laggy maps

[Jalis]

Can you name me bk maps who have reputation to make game lag? It s for test and analysis.

[kwok]

8p fields of engagement. Would love to play this map more.

8p drachenwald (I think it’s called. It has a lot of destructible trees making it impossible to play even on the best machines.

8p graves ridge kind of?

8p Henschel airfield. The map is effing massive. I think people also just don’t like the map cuz it’s so goddamn big.

[Jalis]

I often played Henschel airfield some years ago in multicoop 2 to 4 humans players vs 4 AI without noticed problems. I think 1946 atomic attack take place on this map.

Drakenwald is an other matter. It was the BK maps we avoided. Even more, a lot of crash occurred on this maps, but may be all problems are linked.

Thanks for the list.

[Walderschmidt]

8p fields of engagement. If you solve the lag issue then finally people will play something other than Goodwood.

[Jalis]

Most of laggy maps you speak about share fact to have a load of single destructible pines. Single pines are animated vegetation (they swing in the wind). I made a try on field of engagement remove a large part of these pines replacing by non animated trees and vegetation. However gain in fps is about 10-15 per cent. I dont know if it is enough.

[Jagdpanther]

Bretonneoux. It's a small 2v2 but it lags like crazy, i dont know why, i dont usually have lag on 2v2 maps, only this one.

[Jalis]

For what I experienced I can confirm pines trees have a bad influence on game performance. Replacing it by generic trees, scrubs, rocks or rubbles increase fps.
If goodwood work well it is also because it is a small 4vs4. it could even be see as a 3vs3 forced in 4vs4.
Now, If I have a field of engagement with modified vegetations for improved performance, who will verify it and validate it is enough good to by playable ? As a none pvp, it is not something I can do. Without speaking about performances, just change pines destructibles trees by generics trees change cover condition. Generic trees dont generate remnants for exemple.

[Walderschmidt]

For what I experienced I can confirm pines trees have a bad influence on game performance. Replacing it by generic trees, scrubs, rocks or rubbles increase fps.
If goodwood work well it is also because it is a small 4vs4. it could even be see as a 3vs3 forced in 4vs4.
Now, If I have a field of engagement with modified vegetations for improved performance, who will verify it and validate it is enough good to by playable ? As a none pvp, it is not something I can do. Without speaking about performances, just change pines destructibles trees by generics trees change cover condition. Generic trees dont generate remnants for exemple.

Make the map and I will play it and test it. It's my favorite map.

Wald

[Snowstorm]

Maps with a lot of individual pathing blocking elements tend to cause lag as they increase path calculation times for all units. The more units are on the battlefield the more the map will lag. This is why AI matches tend to be the laggiest as the AI will build excessive amounts of units, many more than any human player could. You can spot any such maps easily by looking at how clumped together all pathing-blocking elements are placed. In professional maps (campaing maps, vanilla maps) the trees and fences etc. are clumped together into larger concentrations and maps tend to have much more empty space between objects. Inexperienced map creators usually attempt to decorate their maps with objects instead of using splats (sprites), splines (rows of sprites), deform (tiny hills and valleys) or tiles (map base grass or sand).

In addition, graphically the Coh engine is not designed to handle more than about 300 3d objects at the screen at the same time. While you can go over that limit it is not advisable as this also causes lag. In BK camera is zoomed out, which worsens the issue. Modern processors and GPUs help with this somewhat, but the engine still has its limitations. Map makers should try to take this into account, especially in larger maps where you can have as much as 8 players looking at the map at the same time (1v1 maps do not need to care about the issue so much, which is why some of even the vanilla 1v1 maps are so full of detail). It's an odd way of structuring a game, but that's just how it seems to have been built.

Even if all this would not be a technical issue i personally dislike maps like high valley, as light vehicles just are unable to move sensibly around. They turn around and pivot instead of moving, which usually leads to them being destroyed. In cluttered maps infantry units respond more slowly and get decimated by grenades etc. Gunshots hit object clutter and miss their targets. Also maps with objects spread evenly all over look unnatural. Real world tends to have stuff clumbed together with open space in between. Best maps use open space intelligently and spare objects for maximum vvisual and gameplay impact.

Sorry for long post.

TL;DR: maps need and should contain more open space. It decreases lag and makes for a better game altogether.

[Playmobill]

All the maps mentionned before are indeed way beeyond engine limitations.

To complete Snowstorm excellent post above, here is a non exaustive short list of what usualy make maps laggy in my experience (i'm not especialy focused on the list above) :

• Loads of objects in the same screenspace
  (check for 'renders' values in the Worldbuilder's statgraph, by convention, rules are bellow 250 r. for a smooth 4v4, 300 r. for 3v3, 350 r. for 2v2 and max limit is at 450 r. for 1v1 maps.
  
• TERRAIN !
  most forgotten issue, is terrain with high tesselation (= non-smoothed). Look how Onkelsam nicely avoided this issue, by smoothing his map Duclair. DO NOT FORGET to smooth "Out of Boundaries" terrain !!!
  
• Certain types of objects will eat fps like crazies.
  loads of animated pines for ex, but also certain types of walls (like the brick wall with fences on top of it)
  
• High number of walls in a map.
  Use them with caution, they tend to eat more fps than you think. I did that mistake in Veules-les-roses.
  
• Multiple water sources / bad water placement.
  Each water source reflect surrounding objects, which are calculated twice then. When possible, place your watersources far from high object density locations (wall like support walls do count aswell twice). More sources is adding more objects to reflect.
  
• Mixing building packs together in the same map.
  If you place a building from Rural section, then a building from Industrial section, and after that a building from Urban section, you are just forcing the game to load the entire 3 buildings packs when loading the map. Focus your map buildings to use the same package when possible.

There is more to add to this list but those are the most common issues i saw in most maps i revised for map pack 2 for example.

[illustreprimum]

This list is fantastic to find and I have compiled the information into my mapping reference document that I use when building or editing maps thanks guys. I have been looking through some very early map-packs and seeing what people made when the game and this awesome mod (I have played over 2,000 hours) were only new. I have a small group of dedicated PvE mates and we have endured lag too many times, so I take maps with a good idea but inefficient implementation and revise them for our use.
My point: The most common thing I find (besides those already covered above) that when I correct it helps our games to stay synched until game-over is 4 or more texture layers in a chunk when using the texture tile painting editor. This is connected to inexperienced map makers using the textures to decorate their map instead of decals / splats / splines for detail. I know, I did it in my early attempts.