[FIX] Test chamber FPS drop reduce

[lexa2]

Here is a proof-of-concept fix for the FPS drop caused by the extensive usage of the alpha-blended vertexes produced by particle systems at the test chamber right after the cascade resonance.

Disclaimer:
a) No warranties. It may work. It might not work.
b) It changes the way smoke effects look like in the test chamber. Having this installed would alter the visual appearance of the game from the way developers intended it to be.
c) FPS drop would only be reduced. With my GTX 550 Ti @1680x1050 with the original BM I’ve got drop to around 35-50 FPS there without this fix and to ~75-80 with it in place having vsync turned off and fps_max set to 200.
d) It is not expected to fix FPS drops related to smoke clouds in any other places of the game (unless devs had used the same smoke particle systems definitions from the c1a1x_effects.pcf at some other map).

How to use:
1. Download BMS_particle_test_chamber_fix_#1.7z archive from the link above (can’t attach it to the post as forum settings forbids to do so).
2. Unpack the contents of the archive to the /steamapps/sourcemods/ overwriting all the existing files.
3. Enjoy, test, report.

PS. If you want contact me, don’t try to PM - that’s not efficient. Feel free to send SMS to +79262181320, or make a voice call to that number or to a skype “lexatwo”. Be sure to mention “use english” as a first sentence so we could understand each other. Thanks.

[SPBHM]

I tested the fix and it seems to work really well, there is a big improvement in performance, in no moment within a more critical low framerate, pretty comfortable to play overall… with no clear or big visual degradation in my opinion,

a few screenshots I took,
https://i45.tinypic.com/n4jmhd.jpg
https://i46.tinypic.com/fkqlw3.jpg
https://i47.tinypic.com/2zqr9tc.jpg
https://i50.tinypic.com/2rdcjk9.jpg
https://i47.tinypic.com/5uiarr.jpg
https://i46.tinypic.com/2nibj1h.jpg

[lexa2]

Thanks for testing this. It looks just like I had expected and pretty similar to what I get with my GTX 550 Ti. Funny thing is that particle system here were tasking both CPU (looking at the center of the chamber without zooming in - CPU constrained due to engine being forced to perform a sorted back-to-front rendering of huge amouns of the transparent quads) and GPU (fillrate-constrained when looking at the center of the chamber with zoom in forcing GPU to fill the entire screen hundreds of times per frame due to z-test not being performed for transparent quads). I’m pretty sure there are ways to optimize it better so visuals would be almost the same they were with the original brute force approach having the performance even better than with my fix in place. And what is good is a fact that optimizing particle systems is something every experienced Source-engine modder could do right here and now, it does not require BM source code access or recompiling the maps.

Thanks once again for testing this.

[ildarion]

Please, re-upload file. The link is broken.

[D3lta]

Post this next time in the Sector C - Test chamber.

[Dr_Twilight_Sparkle]

Your link is dead, lexa2. Try Mediafire instead.

[lexa2]

Yup, that link is dead by now. In fact I wasn’t intending it to remain live as the fix was just a proof of concept. Still, if someone is still interested in this fix he or she could find it here on my personal server: https://lexa2.ru/lx2/BMS/BMS_particle_test_chamber_fix_v1.7z

Unfortunately I have absolutely no free time nowdays so I can’t continue to work on this fix. In fact today was the first day I was able to find some spare time and play BMS since the day I had posted this PoC fix here :-(.