Dynamic lights slows things down noticeably ....

Post by **Rex Claussen** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:53

I just added dynamic lights to my map, and areas with 3 or more dynamic lights seem to play noticeably slower. I do not have very large areas, so I do not have more than 6 visible at any one time.

Also, in one area I have a light right above a polyobject sliding door. This area is the slowest, particularly during the activation of the door.

Is this type of slowdown normal?

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 16:16

Depends on the graphics card. What do you have? I can play Vavoom maps with lots of lights and only marginal performance loss on my GF6800.

Post by **Rex Claussen** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 17:14

I have a Mobility Radeon 9000, driver date June 10, 2004 (which I probably should update). The rest of the relevant system specs are:

Intel Pentium M 1.8 GHz
512 MB of 592 MHz RAM
Monitor resolution 1280*1024 @ 32 bit color
GZDooM settings are mostly default settings

I know this is comparing apples to oranges, but when I am playing in areas in my map that are virtually identical to those in Half-Life, my map lags but H-L does not.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 18:10

That's because the lighting is done differently. HL uses precalculated light maps which are far less time consuming. GZDoom's light rendering code is also not the most efficient.Unfortunately I can't do much about it because I am not that experienced in that area. Maybe if some GL expert tried to optimize it it would gain some speed...

Post by **Rex Claussen** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 19:22

Don't worry about it. I am learning to use dynamic lights with economy. Also, I updated my drivers, but that didn't help much.