The battle for maintaining performance and fps in indie engines is one which has never been an easy one in any indie engine. Today the same applies.
Reloaded is an indie engine aimed at indie game makers. The nature of this has always been and still is that would be game makers using it will rely heavily on the the core engine to provide a quality core and additionally and importantly also - will rely on the engine to provide internally by design abilities to optimise any content they will throw at it while building levels so as to maintain the performance in their games. Lastly for those that are able to do so they may be able to maximise their own game level designs and content optimisation wherever possible to help matters further.
Point being at the level of the Reloaded engine and importantly the status of the majority end user base level (largely one man/woman game makers) - indeed effectively similarly with any engine no matter what its status .e.g. middleware, top position engine, independent game company inhouse developed game engine, the battle for performance is the same.
Maintaining performance and fps with any engine is very difficult. Always has been and performance will never be enough or too much. The better the engine - the more aspiring the games to be made with it, the bigger levels will be made with it, the more complex the games will become, the more will be thrown at it and it will be required to manage and sustain performance, stability and quality and forever better games.
In this instance Reloaded has to find an adequate level for what both TGC and users aspire to in this modern game making era and into the future. In the case of indie engines ($100) and largely one man /woman game makers it has never been done and is and always was something of a challenge from the beginning of time to be fair since the date TGC was born.
No engine I am aware of to date including any bar none can meet with what indie developers by and large need, given that in the main their aspirations are beyond what the level of engine and resources they have and are able to call upon in developing their games.
Indie Developers want Pro AAA game of the day results and always have. Aspirations are always high and sometimes unrealistic one could say.
Having said that Reloaded could be the first engine that breaks the mold perhaps. i.e. allows indie game makers with limited skills and resources to easily and quickly (relatively speaking) develop a high quality game from all aspects of thinking given some effort on their part. By and large a click and play engine if you like at least to a large degree. No other engine on the planet can do that as can FPSC "Reloaded" can whatever the difficulties with performance.
Indie Users expect Reloaded to supply all of the necessary things to develop a complete quality, complex game, easily or at all and that has never been done before or to date remembering that this is an fps engine in the main and additionally aspires to perhaps be and offer much more.
If you just consider FPS then that alone sets Reloaded apart. Most users and perhaps TGC too at users requests would like Reloaded to be able to make games like high quality advanced and complex Modern Titles : The Elder Scrolls, COD, GTA, Battlefiled or whatever your bag, which is quite some aspiration!
When it comes to indie engine comparisons (or any) keeping it simple, games made by indies and their fps performance is going to be under pressure when being used by indie developers. Always has been and always will be. in an empty level fps no matter what it is will quickly fall away when adding content. The highs don't matter as much as the lows and maintaining 30fps constantly is a challenge. We don't need 60+fps - 30fps will do as a minimum maintained during gameplay but achieving that is no easy task.
In the case of Reloaded comparisons though it wont help this product directly, what you need to look at is not empty levels but completed game levels as Reloaded users aspire to for their games. No point at all looking at empty level or a level with just terrain and such like in it for any kind of guidance as that can never show you what any engine is capable of - only fully completed real game levels can do that. As a game maker you Users want a Reloaded game level to be able to be full of all things, Terrain, Water, a City and importantly of course a lot of AI and game mechanics and AI behaviours.
By and large a lot of users want to fill a Reloaded game level with 100s or thousands of entities including endless numbers of enemies apart from anything else and Maintain quality and performance to the very highest standards. A single Reloaded level is large and there are calls for it to be larger still. Filling that with content and action from end to end will take some doing, leave alone maintaining the quality and performance. Make no mistake its a tall order and always has been for indie game makers.
If you want to compare look for another engine a single indie developer working alone with can make a game as you aspire to which is an FPS Shooter and look for a completed game made with it by one person, full of the complex and advanced features aspired to at Pro AAA title quality whilst made in a short space of time and to the highest of qualities and that can maintain performance at a minimum of 30fps throughout gameplay. That wont be easy to find. Aspirations to that for all Reloaded users as expected by many is a admirable one but not easy to achieve to say the least.
To be fair using the current technologies which its difficult to change from now and redevelop the engine from scratch, it was never going to be easy. Reloaded development is slow because TGC are listening to users requests and trying to accommodate them, add actual real time development problems and issues along the line impacting on quality and performance and its - two steps forward and three back. The last few releases have no been helpful in some areas. Even a new engine using 64bit and so on it would not be easy or a speedy end result product and the indie users would still have some things to contend with and continued further aspirations for something better though true to say it may help in some ways no doubt. e.g. memory issues.
As is its a long job and set to continue in that vein. No simple or magic solution. Develop, add, change, go back over everything, update things, change direction and so on all as real life/time development issues and impossible to see impacts crop up dictate or force rethinking or practical development. Notwithstanding TGC throwing open development direction and to some extent capabilty and feature integration and design to the community which permanently restricts forward development which we cant have both ways. If the community and end user base were not to be consulted at all which might have been the case Reloaded may be well further along the line without doubt but you would not be happy with it even more so than now perhaps.
Given the way things are inevitably it will be a long haul make no mistake and the results depend on where along the road you access from. The end is potentially never as nothing stands still and the aspirations and goal posts will continue to constantly move forward. Whatever, its good the way it is as indie developers are consulted but much patience is required and unfortunately we are not good at that very often as is the case many having waited a long time for the ideal indie engine to become a reality.
Indie game makers often have a dream to reach a goal by the nature of what they are trying to do and not getting there is hard to bear. Hang in there I am afraid is all we can do and lend support in whatever way we can hopefully to make things better at the end of the day for all.
