Boston...will it ever be optimised?

[Ethreon]

Ignore that person Jim.

[RelicDuDe]

 

Lol... yeah..but you know what ?.. i think i wouldn't mind at all if my character had only a few repeating lines, or even none at all..

 

 

Always hated playing a silent character...

 

Took you 4 days to completely change your view, eh?

 

 

 

Nah... voiced is the entire game.. love that FO4 has that. The (almost) silent character i was talking about was only when playing a quest mod... because i know how difficult it would be to make that completely voiced...

[kiwi047]

Hey guys merry xmas, and a happy new year. Well it will be because 2016 f***en sux. we lost Princess Leia :( So close but its not over yet. Anyway I wanted to thank everyone for blowing this up, got some answers that i wanted to hear, and its great.

The vivid fallout textures from hein84 helped me. He Redid many textures (Not ALL) with new and more efficient specular maps and made them look better. I get much better performance in the city now. give them a try.

Thanks man will try this. Pretty sure I used it once, but still, with current config and rig, still having issues. And this is with no mods. I'm wondering how do I do a complete delete and reinsttall of f4. Maybe some files leftover are interfering with my PC? Basically I got it about 2 years ago, and havent cleaned the C drive or anything yet. so maybe time for new SSD?

 

Problem is, no matter how many fixes you put on it, that area is badly designed. IT would need a massive redone.

So if it means altering lines of code, EG a tree used instead of a bush in the city. So i alter code to load a bush instead. OR would I need to edit location as well so bush actually appears on the road/ground etc? Would be something I might be able to manage since rewriting code cant be that difficult. CREATING code...mmm little scared.

 

I have a feeling that one way to optimize the area would have been to simply combine a lot of the Landscape Objects into one mesh file.

 

As it is a lot of those Meshes are separate.

 

Although there is something called "precombined objects" I have only just heard about this one, wasn't in Skyrim for instance or never mentioned at least.

Another thing that could have been done would have been to place as many textures of landscape objects on one texture file....The thing is that would mean that modders wouldn't be able to simply provide a new file for just one object.

 

Occlusion Planes...Not sure if those are being used in Boston, if they were though you wouldn't get the experience of hearing distant fights or fights in the street over that you just cant see.

Thanks for writing this, and bring this to light. Learn something new every day :)

 

Only real thing to do in Boston is damage control ^^ however with good tweaking it can be playable (and yes "playable" is for some people x and for some y).

Playable for me is a steady consistent framerate, not 60 fps looking at a bank and 35 looking at a building. Its terrible.

 

"Always hated playing a silent character, and i don't see what that has to do with an unstable Boston."

 

Your last two posts definitely prove you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Why is a voiced protagonist bad? Why are precombined meshes bad? Because Fallout and games related are highly moddable. Those two elements are hindering the said modding A LOT. They are both poor decisions from Bethesda, just like voiced protagonist (people are too lazy to read as I see it), 3 option dialogue, focus on workshop mode, increased presence of radiant quests etc. All in all, less story, more crap, and it's making the life of those that could add more content really difficult for no visible reason. Unless the reason is to become Bioware 2.

How did we get a voiced protagonist into this topic, and why is it such a big deal? I for one think its ok, but I dont like having 4 options, because its pick 1 and lose 3. Id rather just have a yes or no, and good or bad answer option. and thats for a player choice, which would be a small part of the game.

 

The pre-combined meshes were laziness, pure and simple. Because they didn't want to spend the time actually properly design/draw/craft/create high quality, optimized scenery. The same laziness is seen throughout the game in all areas, but particularly in DT Boston.

 

And out in the wasteland for instance, instead of placing an already existing "branch" or "twigs" mesh onto a spot, they simply bury an entire fracken tree mesh 95% into the ground, because that was the currently selected item, and not just once but in some place I've seen 8 FULL tree meshes buried almost completely in the ground, just to show a little clump of twigs. Now the tree meshes aren't all that large on their own, but when repeated 1000's of times it starts to add up.

