, but in the short term having an entire horde of 3D zombies is only going to make performance worse.

[FreeLiving]

I've got an AMD 7950 and an overclocked i5, I wouldn't exactly call that low-end. I can't honestly expect the majority of your player-base to have super gaming rigs, which is precisely why seeing such a drastic decrease in performance really is quite unsettling. It would have been nice to have been warned about a potential significant performance decrease, as it's quite a kick in the teeth to have EasyPickins improve FPS substantially, only to have it hindered badly by an update that was said to improve performance further.

Whilst the majority of your players may not even have a concept of what significance frame-rate is, the people that do suffer when your game jumps from being silky-smooth, to borderline unplayable.

This is the best game I have ever played, and I hope you can fix this issue. It's a shame not being able to enjoy it like I once did.

[lemmy101]

Setting it to Player only brings it back to 60 by you own admission, so in what was are you unable to enjoy it as before? With 3d models for player characters to boot. So now we're chided for providing scalable options above people's specs. Clearly the game is to blame! Despite the whole reason for 2d zombies being we never imagined Pz zombie counts to run well on anyones spec in 3d. The fact it does on high specs (say i7s with a current gen gpu) is a minor miracle frankly. Give us Valves engine team, with months of high tech systems for skinned model instance sharing with differing material and we'll do better!

 

Compare our zombie #s to almost every 3d game in existence except dead rising and L4D and maybe consider the reason for this. This is far far far from trivial. Skinned models are one of the most computationally expensive things in games.

 

True we sold the 3D models with an optimizing advantage and that is memory, not CPU. The CPU load for a single player model, or perhaps a few players in co-op, will be negligible, but I never for one moment expected an All option to be feasible on ANY rig. It was never intended to exist. We tried it as a 'what if' on my laptop while developing the 3D and it ground to a halt after 10 or so zombies showed up.

 

I tried it later on my desktop PC with my i7-4960X six core 3.6ghz with three Titans and it worked, and hey I didn't 100% expect THAT to, so thought 'hell, we'll leave the option there for people who can run it.' All videos taken were recorded with the then default of player + 5 zombies, so we never once insinuated that 'All' would be in the reach of everyone or most people. As it turned out it was possible for others, I know Twiggy runs it perfectly fine on All, and from his reaction to me telling him my PC specs I can only assume he's way down from me, so I consider that a win already.

Already said we will optimize further, but fact of the matter is rendering a ton of skinned models is very intensive, and its your cpu not gpu thats taxed majorly, animating 60 bones and blending between animations and doing that independently on potentially 100s of zombies 60 frames a second. You cant pull the 'But X works fine' argument here because sans normal maps those models are comparable to many 3d games you would totally understand fps issues with that many on screen. That said I've been suprised how well it runs on lower specs, not how slow so I suggest there is something in your set up that's legitimately struggling.

We never put 100% 3d zombies on our promise sheet anywhere so please don't imply your entitled to play max options. We'll try and optimize as much as we can but that is not fair. Just encourages us to avoid trying to reach new heights cause of this kind of unreasonable resentment like we've somehow failed, on what has been a bonus feature that you still benefit from with the player character with legitimate reasons for struggling on top settings.

Considering removing the 'all' option cause I cant deal with many of these kinda complaints. No one ever stops to consider what is required cpu/gpu when they gleefully whap every setting to max. Always the games fault by default. Do you ramp Titanfall into 2560x1440, insane texures, 16x FSAA then ask them to fix the 'issue', or is our game exempt from doing anything intensive or having any 'high' settings out of reach of some low or midrange pcs because its isometric?

[unsaved_progress]

Here here!

 

*googles the correct spelling*

 

Edit: Hear hear!

[lemmy101]

Reads moderator forum re: IP, laughs, rolls eyes, closes thread.

 

Still, this thread serves as an explanation as to why no one should assume entitlement to setting 3D zombies to 'all'.  unless you're running current gen gpu and an i7 its unlikely. We'll do our best to get as much as possible out of it, and I'm sure decent improvements will be made, but 50 3D zombies on-screen puts us firmly in the 'high spec options' category and in no way down to bad optimization.