Have there been that many wads that have ran slowly on pc's in the last 10/15 years?

[invictius]

Apart from frozen time I can't think of anything.  Someone over at zdoom forums said phobos anomaly reborn would tax a 2001 pc, but it was released in 2006.

[bonnie]

holy hell had to be divided into multiple maps because the full map ran rather poorly on most computers at the time in 2006

[Bauul]

Do you mean historical maps, or more recent ones?  

 

I got a few complaints that my Skulldash map ran pretty slowly when combined all of GZDoom's bells and whistles.

 

Edit: Bare in mind any good wad author won't release a map that slows down PCs.  The early internal test versions of some Skulldash maps, for example, would crawl along at 15FPS because of the effects involved.  Dragonfly edited the map until it ran much better, and that's what was released.

 

It's not hard to make a map that sends computers to a crawl: the skill is making it run well while looking like it should be taxing.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Bauul

[Reisal]

NUTS.WAD on non-Boom (IE ZDoom based) ports.

[EmotionalFelineinaMadstate]

obligatory nuts.wad post

[Linguica]

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

Edit: Bare in mind any good wad author won't release a map that slows down PCs. 

*looks at last Cacowards, looks at a certain author, looks at camera*

[Spectre01]

Plenty of maps released can run poorly in any port. All you have to do is go crazy with sector spam in a large open area and your map is guaranteed to cause frame drops. Hellbound map29 is a good example, especially the original version which came separately with the wad. Basically anything that goes over 5k visible sidedefs. For example: the spot in Frozen Time right before the bridge has over 9k sidedefs, which gives me a cinematic 29-30 FPS.

[invictius]

What kind of requirements do Ribbiks wads usually have?  I remember sunlust not running well on a pentium 2, even in boom.  And few of the wads support dos boom 2.02, as it seems "boom support" means prboom these days.

[Spectre01]

@invictius Boom-compatible implies "intended for PRBoom+" as the lowest compatible port. I'm pretty sure most people don't bother playing/testing in regular Boom or PRBoom without the plus. Ribbiks wads are generally not as performance intensive as other stuff out there. And for Sunlust, maps 24 and 28 were the most taxing for me. 

[DoodGuy]

Torment and Torture can still drop to 20-ish frames nowadays (atleast for me)

[Liberation]

Grove.wad

[Spectre01]

9 hours ago, DoodGuy said:

Torment and Torture can still drop to 20-ish frames nowadays (atleast for me)

The final map where you climb the mountain is the worst offender here. The rest of the wad ran mostly fine for me.

[invictius]

5 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

The final map where you climb the mountain is the worst offender here. The rest of the wad ran mostly fine for me.

The original torment and torture?

[Spectre01]

1 hour ago, invictius said:

The original torment and torture?

I've only played the Ultimate version. The map I'm referring to has a giant energy spire and Duke3D Cycloid Emperors for the final fight.

[invictius]

3 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

I've only played the Ultimate version. The map I'm referring to has a giant energy spire and Duke3D Cycloid Emperors for the final fight.

How do you get the framerate counter in prboom?

[Spectre01]

10 minutes ago, invictius said:

How do you get the framerate counter in prboom?

idrate is the "cheat" to show FPS and other visual stats in PRBoom+.

[invictius]

17 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

idrate is the "cheat" to show FPS and other visual stats in PRBoom+.

Is there anything other than sidedefs and hundreds of viewable monsters that will slow a wad down?  I actually had bad performance in the dw 2016 project, in the starting room with all the level portals.

[Spectre01]

While I'm less familiar with ZDoom-based wads, dynamic lights and 3D geometry are known to cause performance slowdown. i.e. The hub area in the new DMP2017 as well.

[Arctangent]

Frozen Time infamously has a bridge formed out a comically large amount mid textures to do a fake 3D bridge effect, which can cause some source ports to take a significant hit in performance while rendering it.

 

How comical? Well, while it's designed for Boom-compat so this isn't a proper solution with that in mind, but if remove all those linedefs and instead replace the bridge with a GZDoom 3D floor? The frame rate issue disappears ( basically, the area has other issues but they cause a far, far, far lower drop in performance ) entirely.

 

technically replacing the effect with a 3d floor isn't really comical at all when you consider the fact that the performance hit is caused mostly by the absurd amount of overdraw the bridge causes, so swapping out the linedefs for something with proper culling is a completely logical solution but i don't get paid to make jokes that don't become swiss cheese with some minuscule amount of thought

[Terminus]

I recall Hellbound's map29 being very laggy, especially the start room.

There was also an old wad called EvilStar that ran on Skulltag's resources, a couple of maps in there really took their toll on my framerate.

[Phobus]

I remember people finding Warpzone difficult to run back when I released it in 2005. I'm not sure what the issue was, aside from possibly just general size of the map. The Spirit Underworld in ZPack was another case like Frozen Time where an unnecessarily complex 3D bridge using midtextures utterly killed the frame rate on even powerful computers. More recently, I'm sure ZDCMP2 has caused a few frame rate issues due to its size and complexity.

[KVELLER]

Well, my laptop wasn't able to run any non-vanilla WADs released after 2002 at a stable framerate (on ZDoom at least). It wasn't old either, I got it around 2012.

[Spectre01]

On 1/27/2018 at 0:35 PM, Linguica said:

*looks at last Cacowards, looks at a certain author, looks at camera*

Yes, one particular map was Given me 11FPS while going over 23k sidedefs at one point:

[cortlong50]

On 1/27/2018 at 3:10 AM, DoodGuy said:

Torment and Torture can still drop to 20-ish frames nowadays (atleast for me)

i can always run it fine (ish) until that scene with the war...then my computer is just like "yeah...youre gonna have to play imagination with this one."

[invictius]

4 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Yes, one particular map was Given me 11FPS while going over 23k sidedefs at one point:

What actually is that one?

[Spectre01]

1 hour ago, invictius said:

What actually is that one?

The Given, hence the lame pun there. ;)

Edited February 1, 2018 by Spectre01

[invictius]

8 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

The Given, hence the lame pun there. ;)

First map I've been unable to run at 4k 60fps.  As @BlackMetalChainsaw would say... BOI.

Edited February 1, 2018 by invictius

[rehelekretep]

sunlust 28 (Maelstrom?) really lagged out my old CPU. not as bad now but still a bit noticeable :o

hellbound 29 of course

[invictius]

1 minute ago, rehelekretep said:

sunlust 28 (Maelstrom?) really lagged out my old CPU. not as bad now but still a bit noticeable :o

hellbound 29 of course

What were the specs and what resolution were you playing at?

[rehelekretep]

it was a Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz, glboom 1680x1050