Question How necessary/useful are Room Bounds? Optimization Questions.

[nzukowski]

When creating an interior cell, are there any good general rules/best practices regarding when you should add room bounds and portals? Is there a particular size or memory usage point or is it more of a matter of just going in game and seeing if it feels sluggish or off? The cell I'm currently working is at 477.71mb/177.00mb, (I have some finishing touches left so that number may creep up a bit) and has some pretty long sight lines (I can post some screen shots of it if that is something that would be useful). Are there any other optimization options that I should consider? Example: I have a long row of wine and beer on shelf, would making them into a static collection and putting the actual items in a container help?

I'm asking because while I think understand the process of adding room bounds and portals, I can never seem to get them in the right position/size (any tips on this?), so I want to know if it's worth all the time and frustration to add them. I understand performance will vary from pc to pc, so I guess I'm just looking for some general guidelines. Thanks.

 

[1000101]

It really depends on the complexity of your cell and how well the precombine and previs engines manage. If they can't optimize the level well then you may consider adding rooms and portals but you really need to design your dungeon with them in mind. The idea is that you want sections separated by halls with the portals between the various sections not visible too often through other portals. The contents of every room the player has a line-of-sight through a portal to must be rendered (or considered anyway). Rooms and portals are a mechanism to quickly discard large amounts of objects for rendering.

As to placement and alignment...
Align your room rotations to 0 degrees and as well as your level and use a North Marker to "rotate" the cell in-game.
Avoid decimals in both the size and position, prefering whole numbers for things like volumes (rooms) - xEdit can be useful for this if the CK doesn't let you access those properties directly on some things.
The edges of rooms that you want to share a portal must be coplanar (share a touching side) so a little basic math will tell your room sizes and positions you need.
And finally, after your rooms are aligned and sized to whole numbers, add the portals.

 

[nzukowski]

Thanks. I'll definitely keep this in mind for my next cell.