IDEA/REQ Increase Npc's draw distance

[propheet]

Toccatta: max (all slots at 10 cards or more) a spray spell that summons any objects on impact (best: air magics - summons different objects). While it's true that there's performance impact on moving and co-interacting objects, the FPS (at least for me) are still down even when all of the boxes, balls and anvils are stationary.

This is because this system is also reactive to gravity and not just one object to another. Even if objects vs. objects are constantly recalculated, something must be always on in physics system for each and every collisionable object to maintain its XYZ location. That has to be done in order to factor in any changes stemming from new objects showing up or even character wading in through them -> which would be laggy if the system resumed its operations just the moment something new entered the fray, which so far it doesn't.

We can check if the collisions on physically-enabled corpses are the reason on tripers. They don't have any AI implemented and their corpses have no collisions on them. Their dead bodies only have meshes, while living beasts have just basic HP parameters. They still give out loot and thus some glow. Summoning 100 of them and killing them should theoretically have little impact on productivity, considering they have no AI and no physics application after death, but would confirm any particle dependency.
Tripers:
TMONSTER_04_01
TMONSTER_04_02

[Kefka]

Does any one know of a way to increase A.I distance?

[swordsman5]

Originally Posted by propheet

We can check if the collisions on physically-enabled corpses are the reason on tripers. They don't have any AI implemented and their corpses have no collisions on them. Their dead bodies only have meshes, while living beasts have just basic HP parameters. They still give out loot and thus some glow. Summoning 100 of them and killing them should theoretically have little impact on productivity, considering they have no AI and no physics application after death, but would confirm any particle dependency.
Tripers:
TMONSTER_04_01
TMONSTER_04_02

OK I've done a little experimenting with this Triper, the maximum number that I have been able to spawn near my character is 228 then the next spawns in a different location...generally right on top of your char. Kill that lot and spawn another group in the same locality and the total before the spawn point moves is 50 or so less. At one point I had a total of 1057 spawned/killed/looted Tripers in the one area (screenies are being uploaded at the moment.) I've got the figures from the number of brains collected. The area I'm using is the roadway the other side of the Bayan gate because I got there via the smuggler route the gate is closed so it's a good area to experiment. I found also that I could increase the number of creatures spawned at a single point by doing so from a greater distance, so whilst standing on the roof of the abandoned building just short of the teleport I started spawning Tripers 2/3rds of the way back down the road towards the Bayan Gate. I managed 385 in the same place but by that time the game was lagging badly, I could probably have spawned a few more but even the console was lagging. Running in for the "kill" was a joke, I was watching the clock and the screen was at the slowest point updating once every 6 seconds, I have a feeling that this was as the character transferred between game cells, once the transition was complete the game picked up speed .... to about 1 possibly 2 fps. Killing/looting the hoard seemed to make no visible change to the speed of the game, however because there is no ragdoll (or anything else for that matter ) for the Triper then it/they still hover and have slight movement.

The above was tried with a level 43 character and at that level you get a hansom 56 XP per kill so I decided to give it a try with an early save....Level 7 in fact, a single Triper at that level netts 1096 XP....so I had to give that a try with a "Full Mob" ....228 kills pushed my level 7 character to level 23! ............That's buggered it if I wanted a heavy armour surcoat!

So at the end of it all even without the collisions they still slow the game even when dead and looted so that has to be something to do with the small amount of animation that each individul has on it.

Pic are ready.... believe it or not there are 1057 Tripers amongst that lot!



And here is the mob of 385 in one place.



And here is where that large number were spawned from

[propheet]

I think you went a little overboard with the testing... that zeal kicked in, eh? Anyway, to make the results more reliable, you should summon around a 100 beasts in a fully loaded subcell (I realized that loading in DOES NOT match the cells/maps -- in fact, those transitions are SMOOTH and UNNOTICEABLE for the most part. Preloading rocks.). To do so, start spawning creatures only in front of you and only immediately after you've seen the rotating cd preloading symbol. A few things that should be reminded of:

-There're physics heavy enemies and physics light monsters. Light physics monsters include small creatures and in general those with few limbs. HOWEVER, the game spawns most accurate body ragdolls only for SENTIENTS and HUMANOIDS. So for the purposes of testing vs. control group (tripers, 50-100) perhaps consider vidon or grom or varn (low physics on accurate ragdolls) and spiders or scoprions (high physics on less accurate ragdolls).

-There're particle heavy and particle light enemies. Those with most particles will show those only when alive. Those include grand necris and necris. Some of the enemies also have liquid simulations (taediums), that might come in handy too (but they have almost no physics and are generally stationary).

-Animations shouldn't factor in at those numbers (you have around 50-100 NPCs walking around every town within one cell at any time, those have not only animations but also AI routines). I doubt your slowdowns were actually due to animations. It's likely simply an object overload, those can happen at any time there's more entities on screen. That's why smaller but comparable amounts of enemies should be compared. 50-100 should suffice, because those are highest margins for what the game will realistically ever display anyway. More enemies will be counterproductive to testing since it will not resemble ANY scenario for which the game has been optimized.

I'm only proposing that cause you seem to like summoning huge amounts of enemies (preferrably totally helpless like tripers) and then just go in in a berserker's killing frenzy Let your sword serve a higher purpose!!!!

[swordsman5]

This is just a fun character....hit level 46 without doing any more quests other than those that are needed to get Hatmandor open, I just wanted to see how long it would take game-wise to get to that level on killing alone...26 game hours or there abouts, of constant spawning/looting/upgrading.

It was your suggestion to utilise the Triper as it has no real AI or collision, at least after death, spawning 100 has no effect at all on fps, however spawning 60 to 70 Varns, Vidon, Scapulari, Draconai or Rages (reapers) has quite a dramatic impact. I tried spawning 100 Ostriches out in the Savannah and things started to slow down drastically, so to my mind that is an indication that vastly extended AI distance would cause problems especially on lower end machines. Whilst extending the view distance will only place the creatures in the world space, extending the AI gives the machine a far greater series of calculations to handle, not only would it be looking to set that wildlife into it's routines but there is also the other animated objects, grass plants and trees to take into consideration.

[propheet]

spawning 100 has no effect at all on fps, however spawning 60 to 70 Varns, Vidon, Scapulari, Draconai or Rages (reapers) has quite a dramatic impact.

Thanks!!!