Best Optimized Missions

[BoilerDunce]

As a community-driven game, optimization of the mission environment for lighter or more outdated computer systems is not expected to be uniform.
Not only will missions differ in how much they use basic best practices, but some will push the envelope where most others did not.

The topic is:

"What missions do you notice a great achievement in optimizing the world?"
"What missions are well or fairly well optimized?"

With humble admiration,
Boiler Dunce 

[nbohr1more]

Most missions in the database are pretty well optimized so the question boils down to if you are asking about absolute performance or relative performance.

We have lots of small missions that don't need heroic feats of optimization to run well on weak hardware but some authors have still applied good optimization work to them ( Sir Talbot's Collatoral, Return to the City, The Outpost, Chalice of Kings, Lockdown )

We also have large and technically impressive missions like No Honor Among Thieves, Seeking Lady Leicester, Volta 1 & 2, Behind Closed Doors, William Steele 2, Requiem, Northdale 1 & 2, Lords and Legacy, Written in Stone... that are well optimized and run well despite their large sizes and expanded vistas.

Arguably, even large missions like Painter's Wife, Iris, Penny Dreadful 2 & 3, King of Diamonds, The Black Mage that are more taxing than normal are still pretty well optimized given what they offer in terms of content.

Then, on the opposite side you have missions like Scroll of Remembrance and A Bridge Too Far which are pretty modest in terms of size but are very taxing on performance. These missions probably could be optimized further.

 

[jaxa]

The missions I remember are the worst optimized. 

[chakkman]

16 hours ago, BoilerDunce said:

As a community-driven game, optimization of the mission environment for lighter or more outdated computer systems is not expected to be uniform.
Not only will missions differ in how much they use basic best practices, but some will push the envelope where most others did not.

The topic is:

"What missions do you notice a great achievement in optimizing the world?"
"What missions are well or fairly well optimized?"

Do you have a low spec computer?

Frankly, the best missions do tax the GPU a bit (although, in general, The Dark Mod is not very demanding), so, unless you have a low spec computer, there's no point in missing out.

Edited July 28, 2024 by chakkman

[BoilerDunce]

To nbohr1more:

Many thanks for this very thoughtful response.

I actually find it surprising that Seeking Lady Leicester makes your list for well optimized. It's unplayable for my PC. 
Written in Stone and its eyewateringly beautiful snowflakes are almost unplayable for my PC.
I'll get more into my PC in the other replies.

For the purposes of claims made about how well a mission has been optimized, different contributors may bring different contexts.
I even encourage technicality and historical context to be included for those so inclined.

I am having trouble finding a sure understanding of absolute vs relative optimization.
I think both absolute and relative measures of achievement would be welcome, but are non-compulsorily encouraged to be clearly marked as what they are, as it may be a courtesy.

~

To chakkman: By the standards of today's market, its weak. But I'm well above the minimum specs. I couldn't find a recommended specs. Maybe I'm not very far beyond those if someone has  them.

i5-3570k, GTX 680, 16GB of memory, SSD.

I promise you I've been trying to miss out on the least I can. Something worries me, though. It may boil down in my case to a question about GPUs: Does anything happen to them that lowers their performance after extended amounts of time overheated, like 70-80 degrees Celsius? I only recently discovered one of the places I had missed on what should be dusted, and after dusting it, the temperature under load dropped 40 C, and some unplayable games became playable again, while others might be performing worse than I remember. I'm not sure if I remember accurately though, it's been a while. If they do something complicated to cope with damage they might get under those temperatures, maybe it would affect different game engines unevenly, is my best guess. But I don't know what's really going on with PC hardware. An answer here would be highly appreciated even though it is not the main topic!

~

To axa: There are many kinds of memory of the mission designers that can be brought here. What they may have published or commented, what those who knew or spoke to them can bring for our wondering about. And what some have been able to gleam from their observations of the work of others. I hope you enjoy what may be remembered here!

 

[nbohr1more]

@BoilerDunce please post your Darkmod.cfg

Also, I presume you are running TDM 2.12?

Did you try evaluating different settings per our performance guide:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance_Tweaks

?

[stgatilov]

If you want to find out what is the problem on your machine on specific mission, you can record performance trace:

• https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Tracy:_timeline_profiler

Tracy Viewer allows to save the trace, so you can send it to me.
At the very least, we can learn whether it is CPU or GPU limited.

And yes, there are certain settings in TDM which stress GPU a lot.
Like high antialiasing or high quality soft shadows --- tooltips in the recent version note about it.

[BoilerDunce]

@nbohr1more  @stgatilov

I appreciate the help, but that's all I will talk about my personal performance here. I just don't want to leave anymore of a mark on the first page than I did. Maybe I can agree to continue on with a thread in the tech support section. Either way... I've only brought my hardware's worth of experience to any superfluous player comments I added.

Like chakkman said, there is no point in missing out on a mission. 

I wouldn't factor in anything you read here into a decision about trying a mission and doing everything that you can to get it to work well. This topic on the whole is mostly about the positives and hopefully what can be learned.