Ideas for optimizing the game

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#1

The game is great but doesn’t run great. In a quick question to Bossun, he mentioned that the biggest killer for the game is engine-side and that the physics engine takes a lot of calculation!

Area-based loading: Instead of loading physics across this entire map perhaps calculations can be cut down to only running physics in the area that at least 1 player is in! This wouldn’t help cut down on the lag in large groups of players as much since the players are physics objects themselves but it may help cut down on lag when spelunking the mines or adventuring out into the highlands.

Object-based loading: Another method I saw was having the game only run physics calculations on objects that are actively in the air or moving to cut down on calculations per object! Having physics objects sleep when not moving allows for better performance and more complex objects.

I’m still a rookie dev and don’t know the most about this but these are some ways I KNOW I’ve seen games use to kill lag!

#2

I could have sworn that the blog talking about the optimizations mentiond something about the area in which the game loads and that it’s only around players.

#3

I’m fairly certain that Unity by default only runs calculations on rigid-bodies (physics objects) that are awake (in motion). Which is interesting because that would mean there shouldn’t be much going on physics wise all the time unless there’s alot of players all doing alot of stuff i guess. However something I’ve noticed is that Rigid-Body Objects seem to almost be attached to where they fall asleep by what i can only guess is a configurable joint of some-kind, until they are hit with enough force or grabbed. I could be wrong but having heaps and heaps of joints everywhere might cause some physics bloating.

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