New explosion FXs (RK's Explosions)

[RK4000]

Just wanted to say new FX are cool and nice work. I also wonder have you considered performance of ASF explosions for setons? If an explosion here affects performance, maybe you could just get rid of the explosion altogether here. Not saying it actually is a problem - I have no idea - but it would be a shame to make those notoriously laggy battles worse.

Well, particles generally have a really really negligible effect on the sim, the sim lag (game simulation slowing down, but not frames per second) is caused by what ZeP said, the amount of projectiles.

However, due to the amount of ASFs usually used, I would need feedback on the FPS performance when a lot of ASFs fight. I personally tested it and it was lag-free with 700 vs 700 ASF, but my PC is too high-end to really reliably test this. The reason we need to test this is that the trails are a new effect, which did not exist before.

The actual "explosion" when the ASF dies is about the same or even lighter on the FPS than the current explosion. The trail is however, while still being really low on particle count, something that is "added" by the mod in the sense that it doesn't replace an effect, so I want to hear the performance feedback for that aswell.

[Plasma_Wolf]

Ok, I just did 700 ASFs vs 700 ASFs in a small sandbox game.

My computer:
- AMD Phenom II X4 945 (3 GHz).
- 4 GB RAM.
-Ati HD 4850 graphics card.

I've done a game on Setons where I forgot to turn the mod on and the framerate fluctuated between 10 and 18 FPS. depending on how close I zoomed in. It went closer to 18 FPs at the moment I zoomed out to the point where the strategic icons became visible.

I've also done a game on Seraphim Glaciers where I had the mod on and there the lowest framerate was somewhere between 7 and 9. I don't know the highest, but it would probably be at 15-17 then. I did notice that there was a weird shaded ring below one of the aircraft. Seemed like a range ring but it was all shadows and it wasn't a perfect ring. The distortion from something that was underwater seemed to continue on land. I'm not sure and I'll try post a screenshot if I encounter it again.

The first game was a solid victory for me (186 ASFs remaining), but in the second, I had to cheat in a second batch of 700 ASFs to kill all enemy fighters.

[RK4000]

Ok, I just did 700 ASFs vs 700 ASFs in a small sandbox game.

My computer:
- AMD Phenom II X4 945 (3 GHz).
- 4 GB RAM.
-Ati HD 4850 graphics card.

I've done a game on Setons where I forgot to turn the mod on and the framerate fluctuated between 10 and 18 FPS. depending on how close I zoomed in. It went closer to 18 FPs at the moment I zoomed out to the point where the strategic icons became visible.

I've also done a game on Seraphim Glaciers where I had the mod on and there the lowest framerate was somewhere between 7 and 9. I don't know the highest, but it would probably be at 15-17 then. I did notice that there was a weird shaded ring below one of the aircraft. Seemed like a range ring but it was all shadows and it wasn't a perfect ring. The distortion from something that was underwater seemed to continue on land. I'm not sure and I'll try post a screenshot if I encounter it again.

The first game was a solid victory for me (186 ASFs remaining), but in the second, I had to cheat in a second batch of 700 ASFs to kill all enemy fighters.

Quite valuable information, however I need to know a few more factors:

1. Range rings, range rings drain a LOT of FPS, the less ASF you have selected, the less lag there will be. And if you have them always turned on, the same applies aswell (best way to make a true controlled experiment of this is to leave them always on since then you remove the FPS difference between selected and non-selected)

2. If possible, testing on the same map would be good, however that shouldn't play much of a role, at least not on official maps. On custom maps it gets complicated because sometimes trees are placed in such a way that they make the game lag.

3. Same zoom distance is important, good to see you've mentioned that, and that approximation of the FPS sounds about right (when you have the mod turned on on sera glaciers), however I would need a more exact FPS number here.

That shading ring thing is peculiar indeed, does it happen in the replay aswell? If it does, screenshot it and post it here. I've no idea what could be causing this, since I've never seen or heard anyone see anything like that before.

Thanks for the feedback so far, it shows my assumptions that the trails do lower the FPS by a few %, but not that much, are at least somewhat correct.

EDIT: another thing that needs to be a controlled factor in these experiments is that the ASF are fighting over land. This is due to a bug that keeps repeating the trail emitter even though the ASF landed in water and is sinking. (it stops when it reaches the bottom, but while it's sinking, it's still adding to the particle count.) So make sure all these tests are done over land. I will try to fix this bug for V7

[Resin_Smoker]

RK, did you ever clean up your script work and properly hook stuff ?

[nine2]

Wouldn't it be easiest to make a short reply where you cheat and 4 players spawn 1000 asf's and smash it into one big group.
Then you can watch the replay twice, with and without the mod, and look for differences in the framecount and sim speed.
Or maybe the people from the simspeed benchmark thread have something already ready to go.
Don't know a good way to handle the different zoom levels ... it would be nice if there was a way to set it via the console - that way you could do a nice controlled experiment.

[RK4000]

Wouldn't it be easiest to make a short reply where you cheat and 4 players spawn 1000 asf's and smash it into one big group.
Then you can watch the replay twice, with and without the mod, and look for differences in the framecount and sim speed.
Or maybe the people from the simspeed benchmark thread have something already ready to go.
Don't know a good way to handle the different zoom levels ... it would be nice if there was a way to set it via the console - that way you could do a nice controlled experiment.

Because the mod is a sim mod and not a UI mod, you can't watch a replay that way played without the mod with the mod enabled and vice-versa. It would desync.

RK, did you ever clean up your script work and properly hook stuff ?

I've hooked what can be hooked, but I ran into some problems with hooking structures. I've decided to just go with a destructive hook there, but that's a topic for PM and not this forum thread The rest has long been cleaned up (since V3 I think)

(Alternatively: Ask Sheeo how and why we did what we did, he will explain it much better than I can.)

[nine2]

Because the mod is a sim mod and not a UI mod, you can't watch a replay that way played without the mod with the mod enabled and vice-versa. It would desync.

I am such a noob. Thanks for your patience

[Ceneraii]

I play from pretty crappy laptop and with the mod generally tends to be less laggy for me, I can't say for extreme situations because these slow me down regardlessly but since I started using the explosions mod slowdowns have been less common than they have been before.

[RK4000]

Good to hear

[RK4000]

NOTE: The discussion about scripting concerns (as it was going somewhat off-topic) was moved to a different thread in order to not confuse people which are trying to post feedback about the visuals and/or performance to this thread.