Optimization (level design)
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Areas
- Leaks
- There's no excuse! Leaks will invalidate almost all of your efforts elsewhere.
- Visibility
- Reducing the number of surfaces and objects that are drawn in the first place. This is the largest and most important area.
- Physics
- Various tricks to avoid overloading the CPU with physics calculations.
- Materials
- Correct material choices will allow your map to scale down its demands on slower computers.
- Lighting
- Performance and file-size optimisation.
(En Français? (http://hl.logout.fr/?p=optimisation))
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Commands
There are plenty more than those listed below — find them in their relevant articles. Note that sv_cheats must be enabled for most to work.
cl_showfps- A simple output of framerate.
1is real-time,2is averaged over the past second. showbudget- A panel which displays how your computer is spending its budget for each frame. It's the premier tool for working out exactly what's sucking up performance in your map.
- It's invoked with
+showbudgetand-showbudget, which means that you can bind the former to a key (i.e.bind <key> +showbudget) and it will only appear when you hold that button down. mat_wireframe- A console variable that lets you see through walls. This way, you can see exactly what is being drawn - for reasons described in the visibility optimisation article, often more than you might think is sensible.
- There are three wireframe modes,
1through to3, which display the information you need with progressively fewer lines.
