《Drifting : Weight of Feathers》is a third-person shooter-action game. The combat system revolves around air-to-ground, air-to-air shooting and traversing. Each encounter in the game challenges the player to develop a situational awareness in 3D space, which includes constantly prioritizing your target whilst observing the surroundings to find out the key to advance to the next stage.
Scenery in《Drifting》
HISM Distance Culling
In a previous post: Indiedb.com I talked about how the distance fade shader causes the draw call for my scene increases dramatically and I need to find a way to disable actors - or more specifically HISM actors - when it's far away from the player camera. (see this video: Youtube.com to learn more about HISM in UE4)
I've tried cull distance volume, however, after some research and testing I found out it's not applicable to moveable actors (including HISM). I dived into the UE4 source code and discovered there are already variables for HISM distance culling - StartCullDistance and EndCullDistance. The variables did what its name suggested and after some modification for my HISM actor class, I am able to reduce an average of 2 ms to the draw call for my scene which is a pretty huge performance improvement.
As I keep developing the project, optimization issue will always be on the top of my worklist. It is a process that requires the developer's constant attention and awareness of the potential performance cost of new features that are about to add to the game.
I hope you enjoy this week's update, have a relaxing weekend. （●′∀‵）ノ♡