I've been wondering how do people get so much out of the budget you get. I watched a vid of one of aka footloose's "go ahead,make my day" and if i had half that many vehicles and a tenth of the animals, i'd have no room for any enemies. I'm using pc...is there more budget on PS3-4 etc ? And how far can you push the budget when the red moves in before unplayable for most.
On PC, the budget can be totally ignored but that doesn't me you should. PC you are free to do what you want. As far as I know all consoles have to abide by the budget. On PC when you exceed the budget you have to start watching out for other things, such as file size and most important "FPS" I pretty much ignore all budgets except for the "budget grid" When It goes red I back off. If you don't, when a player is in that area, too many objects will cause low FPS and it will become sluggish and jerky or unplayable, AI will not respond right, they become ******ed. My PC is just less than "recommended requirements" but well above minimum. As long as FPS stay above 30 all plays fine. If you intend on publishing a map over budget you should make it so it will play on any machine that meets requirements. I've played many maps that go way beyond the budget to ridiculous extremes and the best PC out there won't play it smoothly! Such as I saw an ASSAULT map with 1520 enemy. Totally unplayable! A good rule of thumb for number of enemy is no more than 60 on the ground at any given time, which can be controlled by waves. I use a lot of objects in my maps, but if you just plop down empty buildings with no detailing you could up the enemy count.
AKAFootloose
BTW, "Go Ahead-Make My Day" Is about as far as I will push a map. If you download it you will see it is 6882KB. You can also see it has no red cube and no red budget grids. On my PC I get around 40 FPS most places but drops to around 30 inside the outpost. That is as low as I will go. I have played maps with 2 FPS.
I have a AMD FX(fm)- 6 core possessor ,8 gig,64 bit with AMD Radeon HD 5700 series card. It seems to handle quite a bit but i'd like more memory that someday i'm gonna bump up.
How do you know what FPS your doing in certain areas? Also when placing vehicles my AI budget drops my AI dramatically with every addition. In your "go ahead" for instance you had many vehicles thru out the map and many AI. So do i more or less ignore the blue creeping up on my AI budget...or just lose half my AI ? It would be nice to have trucks etc that were always dormant for looks that didn't use AI budget. But i guess we should be happy with what they gave us and work around it.
I'd love to have full reign with no budget...we all do.
In the Uplay settings - check the box "Display FPS counter in game" Then while playing the FPS will display in the top left of screen. What number you get will depend on how powerful your PC is. With a average PC I would use 30 FPS as a minimum. If you have a top of the line gaming PC I would suggest 60 FPS as a minimum when test playing a map. "ALWAYS" test play a map from the game menu - Map Editor - Play Map. From there it will always play the same as when after it's published. You can play it full screen and take screenshots from there but not in just the editor. You can ignore all those budget blue and purple sliders. The only one I pay attention to is the budget grid - if it goes red, I delete something until the red goes away. All objects have a different budget cost. Such as 1 vehicle may be equal to 4 or 5 crates. AI are hard on the budget, they add up fast as they are animated and use more memory. AI includes enemy, allies and animals. If you want more enemy, use less allies and animals(going by FPS) For a guess, I would say you can double what you have been doing without over doing it. Just remember... no red budget grids and stay on top of FPS. After a few maps you get a feel for what you can and can't do.
Wow..thought i had a good system . Haven't had a game i couldn't play. I watched the FPS (mine for some reason is in bottom right corner) and in the map i'm now making it's running low 20's in village and even lower of all places, looking at a bare opening...17's. And this is with no AI, vehicles or red anything. I lowered my quality from high to med. and it improved to 21...woop,woop. I guess since I've got 70+ maps published doing fairly well they're still playable....just wanted to make improvements. I do like as you say to play maps first as once i caught a chair or two floating in air from a house i deleted . Well thanks for your help sorry if i'm a pain in the butt. I'll work on this for awhile and try and get FPS up.
It's your video card. It is actually less than minimum requirements to even play the game. I was getting 50-70 FPS in Bahas and my PC is not that great. As long as it plays good on your machine, it should play fine on anybody's. All things said and done, ignore the budget and have fun exceeding it. You should be able to double what you have been doing. Your maps will play just fine on someone else's PC.
When you say FPS is in the lower right, are you in the editor or the browser. The reading in the editor (lower right)is not that accurate. The true FPS should be in the top left while playing a map from the browser. Start FC4, from the main menu click Map Editor. Click "all my maps" and find the map you want. Then click PLAY... do not "open in editor" If you open in the editor the game will close, you do not want to close the game.
Ahhh...I see. I'm gonna give it a try,gonna go for it with the blue n purple, and keep an eye on all red limits. And plan on another graphics card in the future. Living on SS is gonna be a trip looking for a deal on amazon or newegg behind the wife's back, lol. She thinks I'm nuts as it is.
Thanks for the info....again.