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Beta Map KF-CarryOnUp

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arramus

arramus

Grizzled Veteran
May 8, 2009
1,142
57
Residing in Japan
#1
This beta version can be downloaded from the Sandcrawler Network here.

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KF_CarryOnUpPerfBeta5 - 24th of July 2009
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This beta version is primarily for performance testing. The map currently contains elementary props, textures, and architecture. These will be addressed in later builds.

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Setting
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Construction workers at a council building construction site have laid down tools and refuse to go back to work until the reported 'giant vermin' have been eradicated. Take your crew and clean up this infestation with everything you've got.

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KF_CarryOnUpPerfBeta5 features:
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8 Traders.

7 Floors.

14 Pickups for both weapons and ammo.

Multiple Zombie Spawners both in the playable battle field and outside the perimeter wall. The outside spawners have Jump
Pads so the Zombies make a 'dramatic' entrance.

Multiple staircases for up and down with additional 'alternative' down routes.

Open and closed battle zones.

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Installation
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Place KF_CarryOnUpPerfBeta5.rom in your server map folder.
Place the compressed KF_CarryOnUpPerfBeta5.rom.uz2 in your redirect.

Add KF_CarryOnUpPerfBeta5 to your server map rotation through the KillingFloor.ini or Web Based Interface.

Be fair, friendly, and have fun.
See you in the servers.

arramus

couperfbeta1_2.jpg


couperfbeta1_1.jpg


cao5.jpg


cao3.jpg


cou_leapers.jpg


cou_roofleapers.jpg
 
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#5
Jumping off the edge is a quick get away and it's often easy to restore most if not all health before the bots have the wits to get back into the pursuit. I was hoping to keep the edges open on all floors to allow the bots to drop off the side of the building as coming down the stairs can be time consuming.

I'd certainly like to maintain the pressure on players who jump off the edge to escape and make it weighted towards being a lot less pleasant by adding more spawn points outside the perimeter fencing so that if there are still spawns to come then the odds of them leaping onto your head from close range are much higher.
 
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#6
That's a good point else you'll get a train of mobs plodding down the stairs in a long line. The pinot grigio is hurting my head but I recall thinking the stairs should be flush against the wall. I rememeber crouching opposite the stairs so my back was against the outer wall and having a lovely line of sight of a line of mobs coming up the first set of stairs of the flight for head shot heaven. If the stairs were flush to the buildingd external walls players couldnt camp and cover all the flights of stairs. Just a crushed grape enhanced thought.
 
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Upvote 0
#14
i've just tried your beta 4 performance map from killingfloor mods. i enjoyed playing the map although it did feel a little samey, this might not be the case on insane level (still not brave enough to try that) but anyway i found that my machine lagged in a few spots which is surprizing since its got 10GB of RAM and 2 Graphics cards. I'd suggest installing FRAPS and running around your map to see where the frame rate drops. I did this with my map and it did wonders for finding those flawed areas. I haven't loaded your map in the editor but there's a ton of open space and doors are almost non-existant. This begins to make me wonder if you have done any zoning to your map. Portals can be a pain because without a door you tend to get the "hall of mirrors" effect. if you haven't already done so i'd suggest you look into "zones" and "anti-portals" for improving the performance of your map. PS. good luck if you are entering the competition, this map should be fun online; can't wait to try it. ahhhhhh why is all the formatting going haywire. i bet it was that latest firefox update
 
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#15
Thanks for the feedback avp2501. This beta is primarily to test performance with a focus on FPS and major flaws so it was good to hear about your performance issues in certain areas.

I use the unreal engine's own FPS checking tool as well as Xfire to offer a secondary reading. To use the unreal engine's FPS checker enter STAT FPS as a console command.

As the image shows, there are an abundance of antiportals which allow for a pretty high framerate inside the building and reduce the hit on the hotspots outside. Placement of closed lockable areas is dependent on performance in this beta in that I'll add them to areas where there are lower FPS hotspots. This will add more variety and weld opportunities.

cou_anti.jpg


I've done a lot of FPS checking in all areas of the map and the lowest framerates I get are:

Outside looking up at the corner with glass windows. FPS is typically 30 in this area if you're looking up or there is a large horde. Keeping your vision at ground level maintains 40+.

cou_outsidefps.jpg


cou_outsidefps2.jpg


Inside at one far end can also see a drop to 30~35 FPS with a horde. This area clearly dictates the need for additional optimisation and makes for a good lockable room area for occlusion and frustrum balancing.

cou_outsidefps3.jpg


My minimum target is 40 FPS + with a zombie horde present.

My rig has the following specs:

Core 2 Duo E8500
4GB RAM
Nvidia 9600 GT

I consider this setup to be in the medium range but am also giving some consideration to players running on lower specs with regard to FPS targets.
 
Upvote 0
#16
Hi Arramus,

It sounds like you are going to have very similar optimisation problems to what I have been having with my Multistorey carpark map. I had a look through your map, and here are a couple of things I have been trying to get a few more FPS out of the engine. This is the stage I am at with my latest beta3, and the optimisation is taking far longer than the actual building of the map!

Removing Collisions from Static meshes that the player cant get to.
I find that Collision detection really drags down FPS. Any meshes that are not accessible to the player should have BlockNonZeroExtentTraces set to false. (nonzero extents are players, zeroextents are bullets, coronas etc). So, for objects on the outside of the play area, such as trees and buildings, this setting can be set to false so the engine knows it doesn
 
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#17
It's the first time I've used FixedVisibility for optimising and I think it's very useful. There are large chunks of building that that shouldn't be rendering based on the antiportal placement. I think I'm going to rebuild some antiportals that I copy/pasted as unique instances. They show up as doing the job in the editor but in game they don't appear to be doing what they should in game. Various tuts say you can copy/paste these brushes but maybe not.

The whole structure is basically made of 7 added brushes for each floor level with accompanying substracts for stairwells and liftshafts and 3 SMs for 2 types of pillar supports and one girder type support. The SMs are repeated a lot for the pillars as each floor has its own set and one doesn't run from top to toe. I'll try a few optimising tweaks to get the best rendering results.
 
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#18
The basic building of our maps is similar so we are going to get similar problems and solutions. I had pillar SM's on every floor of my map as well.... By replacing the pillars on every floor with one new static mesh that I made, I managed to get rid of almost 30% of the Static Meshes on my map. I ended up making a new static mesh of the pillar which was essentially one extralong pillar which goes through every floor.

I got an extra 10 fps by removing those individual SM's. Might be something worth looking at.
 
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#19
I went back to basics and stripped away all SMs in order to start troubleshooting the heavy FPS areas. The SMs I have certainly do not justify the hit you get in some areas as for the most part they should all cache and bring little load to the map. Even after stripping away the SMs my FPS didn't rise dramatically on just the basic brushwork which is very minimal to say the least.

And the culprit turns out to be the KFGlassMovers. They must require a lot of resources and probably constantly rendering. Anytime you look in their direction from any floor there is a drop in FPS.

Here's a comparison of all KFGlassMovers in place and after they've been shot out/removed.

glass_cou.jpg


Without them the FPS is 60~65 but with them FPS drops to about 30 FPS. That's a huge hit indeed. I have two choices with the windows now. Either reduce the glass until FPS is reasonable or change the small panes to one big pane which may allow all windows to remain glazed but will not leave small fragments. I'll test both and see how it goes.
 
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