 

Or roads ... instead of using the proper terrain editing brushes to alter the terrain details, ahh frack it, well just drop 10 meshes over the top of the existing ground, to "simulate" buckled toads.

 

I've used TCL to wander around under the "ground" in a few spots, and the amount of, what can only be called totally useless and superfluous "crap" that has been left behind, buried out of sight, is ridiculous!

 

And don't even get me started on the sheer number of "Trash", "Debris", "General Clutter", "Grass, "Grass Mound" and "Grass Mound with Dirt" meshes that are piled up willy nilly on top of each other in such profusion Yeah gods, does it surprise anyone that the game slows down with all that crap being loaded on top of all the actual terrain, buildings, items and NPC's/Characters?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. This explains pretty much everything, and I had no idea.

 

Here is how i got a lot of spare fps, 120-125 , and 80-90 in downtown Boston. I ignored all your small tips, tricks and fps boost mods and so on. Acknowledged my computers limitations and stopped piling on 200+ mods, when that got boring i simply bought a new computer.

 

Now i am running around 45 mods covering most aspect of the game, excepts boosts, and everything runs smoothly. Most people want that extra 10% out of their computer, i have always done the exact opposite, i try to only use around 90% of my hardware, and that has always served me well. I am seeing a pattern i how people sometimes have issues and i don't, anyways.

 

My I7-4770k, 16 gb beast ram, msi 970 4gb, ssd and 144 htz benq could probably run it on superultradeluxe, but i am content with High settings, medium shadows and low godrays.

well I have 4790 with 970 SLI, 16gb CAS 7 ram, and the only time I have hit close to 80 frames is looking at the floor. Thats was the one time I ran it without vsync etc. keeping it at 60 always worked for me. Settings wise, it was never on high, just a custom mix of options with godrays disabled in whatever .ini file and shadows almost nonexistent. As for mods most I've ever had was 145, and it worked better than vanilla. until the constant crashes in a certain area when I had conflict with some creature.

 

Well... I got the game to run at 60 fps downtown ^^ Just out of curiosity how low I needed to go with settings to get it. Stable 60 fps are possibly for me when using optimized textures and some mixture of low to medium settings and turning some things off completely ... and yes, I needed to go down that far cause otherwise you will never get 100% stable 60 fps. (Maybe I would still get drops, only tested it around 20-30 Minutes with running around and shooting a bit, so no real heavy load).

How low were your settings may I ask? what diod you edit in .ini files if anything?

 

"No, it wouldn't. The game won't run at 60fps in downtown, it's a well known issue on machines stronger than yours. Has nothing to do with anything you mentioned. Game's not optimized at all, and that's that."

 

Well, it does run a pretty smooth 80-90 fps in downtown on my pc, i'm glad to inform you. Maybe you people are not as savvy with computer as you like to think you are and have simply not setup your computers hardware accordingly to the games specifications. It takes more than a few edit in the prefs and the launcher menu you know?

But whatever, keep struggling.

OK mr. prejudice, put your ignorance aside. Dont try and insult people here, go to 4chan or reddit.

 

The annoying (and I guess you must say "funny' to stay sane) thing is ... Several modders have done major overhauls of various areas. Quince for instance, did an almost complete restoration of Sanctuary to it's pre-war state, and whether or not you agree with the concept of a pre-war looking cell, Sanctuary loads 10 times faster and runs at a higher FPS (on my potato), even with tonnes of extra items, and way more buildings and foliage in the cell, than Bugthesda's post- war Sanctuary has.

The same occurred in many other area's that have been "cleaned up" or otherwise changed by modders, simply because they got rid of all the excess crap, pointless junk, and woeful attention to detail. A good example of this is Coastal Cottage - WTF is with that whole in the ground, and all the crap and junk buried in there? If i was paying someone to build locations for a game, and they gave me that crap, I'd fie their a**es immediately.

