Iprove id tech 4 performance

[vanbandama]

Hi ! I'm new to forum so if I posted in wrong section, be polite and redirect it to correct one

Going straight to topic. Is there someone who tried to code in source of Q4/Doom3 engine to improve performance? for displaying more than 4 enemies at once? I know motorsep from kot-in-action that he's working hard for his new game. But he told on doomworld forum that he will release his own version of engine. And it was relatively long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7UIr8VjpTkrJxSI1sb-8dA - link to his YT channel where he upload his WIP game and engine features.

[The Happy Friar]

Motorsep does have an improved engine, pretty nice.

I'm not 100% there are stock D3 GPL engines that improve things, but there's D3 BFG engines that improve things.  However, D3 BFG improves things anyway, so I'm not really sure what was an id improvement vs a GPL coder improvement (I don't own D3 BFG).

[VGames]

I use the Sikkmod 1.2 source which is based on the old 1.3.1 SDK and I have no trouble running the game with 4 or more enemies on screen at 1 time. Don't understand this thread.

[motorsep]

Our engine won't work for Doom 3 as-is. When released, you'd have to tweak a few things to make it work with Doom 3, and the you'd need some assets from Doom 3 BFG, but all the models/textures from original Doom 3. Materials would have to be tweaked too. It would be more useful for some projects that you'd be building from scratch.

[trebor]

Vanbandama you might want to look through this topic because someone tried to render really many monsters monsters there.
In the end you will have bigger problems with the gamecode and scripting than the BFG renderer.

http://idtechforums.fuzzylogicinc.com/index.php?topic=198.0

[motorsep]

For that many monsters one would need LOD, rendering shadows only at a certain distance, dynamic batching and AI modification so that only a handful of monsters care for player at a time.

So, still some rendering tricks are needed and neither our engine, nor RBDoom3BFG provides those.

At this point I am still struggling to understand why not to use UE4 so a project that is drastically different from what BFG or old idTech 4 can handle :/

[The Happy Friar]

Motorsep, if one wanted the visual features of D3 but Wolf3D/Doom baddie count, would DarkPlaces be a better engine?

[motorsep]

Motorsep, if one wanted the visual features of D3 but Wolf3D/Doom baddie count, would DarkPlaces be a better engine?

Probably won't matter. If polycount is low enough and AI is tweaked, it should run just fine with our engine. If dlights are set to be blend lights, then it should be equal to DP to a certain point. DP has deferred rendering, so at some point it would beat BFG if many dlights are used (projectiles, muzzle flashes).

I have a video showing massive crowd of enemies with stock BFG engine. What was bogging performance down was AI - all enemies were doing navigation toward player at the same time and attacking at the same time. 60 pinkies weren't as taxing though.

I think people overthink it when it comes to enemy count. It all depends on the game. Even if someone makes zombie game, then can still manage enemy count in some creative ways and keep performance up using BFG engine.

[motorsep]

Btw, CryEngine is free now, and with source code open. So maybe trebor can look up the code and see what kind of optimizations they have for performance, and improve RB Doom3 BFG

[EoceneMiacid]

Bit late to the thread, but I don't see the problem either.

I'm experimenting with combat scenarios, and my modest i5 laptop with integrated Intel graphics, running the game on Ultra at 1920x1080 resolution, can handle well up to ten zombies at once without skipping a frame.