Post by Eugene_Lychany in THE SILENT CITY CHAPTER 1 comments

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The game is laggy as hell, it can't be played normally even with memory cap disabled. I don't know what you did there but my PC handles way more demanding games with no issues.

Also what's the deal with the screaming monsters? Someone just blew the mic out screeching on top of their lungs and thought it would be scary. I'm gonna have to mute those or replace the sounds with something else because those are really annoying. Still have to force myself through the first levels but I hope you'll improve optimization eventually.

LEMIOUTGAMES207 days ago(+1)

Hello Eugene_Lychany,

Yes, I know the screaming monsters can get annoying sometimes, but there is a slider in the settings to turn down or turn off the audio. If that option isn’t working correctly, then that’s on me.

As for the lag, the game wasn’t really optimized when I finished it back in 2023. I didn’t get much feedback at the time, so I didn’t realize how bad the performance could get. That’s probably why I didn’t put more effort into optimization back then.

The first prototype of this game was a complete mess sometimes it launched, sometimes it didn’t. But I’ve come a long way since then, and I’m still learning. I’ll definitely look into the monster screams and work on improving the sound in the future.

Thanks again for playing and for the feedback it really helps.

That said, I think the biggest issue now is that the original game project is gone. I was using a different version of the engine back then, and now I can't do much with it. So I’ll have to rebuild it from scratch. The good news is, I can optimize the assets this time to reduce the overall game size, using software I bought specifically to compress and clean up game files.

I will upload the optimized version to the download link once it’s finished. Also, I will add the shader pack I’ve been working on, so I hope it works well and makes the game more immersive.

Eugene_Lychany206 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks man, I really appreciate you responding to the feedback. Sorry for being rude, I got frustrated when I realized I paid for the games that woudn't work properly. I'll make sure to stream the latest version and promote the game in case it works better.

UPD: Tried the game, still barely playable at the lowest settings. The initial woods are 5-10 fps max and it gets slightly better (around 20 FPS) when walking around the streets. I was hoping to do a full walkthrough but with recording on it's gonna be a slideshow for sure. The first level loads for around six minutes, not sure about the rest of the game.

LEMIOUTGAMES206 days ago (1 edit)

No problem I totally understand the game didn’t work as you expected.

If you’re still up for trying it again, here are a few things that might help improve performance:

Try lowering the in-game resolution, and also consider lowering your desktop resolution from 1080p to 720p 1280x720 in your Windows display settings sometimes that helps stabilize FPS
Make sure your GPU drivers are up to date
Enable Game Mode in Windows 10 or 11
You can also try an app on Steam called Lossless Scaling around $6.99 it can help smooth out performance in some games

If you want, feel free to share your PC specs, and I’ll take a look to see if there’s anything else I can recommend to help boost performance.

Eugene_Lychany205 days ago

My specs are:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz

RAM 16.0 GB

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4 GB)

I tried lowering texture resolution by using dividetexturesize=2 command. Also added the systemmemorycapoff=1 command to avoid potential crashing on load. The game mode is on, the drivers are up to date. I play at 1080 resolution. The game runs off SSD.

I've taken a look at some textures, they seem fine in terms of size, so the issue might be in game meshes, complex shaders or the number of materials used in the scene. I'm no Game Guru expert but it's usually optimized by occlusion culling, shadow culling, terrain chunk culling, object distance culling, delayed shadow rendering, disabling unused objects collision, compressing textures (yours are okay I think), using less complex shaders, etc.. I heard this engine loads the whole game at once without streaming assets which severely affects performance, especially if you have the same model copied over and over throughout the level (the cars, wall modules for example). The less is loaded at once, the better performance, so one of the ways out would be splitting the game into more lightweight levels and merging repeating objects into one mesh or a number of groups which could be culled by distance. The spawns seem to load on trigger only which is good (the number of enemies is quite heavy though, the football team of monsters spawning all at once on each pickup makes everyting lag (I also avoid some monsters to save my ammo, which increases the number of them chasing me around the streets), also breaks the immersion).

All in all, I think you could use profiler like Optick to see what's going on with the game. I've also found this optimization tutorial, might come in handy. I know it's a lot of work for you being an active developer, optimization is crucial, otherwise every project will have someone like me complaining.

LEMIOUTGAMES205 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the info. Your PC is a bit low for big map in GameGuru MAX because it loads everything at once. If I cut the map into smaller parts, lower the enemies, and maybe reduce some assets, it might run better. Also, this is GameGuru MAX not the old GameGuru Classic engine. I remember making this game when I had a 3060, and it ran fine on my PC back then

Eugene_Lychany205 days ago (4 edits)

It seems the same steps are valid for Max version as well. Someone even used 1050 for a benchmark here https://thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-max-performance-improvements

After some thinking, the single level approach is definitely the culprit. This is probably the first time I've seen someone do this as every other game was split into progressive story levels.

I also tried lowering shader settings as follows:

visuals.shaderlevels.terrain=2

visuals.shaderlevels.entities=2

visuals.shaderlevels.vegetation=2

visuals.VegQuantity=60

visuals.VegWidth=35

visuals.VegHeight=35

visuals.CameraFAR=200000

visuals.TerrainLOD1#=3000

visuals.TerrainLOD2#=4000

visuals.TerrainLOD3#=5000

visuals.DistanceTransitionStart#=2500

visuals.DistanceTransitionRange#=300

visuals.BloomEnabled=0

visuals.DepthOfFieldIntensity#=0

visuals.MotionIntensity#=0.3

visuals.FXAAEnabled=1

visuals.WaterWaveIntensity=80

visuals.WaterReflection=0.2

visuals.WaterSparkleCol=1.0

visuals.SkyCloudScale=40000

visuals.SkyCloudThickness=50000

visuals.SkyCloudCoverage=0.9

visuals.ShadowSpotCascadeResolution=256

visuals.SAOIntensity=0.3

No result whatsoever, which means the single level is so huge it doesn't fit into 4GB of video memory. 3060 has 12 GB of VRAM which allows it digest less optimized games better.

I'm just saying, I was able to run games like Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, RDR2 and so on. Those were able to run because modern engines use streaming assets plus splitting into levels to make the maps fit into that 2-4GB VRAM bill. As Game Guru MAX can't do that, your biggest task would be to split everything into levels.

You can join in Blender or attach in 3DS max the cars that use the same material and texture together, the same goes for decorative elements, walls, windows, doors if they are separate to create chunks of similar meshes that will be loading and unloading by distance. In other words, each level should contain only meshes that are used by it. It will reduce your drawcall count as each separate piece of mesh takes another drawcall to be rendered.

Optimizing your projects will save you tons of issues and attract wider audience as not everybody can afford better PC these days. That also will improve your skills as a game developer. Thanks for listening, I appreciate you taking time to fix everyting.

LEMIOUTGAMES206 days ago

About loading its on initial load is the only one time. Once you're in, the rest of the game loads seamlessly with no additional loading screens. It's a single continuous world, so while the first load is long, there shouldn't be any further interruptions after that.

LEMIOUTGAMES207 days ago(+1)

Ok, the size is now reduced from 20 GB to 13.6 GB, and the shader pack has successfully worked. The game looks like this now:

itch.io

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