Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

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Keeper Raul
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Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 5:55 pm

Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Keeper Raul »

I love the mods created by the community, especialy Extended Terrain Distance, Enhanced Skies and Water Reflections, but those also come with loss on performance (which is totally fine imo), the problem is that, even without mods, there are certain visual effects that really eat my FPS and they aren't all that visually appealing either. In snowy areas the ground looks completely white and shiny during the day, due to bloom (or specularity, or whatever it's called), this causes a real slowdown in outside areas. In taverns or cities, some ground textures have reflection, so a stone floor reflects light as if it was made of glass, again, this effect looks ugly and causes a big loss on performance, this is also what was causing my tavern FPS problem. The obvious solution would be to reduce graphical quality in the launcher menu, but when I did that, sprites and textures looked blurry and pixelated (even more than they already are). I am really trying not to sound like a douche, the work you guys have done is astonishing, but DFU could use a lot of optimization right now, my suggestion is to change the graphical settings so they don't alter sprite/texture quality, but increase/decrease visual effect quality. When you guys finish working on the UI, an "Advanced Settings" menu could also be useful, but for now, is it possible to do some .ini file tweaking (or something similar) to change light/shadow/specularity effects, like we do in modern TES games? Thanks a lot for reading.

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Interkarma
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Interkarma »

Thanks for the feedback! And you definitely don't sound like a douche, there's nothing at all wrong with highlighting problems and offering constructive criticism. :)

Agree some optimisation needs to be done, and this will be done gradually over time. There's a few things going on your post that need to be addressed separately. Overblown lighting on snow is a known bug that will be fixed at some point. Taverns definitely need tuning after the lighting upgrade they received recently. Not sure about stone floors reflecting like glass - that actually sounds like the reflections mod is enabled. A screenshot of problem would be helpful.

Just FYI, mods will be split from builds to their own addon (like normal mods). This will reduce memory footprint of the main build and create a clearer distinction between mods and default. I'll add some additional INI options to tone down the lighting effects in taverns and other interiors, and look into making the Unity performance options not break sprite quality.

Cheers.

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Nystul
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Nystul »

yep sounds like reflection mod was active when you mentioned that stone floor ;)
about interiors: one of the biggest performance improvement for me is to reduce shadow quality from high to medium in the quality settings of unity. Shadows look as good as before but it doubles my framerate. unfortunately this setting is not mapped to the ini-file/settings menu so we should consider to make this available as a setting

Narf the Mouse
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Narf the Mouse »

Your post would be easier to read with paragraph breaks. ;) This is not a critique of the content; paragraphs are just easier to read. :)
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

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Keeper Raul
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Keeper Raul »

Thanks a lot for the quick reply guys, I didn't notice there was already an advanced settings menu, I was using and older build, so I just downloaded the most recent live build and did some testing, here are the results:

http://imgur.com/a/Kkhch

The stone floor reflection (pic 1) happens in Mage Guilds, not in taverns, and it is indeed caused by the reflections mod, sorry for the mistake. I also noticed my FPS drops in Mage Guilds too, but the FPS problem is probably not related to the reflections mod, because in temples, where the effect is most prominent (and neat too), my performance is just fine.

I also disabled the reflections mod, but it didn't work, my performance is still poor in taverns and mage guilds. I think the reason for that is the excessive amount of shadows and lights in certain enviroments (pic 2), I tried disabling "dungeon shadows" in the menu, but nothing happened.

I also noticed other issues not related to performance, I think they were also present in older builds, but its worth pointing them out anyway: in town areas, there are lines in the ground textures, forming a grid pattern (pic 3), I don't know if its caused by mods or not. Also, the weather keeps changing all the time, its snowing, then it starts raining, then its sunny, and then snowy again. Sometimes (but not always) the snow looks glitchy (pic 4). Hope this helps.
EDIT: added paragraphs

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Nystul
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Nystul »

Yes you are definitely experiencing the same performance drops like me because of shadow quality. Just be patient till this setting is available in the settings ;)

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Nystul
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Nystul »

in the next build there is the advanced settings option to set the shadow resolution mode

just issued a pull request with the changes. So this will be in master branch of daggerfall-unity soon hopefully and thus in next live build

furthermore I switched the default shadow resolution mode to "medium" which should improve performance a lot on many systems.

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Interkarma
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Interkarma »

Awesome thank you for doing that! I will merge changes and update builds in morning.

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Interkarma
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Interkarma »

Builds updated. Thank you again for your shadow changes. This seems to have improved things quite a bit in interiors, and the visual quality is practically identical. Nice job!

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Keeper Raul
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Re: Disable fancy effects? (and other optimization requests)

Post by Keeper Raul »

That's great! Downloading the new build right now :)

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