Hello. It's been a few months but I've been happy to get some time to work on the mod.
I played a game of Forgotten Hope St. Vith started entirely in the client with 64 bots. The FPS often goes down to ~20 and below.
As you can see in the map of St. Vith above (courtesy of Forgotten Hope dev team) the map is has quite a complex layout. I suspect this is why the frame rate is very low with the AI on this map. Other levels are not this bad even without the dedicated server. The AI is having to do a lot of path finding around obstacles on the navmesh which puts more strain on the CPU. Running the AI on the dedicated server solves all that by handing off all the AI stuff to another CPU core. On that point ...
I noticed in the dedicated server readme.txt this; "Only run one instance of BF2 per physical CPU with Hyperthreading disabled". I assume "BF2" means the server seeing as this is in the server readme. I'd been running the server on two cores. I think this may explain some server crashes I've had before. So forcing the server to one core should help with that.
So with the client connecting to a dedicated server on the same machine the FPS is 99% of the time @ 60 fps on St. Vith ! Even reducing the bots in a client only game to 48 in total the FPS is @ ~48. Playable, but 60 fps is much more immersive.
So there's a few problems to fix now.
Running an identical copy of FH Coop Patch C files on the server gives ...
1. Sometimes missing shell change sounds in tanks.
2. Double fire sound on some German tanks.
3. Inability to become squad leader.
These are all problems that arise when running with the dedicated server. They do not happen when starting a game entirely in the client without the dedicated server. So there are some fixes needed in the server files. I think the sound problems can be fixed. The squad problem might be more tricky.
I'm also going to work on a GUI to make starting games easier. It will be much like the GUI within the client for starting client only games but will have more features like showing the full "mini" map as found on the FH website (if FH devs will allow me to distribute them). I'm considering coding this in C++ but might choose some kind of scripting language.
OK, thanks for reading if you got this far and on with the development !
Anything above 30 FPS and I can't tell the difference.
You are kidding right?
No really, anything above and I can't tell the difference. maybe because my machine rarely gets above 30 fps.
The mod also prevents frame rate glitches, also known as "stuttering" which can noticaebly take the fps below 30fps on AI events. I find that interrupts my game.
I would love AI support for Forgotten Hope 2, I whish you good luck.
Looking forward to future developments :D