How do I make a detailed environment without maxing the gameplay thermometer?
I made a couple characters, and that used up 47% of the graphics thermo, which is okay, and it also used up 32% of the gameplay thermo, which surprised me. Then I started creating an environment around the characters, using cloning, thinking that would save on the graphics thermo, and it did: I built about half of the structure of a building around them, and the graphics thermo only went up to 50%, so that's still fine -- but the gameplay thermo went up to 97%.
As I mentioned, I'm only halfway through the structure of the building, I haven't added doors, or interior details such as fireplaces, or the outer landscape like trees and horizon, or any effects. (Not to mention, I haven't added any gameplay.)
After searching these forums, I'm gathering that it's the number of objects, whether clones or not, that's raising the gameplay thermo, and I've seen several questions about it, but the only solution I've been able to find is to use fewer objects. Is that really the only solution?
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Most likely using fewer "things" is the answer, based on the way you've described things. A good way of thinking about it is to balance out graphics thermo with gameplay thermo.
For example, say you have a single brick sculpt. It's fairly small and so doesn't use much thermo. You clone it around a bunch of times to make a wall. Gameplay has gone up a little but not that much, and graphics hasn't budged, which is cool. But now you clone that whole wall out a load of times, and now you've got thousands of clones of that one brick and your gameplay's going through the roof.
Or you could make a wall as a single sculpt, and cloned that--resulting in the same number of walls you wanted. The wall would take a little more graphics thermo, but would take a lot less gameplay thermo because there are fewer copies of it.
Note, however, that *any* "thing" in the scene takes up some amount of gameplay thermo, including logic, separate clips in a timeline, etc. So it's not necessarily all down to visual things in your scene.
As for reducing graphics thermo, you can use the sculpt detail tool to reduce a sculpt's resolution (and any of its clones). This makes that sculpt use less memory. You can also use the tool to increase resolution easily enough, so you can always undo that down-ressing. Most of the time, you can reduce detail without noticing much of a visual difference from the perspective you'll be seeing it while playing the game.
Another tip is to use sculpt detail instead of adding looseness. A sculpt with lower resolution will look like its flecks are larger--as if it had looseness turned up. So try turning down the looseness in the setting, and decrease the sculpt detail instead. You can usually get roughly the same look as you had before, and you can adjust by adding a little more looseness if you need it. So you're saving on thermo, *and* loosening the sculpt for free!
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