Mods VS Computer Speed

[Butters!]

Some car mods make your game lag when there is more of 1 of the modded car on your screen. What exactlly can effect this? If you have a better Video Card of a more powerfull procesor can you lower the amount of lag?

[Huckleberry Pie]

Some car mods make your game lag when there is more of 1 of the modded car on your screen. What exactly can effect this? If you have a better Video Card of a more powerfull procesor can you lower the amount of lag?

Some car mods are polygon-rich - in other words, they have several times more triangles and stuff than the default SA models. This is the reason why older and/or weaker video cards suffer from framerate issues when you have modded vehicles. I once installed a Hyndai Starex mod on a PC at some kiosk, and it did lag like crap. I guess the video card was some Nvidia GeForce FX-series card, or even worse. Newer video cards, and even the relatively low-end yet recently released ones like the 8400GS and equivalent ATI cards, can and will score better on Fraps with a car mod installed.

[ToonSkull]

Exactly. This is why my brother is a firm believer in fewer polys and better textures. I work in Blender and when the verticies (points) get higher than 14,000 in a single model I start to notice it big time. Blender heads like myself make movies and stills not meant for games.

Your model looks incredibly smooth but if you are working with a game it is better to have an 8 point box. Also you might notice the default steering wheels are pentagon shaped? This is meant to reduce the poly count because the interior of a car in GTA isn't really important.

If you wanted to fix the car it won't be easy. You would have to export it using Zmodeler or 3DS and carefully remove or reduce as many polys as you can.

So to all the modders looking at making a cool car for this game, remember people won't like the fact you put so much detail into the model such as springs, shocks, and struts. They will like the paint job and the fact it loads quickly.

EDIT: Here is an example, the PCJ600 has 1698 verts and 1720 faces in the highest resolution. I have come across some mods that have tons more than needed and most are internal items that would never show up in the game but the game must still calculate those useless ones.

Edited August 13, 2009 by ToonSkull