Camera Settings Thread - Dow-Host: Red Phoenix Rising mod for C&C: Generals Zero Hour

What do you think should be the camera height, angle or pitch in this mod? If you have any suggestions regarding camera settings, post it here.

hi flanker, we have already discussed about it, i think player should be able to use high camera to view more of the map and what ever is going on the map, i would use 600-700 for max camera height and 400 for minimum height.

the only problem with that height is lag, when you have models as high as 1500 in large numbers (around 60) + explosions and effects + structures, a camera height of 700 will cause a drop in frame rate. GeneralIgor suggested a pitch of 53 with a max camera height of 650. I tried that, I think it will lag less. However the normal pitch makes you see more of the battlefield. Try these values and tell me how it looks and what you think.

Edited by: Super-Flanker

hi flanker

i think we should also consider the PC, i have a fast PC with good hardware. i play project raptor on 600 max camera setting without changing anything else in the ini. i use the highest graphics setting, am not sure how come i did not notice any lag, maybe PR mod was built in such a way to avoid lag, i think you have already mentioned it to me before regarding the way they use FX etc. but i will try the setting you have mentioned to see what will happen. but i don't see any problem since we can readjust the camera height while playing the game, this way whoever want to use more height they will have this option.

The problem with this engine is that it doesnt matter much what your hardware settings are. I have dual graphic cards on my pc. Also when you play a network game with ZH, there will be an fps limit of 30. This fps limiter makes the game lag more. For example if your playing a single player game with game speed on 60, it will lag way less. I dont have a logical explanation for this. Also when the camera height is low, the game lags a little bit less too (NOT the max camera height). I still have a lot of experiments to do on these settings. I hope we can find a solution for this soon. 1 more thing, if you are playing a network game with 4 players and one of them is on a camera height of 600 while the rest are on 200. That guy will cause the others to experience lag. Kick him out and everything will be fine. That is also the case when you have 4 players and one is looking at an area full of Tanks and explosions while the rest are not. If you wish to try any gamedata.ini settings, try them on a game speed of 30. BTW i did not try to change the FramesPerSecondLimit = 30 from gamedata.ini and play a network game

In my experience in personal modding, FX and map and poly count of models have a large effect on lags. Happi is right about having a good hardware. The only problem will have even though you have the highest highest and latest hardware is the limitation of ZH engine concerning poly count of models..... QSN of Modern Warfare mod seems to have an idea how to surpass this limitation but again good hardware is always a factor to less a lag.

Concerning a 4 player game or more, If I will create a multiplayer game I should have high-end spec PC or using a PC with Server capabilities(dual processor slot, multiple DRAM slots and high-end graphics card..... That would lessen or eliminate lags in multiplayer game mode.....

Actually, the engine does not use the full capabilities of a modern computer. For example, the engine is a 32 bit application. This means anything larger than 4 GB ram will not be recognized and therefore even if you have 16 GB's of 1666 MHZ DDR3 RAM in different slots its gonna use 4 GB only. Also the engine was not designed to run on more than one core in a CPU as most people had only single core CPU's when the game was released. It uses only 1 thread of 1 core. I have a quad core CPU with 8 threads and no matter what I do,I cant make this old engine run on 2 threads or more. Regarding the graphics card which is the most important piece of hardware for any game, the Zerhour engine seems to have the same poly count / particle FX limit regardless of what "modern" graphics card you own. Also since most graphic cards available nowadays are newer than the game, the graphic card is not considered the limiting factor here. The limitation is within the engine itself.

Ive been modding Zerohour for about 6 years now and during the past year I did a lot of graphics stress tests on this engine. Very recent results allowed me to notice where the engine lags the most and currently we have some solutions to those problems. Watch the latest video over here: Moddb.com and see how the engine can handle 108 high poly tanks on fire. The scene has a lot of FX and the engine does not lag.
After those results, we decided on a camera height of 630. This height is the maximum camera height which does not cause blackouts to appear on screen.

Edited by: Super-Flanker