Hello guys
We use this script to change the view distances in game. I have just posted an update i have modded so we can use the latest version.
There is also an option available to us where we can disable the ability to remove all the grass. I know some people can have performance issues with grass but i feel it's a little bit of a cheat to be able to completely remove it. I would prefer to only give the option to go to a low setting for grass, not none.
What are your thoughts on this?
Its a good idea execpt there are a number of people I think that can not run this game with grass on. So I think we low grass is a good one and we can test it on a new map see if how many people it will really effect.
To be honest it'll kill my game to have it totally disabled.
I can hardly play it as it is and reducing the grass level is one thing that makes it just about playable.
Are you playing at your monitor's native resolution Pen? Bumping that down instead could just be the trade off, if not!
Just for information, both Smilo and Sparko are against removing grass completely
Quote from: BrotherTobious;400992Just for information, both Smilo and Sparko are against removing grass completely
sorry only just seen this.
I dont mind if someone needs to remove it due to performance issues, but as we know some people do remove it to gain an advantage and 'to make it easier' and has nothing to do with their game performance. Its a tough one really
I've also heard people openly recommend turning it off to make the game easier - I can't agree with that.
Can we lock it so you can only take the level down to Low, without removing completely? That would seem like a sensible compromise.
I'd suggest trying it and seeing the impact. If it's to unbearable then I'll continue to tweak my settings and if that doesn't work then so be it.
There is a way Arma could be played that goes completely against the whole ethos of how dMw play and specifically how we set Arma up to play on our server. Removing grass, using thermal imaging, equiping overpowered weaponry, completing every mission is a nuclear powered, titanium armoured, flying stealth tank is possible (well maybe not all of them are). But that doesn't mean we should so.
I wonder why we even need to limit loadouts, revives, vehicles, draw distances at all. I actually get quite depressed when I find myself adding a script to every vehicle that removes thermal imaging, high powered scopes etc. I'm designing maps that are as fun, tough but balanced as I can make them. It's sad that I even have to stop people from doing something we shouldn't be doing in the first place.
"Look there's a load of thermal sniper rifles in the boot of this car, everyone grab one quick and we can trivialise the mission in an instant." :sad:
Let's lock the grass, keep designing bespoke loadouts and see if it impacts playability, frame rates. Maybe run a little test for Penfold midweek? If it's a killer then we can remove the grass function from the script. I know how frustrating lag etc can be from my Virgin Media debacle earlier this year and I also turned of grass to try to make the game work, with some success. so Pen has my sympathies.
Truth be known we shouldn't 'have' to limit anything. We play with a closed group of players which are trustworthy enough to just not use what they've been asked not to. Like the AWP in CS.
Either way I'm sure I can just knock my settings back to make it playable and if not then it's no biggie. I'm not going to be playing for a month now as it is as we've got a couple of holidays booked.
Quote from: Penfold;401049I'm not going to be playing for a month now as it is as we've got a couple of holidays booked.
Whoosh!
That's my sympathy flying out the window mate.
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Well this has produced slightly more conversation than i was expecting.
I think my original question has morphed into three separate questions:
- Should we disable the option, Grass - None?
- Should we have a need to limit anything?
- How to get the best game performance?
As for the first one i think we are agreeing that we should disable this option, at least for a test period or test nights. It's easy enough to do so let's see what happens. I did a quick test on our server last night which I'll talk about in a bit.
Should we have a need to limit anything?
The short answer is no, but .....
Of course we would hope that everyone does what we tell them and for the vast majority of the time that's the case but there are always instances and to be fair, i think there always will be.
Something i think we should remember, a lot of the things we are talking about, grass to none, using thermal scopes etc, we as mission makers have put in there and made available in the first place. So maybe we should just think along the lines of, "We only put in what we want to play".
How to get the best game performance?
As i said, i did a quick and unscientific test last night. I loaded up my latest monstrosity, Camp Carry On and also created a test mission with just one player, one virtual ammo box and one quad bike. Camp Carry On has loads of stuff in it and slots for 20 players.
My ping was 33 when i loaded both missions. I set the view distance to 5000 (default it is set to 1600) and then tested with max grass and then no grass.
I jumped on the quad bike, went into third person view and raced off down the same dirt tracks.
[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500]
[TR]
[TD]Mission[/TD]
[TD]With Grass FPS[/TD]
[TD]Without Grass FPS[/TD]
[TD]% improvement[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Camp Carry On[/TD]
[TD]29[/TD]
[TD]31.5[/TD]
[TD]9%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Basic[/TD]
[TD]34[/TD]
[TD]38[/TD]
[TD]12%[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
However, i think it was more interesting to see there is a 17% to 21% improvement between the missions FPS (depending on grass setting). I think this shows it is far more important that we think about the best optomisation in our missions and even on our server. Camp Carry On was great fun to mess about on before we played on Sunday but it's going to be appalling for a mission. I have been doing a fair bit of reading recently about this and we should be avoiding adding anything to our mission we don't actually need. We shouldn't be adding to the map if we can at all avoid it, no new bases, no empty vehicles sat at the spawn unused etc etc. This is one of the reasons i have been scripting tasks and triggers instead of placing them in the editor. They are then only called by the completion of the previous task. We can do the same with the AI spawning.
I have been watching some of Jester814's Youtube videos and if he is controlling the mission he sometimes even uses Zues to delete the ammo boxes to help server performance.
I don't know how well our server performs (that is something we can monitor when logged in as admin) but something we might consider is using a Headless Client. This can help with general performance and also makes the AI act a little less like AI. But that's something for another day....
The server performance is an interesting angle, I have no idea how much processing it offloads to the client.
Maybe one of our handsome server admins could gather some perfmon traces for us ;)
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"The general idea is to offload the AI from the server to a client.
That client can then handle the AI calculations without the additional burden of network synchronization etc. This typically results in much more responsive, more human like AI, along with less server lag."
"When should you use a headless client?
The easiest way to tell if your mission would benefit from a headless client is to monitor server performance during a play through. While logged in as admin to your server, open chat and execute the command: # monitor 10
This will begin spouting server performance information in the lower left of your screen every 10 seconds (you can change this frequency by changing 10 in the command to a different value, and a value of zero disables the output). Within this information you will see a FPS (frame per second) value. This measures how well the server is performing and has nothing to do with any sort of rendering.
Values of FPS > 35 are generally considered good performance, while FPS < 15 is poor performance. Obviously the higher the value, the better. If at any point during your mission you are consistently getting low FPS values, then you may want to consider implementing a headless client."
QuoteAI in thick jungle? God help us :doh:
OB
No!!! we will not turn off the jungle !!!!!!!! :roflmao::devil: