Shockwave and Incineration Cause FPS drops?

[MN Lahmar]

Hello guys,

I've been noticing that in my map, the spells Shockwave and Incineration cause FPS drops. And the more you cast them the more the fps will drop. The fps drops' duration last till the effect of the spell ends.

This didn't happen when i tested it in a new empty map.

Any ideas guys?

Thank you.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Shockwave has known performance issues. I sent Blizzard a demo map demonstrating that firing it diagonally uses a lot more resources than firing it axis aligned. Additionally the performance impact has strange characteristics such as changing camera position instantly fixing it while panning the camera does not.

 

[Cespie]

Hello guys,

I've been noticing that in my map, the spells Shockwave and Incineration cause FPS drops. And the more you cast them the more the fps will drop. The fps drops' duration last till the effect of the spell ends.

This didn't happen when i tested it in a new empty map.

Any ideas guys?

Thank you.

Terrain deformation causes memory leaks, and shockwave causes a terrain deformation.
It's probably best to not rely heavily on this spell in your map design.
As for incineration(Incinerate?), I don't personally have experience with it causing lag, but if you are doing something extreme with it, it may have some sort of od interaction.

 

[doom_sheep]

I've experienced shockwave being very heavy when overlapping with other terrain deformations.

 

[Deleted member 247165]

Shockwave and Thunderclap affect the terrain and this is why the FPS drop. The Firelord's Incineration ability does not cause such things. Maybe you triggered the Incineration and something in the trigger has memory leaks.

 

[MN Lahmar]

Did i say Incineration!! I meant Soul Burn lol

Sorry guys! I'm a dumb dumb

But i figured out the problem with Soul Burn: I've set the Damage Period to 0.00 (I was aiming for the silence and the damage penalty effects from the spell). Now that i set the Damage Period to 1.00 along with the Damage Amount to 0.00, it works smooth.

About Shockwave, i will try to use another spell.
Thank you guys so much

 

[Cespie]

Shockwave and Thunderclap affect the terrain and this is why the FPS drop. The Firelord's Incineration ability does not cause such things. Maybe you triggered the Incineration and something in the trigger has memory leaks.

Not to be a stickler, but it's War Stomp, not Thunderclap.

 

[Deleted member 247165]

Not to be a stickler, but it's War Stomp, not Thunderclap.

I encountered both to be honest. It happened once I edited them.

 

[MN Lahmar]

But i wonder why in a map like Icefrog's Dota, shockwave doesn't cause fps drops even if you spam it in the WTF Mode (no cooldowns) while in my map 1 the fps will drop every time you cast it (even the normal unedited version of shockwave).

 

[Cespie]

I encountered both to be honest. It happened once I edited them.

I'm fairly certain that Thunder Clap doesn't cause a terrain deformation, and thus, not a memory leak.
Back when I had a real shite computer standing on its last leg, using War Stomp and Shockwave would even lag my PC like crazy, but Thunder Clap wouldn't.
Clearly, terrain deformations are a pretty heavy thing in general.
Anyway, there could be other reasons why Thunder Clap would be causing a lag or memory leak. For example, if you spawn it as a special effect but don't detroy it.

 

[Deleted member 247165]

By simply modifying the effect of the basic thunderclap causes lag sometimes. I encountered that.

 

[Cespie]

By simply modifying the effect of the basic thunderclap causes lag sometimes. I encountered that.

It's possible that the game encounters some errors if you are trying to add an effect to Thunder Clap other than the slow effect that it usually has, as the ability has data fields directly interacting with the buff/effect. Was that the case? Or are you talking about the animation/special effect of the ability?

 

[Deleted member 247165]

Both. I changed the animation and the special effect of the buff itself, though the buff was still based on the thunderclap one. Anyway, is better to trigger a spell that works that way so you do not have to use thunderclap for an AOE slow. Just use a units group and a dummy to cast slow on them how you want.

 

[Cespie]

Both. I changed the animation and the special effect of the buff itself, though the buff was still based on the thunderclap one. Anyway, is better to trigger a spell that works that way so you do not have to use thunderclap for an AOE slow. Just use a units group and a dummy to cast slow on them how you want.

Actually, I just found another post that states that Thunder Clap does indeed cause a terrain deformation!
So you're right.

 

[Deleted member 247165]

Actually, I just found another post that states that Thunder Clap does indeed cause a terrain deformation!
So you're right.

)))))))))))))) Told ya

 

[Wrda]

Even if they cause permanent leaks, none of them causes lag except shockwave when there are a considerable amount of units to cast it, it still doesn't make the map unplayable or bad because of it.
I still wonder why blizzard never chose to bring the feature to remove terrain deformation leaks.

 

[Deleted member 247165]

Even if they cause permanent leaks, none of them causes lag except shockwave when there are a considerable amount of units to cast it, it still doesn't make the map unplayable or bad because of it.
I still wonder why blizzard never chose to bring the feature to remove terrain deformation leaks.

Yes you are right. The terrain deformation from the Thunder Clap and War Stomp lasts about 1.50 seconds. The maps can be played with that.

 

[Cespie]

Even if they cause permanent leaks, none of them causes lag except shockwave when there are a considerable amount of units to cast it, it still doesn't make the map unplayable or bad because of it.
I still wonder why blizzard never chose to bring the feature to remove terrain deformation leaks.

Depends entirely on how shitty your computer is. But for most people, yeah.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Terrain deformation performance seems coupled to either doodads or destructables. For example on an Azeroth Wars like map casting even standard warstomp causes the game to freeze for a second, but if one removes all doodads and destructables warstomp causes no FPS drop at all.

Another example of performance issues but unrelated to above is firing a very long range shockwave in an axis aligned way drops no frames at all, but firing it at a diagonal causes very low frame rate. However while framerate is low one can teleport the camera and frame rate is restored to full even while shockwave is traveling.

 

[Cespie]

Terrain deformation performance seems coupled to either doodads or destructables. For example on an Azeroth Wars like map casting even standard warstomp causes the game to freeze for a second, but if one removes all doodads and destructables warstomp causes no FPS drop at all.

Another example of performance issues but unrelated to above is firing a very long range shockwave in an axis aligned way drops no frames at all, but firing it at a diagonal causes very low frame rate. However while framerate is low one can teleport the camera and frame rate is restored to full even while shockwave is traveling.

Those are some seriously weird behavior pattern. The Doodad/Destructible thing makes sense I guess, the algorithm probably takes those into account when calculating the terrain deformation, meaning that it might actually check every Doodad/destructible in the entire map for every unit of distance that the ability paths over during the path of the Shockwave. This may also be why diagonal shots are heavier than axis-aligned shots, because the game knows that it only has to check along the axis of the ability rather than calculating the XY coordinates of each increment. I'm totally guessing here, don't hate if I am way off , but I think that would make sense. As for why moving the camera apparently works. Shit, I have no idea. That's just weird.