Hi, i'm trying to place quite a few fences but when trying to run the level it gets stuck at creating AI obstacles, is it possible to turn off the collision process for them to speed up loading?

i have already set the collision mode = 11 in the fpe (and can now walk through them) but it didn't help with the loading issue

I have had some long waiting times now on ai obstacles. 15mins and I got bored... no error messages or anything just a long wait b4 exiting out through task manager.

It's an intense step in the process as each obstacle creates an exponential performance cost as it has to relate the new obstacle to all existing ones. I agree this step can be MASSIVELY improved in terms of operating speed but it's not a top priority for V1.007. If this issue re-emerges for more users, I will bump it further up the list!

well it definitely gets lengthy pretty fast, i think it would be a nice touch to skip it for objects we set to have no collision as a starting point although a better system would be great in future, i am currently using quite a few objects though so i will remove them and rethink my approach for now, taking forever to test anything with those load times

Can the system not be updated so that the "obstacles" in the world are mapped by the engine and their position pre-calculated and saved/remembered in the map/engine so that they don't have to calculated every time the map is tested?



This I would mean of course that the/this pre-calculated/compiled "Obstacle Map" would have to be "updated" each time a new obstacle was added though I don't know if that could be accumulative or if the whole would have to be recalculated or just any additional obstacles (positions and so on) could be added to the existing Obstacle Map without as said recalculating the whole every time. If all had to be recalculated at every single additional obstacle added then I guess that's back to the same problem.



I know such things as obstacle avoidance are complicated and clearly require a lot of maths/calculations especially I guess in real time/run time if obstacles have to be constantly taken into account in real time, live during game play.



I guess its a big job to do at an advanced level and to work around or avoid the constant checking math/data processing.



You can see I don't know what I am talking about. No idea if that makes any sense at all to anyone other than me it being a bit long winded. I am sure Lee will do whatever can be done to help given the possibility and time.

This is becoming increasingly annoying, the transition from working on my desktop computer to my laptop is very noticable now. Loading my level takes ages on the calculating AI obstacles. This really should be looked at as it is a hinder for people with average systems. (As I said this is not much of an issue on my powerhouse of a PC, even though it STILL takes some time)

Lol yeah I pretty much click test level and then go an make a toasted sandwich and get back before its loaded

Even worse when it just gives a black screen after the wait



I've played about trying to speed the process up in the past. I find placing one object down, right clicking it for it's properties and turning off physics seems to help. You can then replicate that one as often as you want. The player can walk through the object generally, but for distant stuff you never intend them going near it could help. Of course, it's a long winded process clicking each object and settings them separately when you have already done a level though. I don't often do this but it certainly used to help a fair bit in older versions,even giving a bit of in game speed increase.



As for fixing it. Uman is probably on the right lines. Should be possible to add a changed flag that gets set when you first place an object or adjust it. So when the engine calculates them it can ignore anything set to unchanged, and only calculate any new or changed objects. Reading the last calculated data for the unchanged ones. Of course it sounds simple, but in practice there may be a good reason for leaving it until the map data is fairly set in stone. You would also have to save the data for this after calculating in order to read it on the next test run. But for small tweaks on a large level it could be way faster.

do they have any info on if they will optimize this? my testers say this is the most annoying part. I have a huge level with over 2000 entities and I literally went to the store and came back and it just loading, thats like a 10 minute wait time

UMAN hit up on the solution and the one we will be implementing for V1.008 which is to skip time consuming steps in the Test Level build process where the previous data would have been sufficient. For example if you have not moved any entities, created or deleted any, then there is no need to recalculate obstacles. If you move dynamic entities, there is no need to recalculate obstacles. And so on. There are a few other hot spots as well not related to physics which can speed up the time it takes to start a Test Level session and we will look at these once we have squeezed more performance out of the in-game loop (which is our priority).

Yea that solution would really help. Thanks for the attention on it!



So today I hit my "I am officially done" for now feeling. It takes me over 3 mins just to pass AI obstacles. I know that this is going to be attended to but unfortunately this means that I can only test my level on my home PC and not my laptop because my patience is severely tested each time.



I wish that you guys would release the alpha builds (internal) to the GOLD pledges. Who cares if it breaks my game, I should of had backups. I am the type of person who flashes new roms on my android phone every week. I have no issues messing with the latest and greatest even if it mean stability loss. I would understand the hesitance to release nightly builds when you have a fully functioning stable product but in this cause the nightlies would almost ultimately be better than the last release.



Anyway if this is never going to happen then I just hope that 1.008 releases soon.... (as you can see not having nightlies causes us to desperately jump to the "next" version attitude.)



EDIT: I see that they are releasing 1.0071 so I hope that includes the AI Obstacle optimization!!



EDIT EDIT: YES IT INDEED DOES!!!!

Please delete this double post..

We will be releasing a Hot Fix for V1.007 soon which substantially improves the AI OBSTACLE build time, so watch this space

See that is why I frequently visit here so much! Thank you for paying attention to this concern and addressing it quickly. I am very much looking forward to improvements in that area. This is major to me now because I am at the script making portion of my level design and this is when I have to test over and over again making the AI obstacle more noticeable.

Thank you for adding this to the next update, so awesome!