City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Maximum number of characters in a demo?

Dark_Respite

By Dark_Respite,
Posted on: 2008-12-02 01:06 in Multi-Media Fan Creations

 

Posted

Just wondering if anyone has experimented with an upper limit on the number of characters that can be placed in a single scene. I know that part of this limitation is based on the capabilities of the hardware the demo is run on, but has anyone hit a wall that even a beefy pc hits? For example, imagine creating a large battlefield scene with hundreds of NPCs and heroes or row upon row of soldiers as far as the horizon.

 

Posted

Have not run into a problem in terms of number of characters...

I HAVE run into problems in terms of how LONG the file is. I filmed for an hour and a half in Recluse's Victory and the launchers all choke.

Michelle
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Posted

I don't know of a character limit, but there is a limit on how far an NPC can be from the "Player" before it disappears.

 

Posted

There is also a limit on number of characters drawn. I believe BaB went off to say that the engine only renders the closest 100 players/NPCs to you (in responce to some issues during the Wedding Event).

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Posted

That could explain what I am seeing then. I have copied several hundred players and when it renders, only a small portion of them appear in the demo. I will try to reduce the scope of my design and see what happens. I love experimentation. If I can discern a more precise limitation, I will post the details here. Thanks for the input!

 

Posted

If you slow down the framerate, more characters will draw. Back in the early days, I recorded a Hamidon raid where I couldn't see Hamidon or most of the characters around me, even with my graphics turned way down. When I watched the demo, though, I slowed it down to just a few frames per second and I was able to see a LOT more.

There might be a hard cap at 100, though.

 

Posted

I just solved my issue, unrelated to any CoH limitation, and have been able to generate a demo with 7000 players standing in formation in a 30sec loop. They just stand there, but it renders all 7000 of them. I'm not sure what kind of framerate it would give me if I tried to give them any actions, dreadful I'm sure.