Is there any way to put these files together to clean up the game? Fix bethesdas mess? Could I fix most of downtown somehow, or is it too big of an ask for one person who doesnt know much about computers

 

 

Referring to the OP's question "Will Boston ever be optimised ?"

I think

Boston ? More Than A Feeling.

 

Yeah.... BOS, raiders, 7fps in some places, Supermutants, Triggermen... A fine place to come.. spend your money, settle down.

good song.....settle down as in whoah whoah whoah there framerate now dont go getting too high lets just settle at 5. there ya go, time slows down around here we dont like speedsters here eheheh

 

Ignore that person Jim.

Fantastic advice +1

[Ethreon]

I think the best treatment this area can get is the same treatment DC got. Put limiting rubble walls, cut the visible portions of the city, add better LOD (we all know Beth rarely makes good LOD), add occlusion planes, reduce the number of junk decorations and so on. I doubt there's much to do with code. But who's gonna pick up on that titanic task, which at the end also requires to redo the previs/precombined data? Dunno, we'll have to see. Think that, even if one does all those changes and improves the area dramatically, all it takes is another mod changing some stuff in the terrain loaded after first mod to render a lot of fixes null.

[Perraine]

If the guys doing the UFO4P could be convinced to add an "optimization" to their file, it "might" make a difference. That file is pretty much as essential and standard to everyone's load order as DLC files. They usually don't do "enhancements" though, only actual "bugs". But maybe the fact that Bugthesda did such an atrocious job on building downtown Boston, they might be persuaded.

[CiderMuffin]

The only way I can see it improved is if you Freeside it and make a lot of the areas into new cells separated by gates and walls but that would kinda ruin the charm of it and make it feel more artificial.

 

Even though it's laggy and annoying at times I kinda think it's cool that we have this big city area that isn't separated by gates and other cells.

[Ethreon]

"If the guys doing the UFO4P could be convinced to add an "optimization" to their file, it "might" make a difference. That file is pretty much as essential and standard to everyone's load order as DLC files. They usually don't do "enhancements" though, only actual "bugs". But maybe the fact that Bugthesda did such an atrocious job on building downtown Boston, they might be persuaded."

 

And it would immediately be rendered useless by your other 20 mods editing the worldspace in and around Boston city center.

[kiwi047]

I think the best treatment this area can get is the same treatment DC got. Put limiting rubble walls, cut the visible portions of the city, add better LOD (we all know Beth rarely makes good LOD), add occlusion planes, reduce the number of junk decorations and so on. I doubt there's much to do with code. But who's gonna pick up on that titanic task, which at the end also requires to redo the previs/precombined data? Dunno, we'll have to see. Think that, even if one does all those changes and improves the area dramatically, all it takes is another mod changing some stuff in the terrain loaded after first mod to render a lot of fixes null.

This is what I was afraid of, other mods nullifying all that hard work :(. And would it be harder for the authors of each mod to adapt their mod to the overhaul/fix?

Bugger, guess its a new PC several years from now then. guess I better get started on skyrim.....

[cossayos]

 

I think the best treatment this area can get is the same treatment DC got. Put limiting rubble walls, cut the visible portions of the city, add better LOD (we all know Beth rarely makes good LOD), add occlusion planes, reduce the number of junk decorations and so on. I doubt there's much to do with code. But who's gonna pick up on that titanic task, which at the end also requires to redo the previs/precombined data? Dunno, we'll have to see. Think that, even if one does all those changes and improves the area dramatically, all it takes is another mod changing some stuff in the terrain loaded after first mod to render a lot of fixes null.

This is what I was afraid of, other mods nullifying all that hard work :sad:. And would it be harder for the authors of each mod to adapt their mod to the overhaul/fix?

Bugger, guess its a new PC several years from now then. guess I better get started on skyrim.....

 

 

The better question would be why someone would keep these other mods running when there's a general fix. I have removed quite a few mods when another one added their functionality anyway.

[Ethreon]

Because they're quest mods and I want more content?