More Lag

04/23/2013

Tonight we can submit our game for review again in the XBLIG. But first thing this morning our Engineering Lead contacted me stating that he was noticing lag in level 3. I told him that I thought I had resolved that. He mentioned that the katana on the players back was twitching as the player ran. I told him I was on my way to the lab at school and would test it as soon as I got there.

As soon as I got to the lab and got everything setup to test I was able to confirm the same thing he had observed. I must have missed it when I was testing for lag the night before, because I was more concerned about the players movement lagging. Our Engineering Lead tried an old build of the level and it did not have the lag so he came up with a hypothesis that it could be we had too much geometry in the current version of the level. I started testing the hypothesis by deleting different objects, and he was right. After I deleted enough models the lag disappeared. So I attempted to leave the level intact as much as the level designer had intended. In the end I was able to leave the level almost the same, just with some fire pits removed and some crates removed. In doing so the lag was completely removed.