Low(er) detail genergic enemy model or other solution

[Dratz-_C]

Dear Red Eclipse,
Congratulations on your community and game! I have been enjoying your work immensely since late January, and have been lurking on the forum a while, until now. (I have searched another post on this idea and have not found one. I have a 1.6ghz pentium 4 model nettop with an nvidia ION LE graphics chip, 2gb of ram, Windows XP SP3, run the game at 1080P, and have every setting as low as it will go or off.)
Sometimes teams can play against the generic looking humanoids without spacesuits. This mode/mutator is a lot of fun. You can score points just by hitting the mob of course while still having the ability to shoot the other team.
My frame-rate only drops below 10 per second in this game-type. Otherwise it is about 20 to 40 except when about 3 or more players shoot rockets at once. Would a very basic, lower-polygon version of the mob member model help performance in this situation?; and is the artificial intelligence for these foes a major factor too or in itself? Does anyone else have any ideas of a possible remedy for this issue that would not take too much work to accomplish?
I know those are a lot of questions, and I appreciate your reading them.
Cheers

[fawstoar]

You should get a new computer.

But seriously, lower the resolution. It's the most effective way to boost framerate in any game, at the cost of the crispness of your visuals.

[Dratz-_C]

Hey folks,
Thanks for reading and replying to my message. For me it's college or a new computer and I have to pick college for now.
The game plays exactly the same framerate at 1080P as 640X480 for me. My nettop was pretty good when it came out ... for a nettop. I believe it spits out 3600Mpixels and 3600Mtexels a second. http://www.nvidia.com/object/picoatom_s ... tions.html ; the ION graphics chip is otherwise know as the GeForce 9400M G. In light of the resolution not mattering for my hardware, I think it just does not handle an unreasonable amount of polygons with out a big frame-rate hit; and I think a dozen or more generic humanoids on top of the player models and map borders on an unreasonable sum of polygons. I think an option reducing the humanoids' polygons would be an elegant and efficient fix.
Cheers

[qreeves]

http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=2680&start=25#p27020

[Dratz-_C]

qreeves,
I know who you are and appreciate your suggestion. I had already been over that thread (and another too), but only because I habitually read all of the posts in this forum. I made an educated guess that the suggestions in it would not help me. My performance is pretty good in most situations; only the cluster of humanoids slows me down in general (and especially when combined with rocket instagib but I think that is another matter). However, I will post in the other thread until am certain whether it will help and then come back here if it doesn't.
[Edit: I have tried the procedures laid out in the other thread now. The low frame-rate when a score of character models are on the screen has not changed. Is there any way for me to reduce the polygons taken up by the repeated generic humanoid model? I'm not particularly smart but I would be willing to chip in to actualize a fix. I'm sorry if a way around this issue is asking too much. I know you can't be expected to cater to all minorities.]
Cheers

[sireus]

Your case is actually a very rare one nowadays, especially with the generally more low-poly Cube 2 games. I'd say almost all graphics hardware is fill-rate limited, not vertex-limited as yours apparently is, that's why there are few optimizations available in that direction. Also, it's much easier to reduce things like shaders and texture resolution than polygons - the latter usually requires manual or at least manually corrected steps.
Just make sure you have as few render passes as possible - disable shaders, glare, all water & waterfall effects, shadows, soft particles, reflection and all model effects except lighting, and set animation to medium. Switching off decals and dynamic lights might also help a little.

[Dratz-_C]

sireus,
I do know my predicament is rare among players, these days. I also notice now that it takes more manual labor to provide an alternate, low-geometry, generic humanoid model than automatic engine optimizations, as you say. However, I would like to keep the request alive in case any folk feel particularly inspired to work with me (and, God forbid, any other few it might help) for a resolution. Lastly, I had all the things set as you mention, and thanks.
Cheers