We can use this topic to suggest ideas to solve performance issue in Reloaded.



I'm not an engine developer so I can't suggest any technical staff, Only thing I can suggest is to analyse Cube 2's source.

http://cubeengine.com/

http://sauerbraten.org/



Cube 2 is an open-source FPS sandbox game engine just like what Reloaded wants to be when it grow up.

Cube 2 does not include cutting edge technologies, but in my opinion Cube 2 is still a beautiful engine and rock solid, able to run on very old hardware and it sandbox scene editor is great.

Of course not possible to use it source code to make a commercial product to sell but I think worth to look at, maybe Lee can find some ideas, how to optimise Reloaded. In my opinion a similar engine would be enough, even if not cutting edge but nice, fast and stable.

I've written an engine similar to this in the past (well several actually), and it gets it's speed from the fact that it can all be done with relatively few polygons and fixed-function pipeline visuals. Baked lighting and some nifty visual culling improve performance further.



Unfortunately for us, Reloaded is an entirely real-time 'massive world' engine, so the challenges are to get the fastest shaders running on the lowest hardware, reducing polygons and draw calls ONLY when you don't notice them and ensuring the lighting model produces a convincing end visual without faking or pre-baking. It's a tall order, but we're capable and we have the time



I could probably learn a few lessons from the way they render their large scenes, but I am a cynic and suspect they do a texture sort and then do a massive blit of geometry batches. More modern engines have per-shader issues in the mix, which makes render activity a lot more 'interesting' (read: complex)