Lugge-Trucker wrote:In the last days, I've been driving along all the parts in Spain and - yes - I am also kinda disappointed about ProMods Spain. I first arrived in a 1 fps-Barcelona (I know, I only have a low-spec laptop, so I won't get 30 or even 60 fps in ETS, but it is still playable everywhere else). Why do there also need to be parking areas with thousands of parked cars?
Trust me, it used to be much, MUCH worse. I've been working hard to optimise the city a lot and it was frustrating me to a point where I flipped the proverbial table. For some reason, my common optimisation strategies just fail. Here's what I've done in the city so far:
- Lower the drawing distance on detail objects.
- Replaced high-poly models with low-poly models in the distance.
- Removed a lot of detail objects
- Closed off a lot of roads so I can remove objects and add more strategic, large cut planes that hide large portions of the landscape (this is what gave the biggest gain in fps). Barcelona used to have a lot more accessible roads... and a city-wide fps of 30 or lower on my system, with one area even getting below 10 (it's now 40-45 for most of the city, with 20 as a minimum)
- Re-done all the cut-planes.
But all of that work, MANY hours of work, still couldn't solve the performance issues in Barcelona. I was out of options, out of ideas and out of motivation.
Lugge-Trucker wrote:I am definitely not reporting all those issues, I have better things to do in the next weeks. Maybe, there's someone else, who is bored enough to report all those issues. You just should overhaul the whole city once again. I know, it is not finished, it is also visible all about the city. That's why I am really wondering why do you even release such a early WIP city?
There is one reason why it's there. We pushed Ivan to finish this city, otherwise he wouldn't have any content in this release. Ivan's mapping pace is a bit questionable. He works everywhere, starts a lot of projects, but to my frustration, leaves them half-finished. Bilbao is one of these cities that could've been completed months ago, but Ivan still went on spreading out everywhere leaving a lot of loose ends and unfinished areas. If you build like that, you never going to finish it. This is totally the opposite how I mapped during the last release cycle: map to finish things, finish projects from what others started (e.g. Brussels, Umeå, Örnsköldsvik, Vaasa and even small parts of Norway in the Barents Sea Project). The result that Bilbao is kinda rushed, while it could've been finished at an easy pace. And this is getting a bit frustating...
Lugge-Trucker wrote:I am also wondering why do we need thousands of roads on one little piece of the map and hundreds of different ways to reach any point in ProMods Spain? Nowhere else can be found this density of roads and everywhere else this is definitely sufficient, even in the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany. So, why do we need it in ProMods Spain?
Different mappers, different mapping styles. That's what you are seeing here...
Lugge-Trucker wrote:To be honest, it simply looks like a challenge of some young kids who can create more in a smaller area, as if they were following the motto: "Higher, faster, further" and as if they had lost the focus on the essential, which is creating a nice and realistic map in a 1:19 scale in a computer GAME! Yes, it's a game, not a challenge, who can do more with the map editor. Thus the long time of creation and the little result. That's just how it appears to be to me.
Barcelona took way too long, that's what realdeal admits. The other part of the slow pace in Spain is caused by Ivan's rather unfocussed mapping...
Lugge-Trucker wrote:I really have to say you have definitely shot yourself in the foot with releasing Spain in ProMods at all. Sure, as I said before, the detail in Spain is great just as everywhere else in ProMods, but what is the good of it when it's not playable because of bugs and hardly any fps???
Do you have ANY idea how much the community pushes us to do this area? Have you ever need to cope with community pressure? Barcelona was in development for over a year and it was a big dilemma for us: release Barcelona with performance issues, or don't release it and give the community a huge disappointment? Think about it. It was a really tough choice for us to make.
The whole Iberian Peninsula is so far a two-sided medal. It looks great, but it's expanding slowly and the performance ain't all to great. And this can cause some big dilemmas and frustrations that I don't wish anyone to experience...
Also don't forget that both Ivan and Realdeal have school work to do besides of mapping. That slows down their pace too.
