Do Models?

Do Models lower the FPS speeds? Or R speeds?

Almost anything you add to your level will lower your FPS sadly. Its not easy to give a very clear cut answer as to how much a model will lower your FPS however, as it is really dependant on the model itself, the circumstances in which you use it, and the system the game is running on. Some models are cheap, others are expensive. It comes down to how many polys it is made up of, whether it is static, dynamic (animated), or physics enabled, how many materials it uses, what shaders its materials use, and more.

To see how much each aspect of the game is contributing to the time it takes to render your scene you can use the budget panel. Bind a key (I'll use B) to it by typing the following in the console...

bind b +showbudget

Now when you hold down B you'll get a panel on your screen showing a bunch of bars. The longer the bar, the more it is hurting your FPS. Most are fairly self explanatory - there are "prop" bars, the world rendering bar, displacement rendering bar, NPCs, sound effects, and so on. Another that is of interest to level designers is the "swap buffers" bar, which is generally influenced by expensive shaders and tells you if you're using lots of expensive materials, for example. Use this bar to figure out what is having a big effect on your framerate and optimise based on that feedback.

---

[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I've found models to more detrimental to performance than Valve would suggest in their literature, especially player models, they suck the life right out open areas.

There are a few options around this, prop fading being number one; careful placement of the props so that you can fade them unobtrusively helping there. Collision negation which would be up for debate but it's easy to do so why not, and like Reno said, simpler models.

Once you get hinting and portaling/occlusion figured those are big helpers as well

I bound f12, and that rocks! Thats a great resource I never knew about thank you.

I may have to restructure this map some.. sucks.. because I love its look now. I will get some screen shots of it, in different areas, and maybe you can help explain what it all means and how I can fix it.

What another mapper had to say about my map.. this is just part of it.. but I am not sure how to fix.

My most major concern is map performance. When I say this, I'm very very concerned with frame rate and processing costs. I only dropped below 60 fps in some areas, but this is frankly unacceptable when you add 19+ players to the map. Your map will simply not perform if it is not optimized (I'm taking emotions out of this, so please don't take it personally). Using mat_wireframe 1 I was able to see that the whole map is being rendered when it doesn't need to be. If you effectively use areaportals, then you can add up to 200+ fps to your map, and those with lesser videocards will be eternally grateful. I myself have a geforce 8800 superclocked edition, and it had difficulties rendering your map. If you planned on adding areaportals to your map later on, then also disregard this section, but please don't ignore areaportals. They are absolutely essential.

This is why I was asking about area portals.. I have never used them, and in doing so this time it broke my map... I must be using them wrong. I don't have enough experience to use them correctly, or understand how they work. If you DL my map and take a look you'll see how my map is laid out, and maybe you can offer some advice on how or what I can do to make it better.