Back in Time?

[tegleg]

hey yo

udk is an awesome engine. i have been playing with it from the start and have seen many many features added at regular intervals throughout this time.
well big ups to epic for bringing us this for free. yay.

so then,
for at least the past 6 months i have noticed an alarming drop in framerate and overall smoothness of gameplay with this engine, as well as the little thing of 4 out of 5 times it crashes on startup.
possibly the introduction of directX 11 support is at the route of the problem, of course i, like most people, only have directX 9, but whatever it is,
i kept hoping they would fix it but instead, as is the tradition, they added yet more features (3d woo lol).
so to continue developing games im at a crossroads.

either i change engine, i dont want to because i am able to do just about anything within the limits of udk.
or go back to an earlier version of udk.

was there a version of udk you know for sure ran smoothly and reliably?
wich one was it?

also if i go back before scaleform i can make menus again for free
im thinking maybe march 2010??

thanks for reading, please have a say.

thanks

[Henrik]

You can still make menus for free if you can code. Same way it was done last generation.
Have you tried disabling most of the default post processing? I personally gained dozens of FPS when I disabled things like Ambient Occlusion etc in the World Properties.

[tegleg]

thanks Henrik
yes i can code a menu, theres even that kismet thing, but UIScene was so easy for some things.

i never thaught of disabling stuff like that in world properties, ill have a mess, cheers

[DemoMan2]

Hi Tegleg,
I've noticed the same thing. I too am running on Win XP with Direct x 9.0c. One thing I've noticed is that the framerate drop doesn't seem to be tied to the Nvidia drivers since I've seen the same thing on the last three sets of video drivers. Framerates do seem like they are dropping the longer I play the game. Almost like the video memory isn't being cleaned up properly and the thing slowly degrades over time. I was wondering if it's related to the shaders getting corrupted after lots of recompiles of levels in the editor. Anyway, your not the only one seeing that problem.

As for changing engines, I'm not sure your going to gain much switching to either Unity or Cryengine. All engines have issues so I think you would just be trading one problem for another. Give the team at Epic a little more time to dig into the problem. Hopefully they will have a solution for this framerate problem in the near future.


BTW, thanks for your work with GeoDav on getting some custom vehicle tutorials up a few months ago. They really helped me out and I've managed to get 5 vehicles in operation in part due to your efforts.

[tegleg]

no turning off things in world properties did nothing to improve it.
i still get random framerate drops that gradually merge into one giving an avarage 16fps no matter what map/game im using. still crashes 4/5 times on startup. non steam multiplayer doesnt work ect ect...
glad im not the only one DemoMan2.

so i tried march 2010 udk and i say what a breath of fresh air!
after a full day of testing, adding assets and writing code it loads up very quickly every time and hasnt crashed yet!

i get decent framerate all the time,
i dont have to wait 5 mins for changes in the material editor to take effect.
my gfx card temperature doesnt go into kelvins.
saving stuff is quicker, everything is quicker and smoother.

for anyone struggling with the bloated bug fest that is the latest udk try one of the older versions, you will be surprised how much nicer it is to work with.
sure it doesnt have this and that feature dragging it to the floor, but theres plenty enough to make a decent game with.

[Henrik]

If a particular release of UDK has what you need, it's best to stay with it. However before you settle down with that version I'd really recommend going through a test run of the entire pipeline you will be needing so you don't run into any nasty surprises later. IMO go with the absolute latest version that runs smoothly for you and you'll be best off. I suppose I'm fortunate that May 2012 runs great on both my home and work PC's, cause I benefit a lot from most of the last year's worth of changes especially.

[tegleg]

yes i spent yesterday testing the pipeline, i managed to import and code a character/player, an enemy, a weapon, a vehicle and a static mesh.
it all went without incident in a quick and smooth manner.

i cant think of anything i really need from the last year or so updates, terrain has always ran smoother than landscape for me, i dont need or want scaleform, i dont have an ios device, i dont have a 3d tv, physx destructables are problematic, and so on.
also thinking about it from the 'customers' point of view, it would be better to have a game that runs smoothly without having the latest and gratest pc.

[MonsOlympus]

You could try making a UT3 mod if you want to roll back far enough, Id have to say the 3rd or 4th release off the top of my head. They all contain WIP stuff and it depends if you mind loosing GFx or the new landscape or not. Have you reported this issue, provided debug info?

[tegleg]

Have you reported this issue, provided debug info?

yes several times. there are a few threads from other people knocking around about it too.

i dont want to do a ut3 mod thanks
just need to be able to work with the engine.

[MonsOlympus]

Which subsystems are a requirement for ya? Then I can put you onto a good version to suit your needs

[tegleg]

subsystems?

[Chosker]

have you tried disabling postprocess altogether? not only in world properties, but in the console. open the console and type 'show postprocess'. for me there is a huge gain in performance without postprocess altogether.
and then I've coded a number of things into a settings menu that disable postfx features individually (bloom, SSAO, motion blur, etc), and then control things like texture sizes, light's godrays, some of the shadow quality options, etc.

then again just landscape makes me never want to roll back. but if you feel the same game just goes slower it's understandable if you want to

[tegleg]

turning everything low quality seems to defeat the point somewhat. ive already changed max texture resolution to 1024 in the ini's and that did initially improve it. but it still grinds to a halt eventually even on a template map, ie the white cube and sky.
over the last few months udk has been getting slower, bigger, and a LOT crashier and has reached a point where its good as useless on my pc. (win7, p7450, 4g ram, gtx260m)
what should take me minutes sometimes ends up taking hours simply due to time wasted waiting for udk to decide if its going to crash or not.
and all that for the sake of features i and most people cant even use.

[tegleg]

further tests with the latest udk..
in DefaultEngine.ini i changed this to false

bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE

after doing this, the framerate still drops at random points but it doesnt seem to accumulate and force it down to a constant 16.
it drops randomly below 20 but then picks back up.
there is also this might be worth playing with
MinSmoothedFrameRate=22
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62

edit:
spoke too soon
it just takes longer for the framerate to stay low

[MonsOlympus]

Subsystems as in apex, scaleform, landscape, etc. If I don't know your rewuirements its hard to suggest the right version. As a guess, nov 2011.