Hi all,

Just a quick question to any experienced map makers if you got a second. I'm new to track building and having a lot of fun with it just a little confusion with display cost and what it is exactly.

I've made a map and noticed over 15000 points in the editor the number goes red indicating it may not be so good for low end PC's but I guess what I want to know is the 15000 number a solid number I should follow or can I go beyond it? or is the display cost something not so important with your average PC today in your experience?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I can tell you from my own experience (i like to build big maps with 15k+, too ), that some people with lower performance-PCs or those who are playing with laptop complained to me that the maps are like a "slide-show". So you should take care of the display cost (DC)

Here some clues i found out:
In Valley you can built up to 15k DC, if it is not a high-speed map, then you should lower the DC (12k for very high speed seems ok)
In Canyon it seems you drive faster through the blocks, so you should keep a 12k DC limit for your maps in Canyon - many experienced mapper say it so and it works good.

Best regards, Beat


PS: DC is equate to the grafic outlay your pc need to display your map. each block in the editor has it own DC-value.

Hey Beat,

Thanks for the advice, I will definitely use that as guideline to go by from now on. I have a few maps I mess around with and most are between 7-13k so not to bad just one map has gone a bit crazy big so I'll finish it up with the high display and move on.

Cheers.

Wakuda.

One thing I've found that's helpful on Canyon tracks to reduce DC is to use the blocks that have no support pillars, especially if you're using a bunch of them in the air as a driving surface, since although you won't ever see the pillars, the game still has to take them into account when rendering frames.

I also found that making terrain blocks have straight rear edges helps a bit, too (see picture below) – again, although you won't see them when driving (unless you go far off course) the game still has to deal with them. The change might not be much, but lots of them together can certainly add up (this applies to Valley, as well)

Another things with terrain is that the 'decoration' blocks (to make the edges of canyons/cliffs more varied) also add to the DC, so you could remove them where they're unlikely to be seen.