Are some workshop creators too overzealous?

[Vigilante]

After not playing for a few months, I'm back now. Out of interest I had a look at some workshop objects and was quite stunned how many parts are used that are absolutely invisible. This would not be a problem in itself, if these objects would not be rendered by the engine anyway. Stones, wood, other things are placed behind stones that are not visible and have no function for the AI, or 30 small stones are arranged to form one big stone that looks like a stone that also exists as a single object. I had downloaded one of the 4+ star parks from the workshop and was amazed why I only had 6 - 8 FPS even though there are only a tenth of the visitors in this park, compared to my parks and only half of the animals are there. So I once removed a big part of these invisible objects and saved over 80k of objects and can now play the same park with 30 - 60 FPS. So really the same park, without any loss of quality in the nice details. And this is only roughly cleaned, because I don't want to play this park. I think I can get even more out of it if I had the motivation.

This isn't supposed to be a hate triad against the "evil" creators. Many people do such incredibly wonderful things in PZ. But with this amount of useless details you shouldn't be surprised if you can only play in the single digit FPS range. Of 8 things I looked at, only 3 were really well thought out and therefore really playable.

What do you think, is this a general problem?

 

[Cool Cats and Kittens]

One reason is, that a lot of the extra pieces are a result of copying and pasting to duplicate sections or to make round segments. Cleaning up the unnecessary pieces to increase performance can take a lot
of extra time.

There are also some blueprints in the workshop, which are to detailed to be usable in a bigger zoo. This is often caused by custom roofs

 

[ShadowLilly]

I would say it is more an optimization issue rather than a building issue... i mean: even with an empty zoo the game uses WAY to many resources.. that is the problem, not the ammount of pieces someone puts in a blueprint.

I realy don't understand why the game isn't optimized properly. Even with a high end pc(and i mean 9900k/2080ti) you can not have a zoo by using the full map without masive lag/stutter... let alone on recommended specs. game is unplayable after using less than a quarter of the map by the ammount of stutter, and then the zooisn't even detailed... :/ And yes you can reduce guests, but in franchise that is not always possible, because you would lose all the income

 

[NL_Mutso]

I think it's a mix of those 2.

Some builders use too many pieces to get their result. Some just focus on building 1 structure without thinking about the actual use in a zoo.
Some pieces are used for building help and instead of removing them, they cover it with a different piece. Some blueprints are built really smart with minimal pieces.

And the optimization issue (mentioned a million times ) doesn't help here.
And if you struggle with a 9900k/2080ti, that shouldn't happen. Majority of players (including me) have lower specs.

 

[ShadowLilly]

i don't have a 9900k or 2080 ti (alhough i wish ), but i read a lot of people who have issues with them, but the fact remains that on a pc with recommended specs, you cant even 'build the zoo of your dreams' that they advertise with, because when you have 'to many animals, pieces' the lag makes it unplayable

 

[Casperite]

Short answer to your question is yes. Some people's builds are completely unusable due to this.

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Well... not every player who is generous enough to share their hard work in the workshop for others to just download and drop are pros. So yes, not every workshop item that is an advanced build is perfectly optimized. Some pieces might even be there to hide mistakes made or because sometimes building with grid pieces can be a pain in the behind.

I don't use workshop items because of that - or just on very few ocassions. Does it mean my own work is optimized? Heck, no! But I have absolutely no problem scolding myself but would have one telling someone who offers their creative work for free to me that it uses too many pieces.

 

[Vigilante]

I guess nobody wants perfection. That's exactly why we became human.

But there is a difference between not being able to do something perfectly, or sliding the same object 50 times into each other. Deadpool would probably call this lazy writing.
Cool Cats and Kittens says this quite aptly in their first comment.
Because this method of construction combines a lot of graphic elements that are not visible, even the most modern graphics cards get problems.

Yes, PZ still has a need for optimization. My CPU works just with 12 - 30% and when I think about what could be possible if my CPU would be used to 40 - 50%... ^^
But I can see it in my example, how much performance I get out just by roughly deleting duplicates and non-visible objects. Well, you can't create a bottleneck yourself and then say to the developers: It's your fault why my game doesn't run well.

I always think people are proud of what they have created and want others to play with these works. Only if the other user can't do it because of something like that, that's a real pity. Because this park, which I take as an example, has become really nice, but even with my gaming PC not playable. At least before editing.

 

[DoctorWho1975]

How much does the scenery help the zoo? I see the positive comments in the zoos thoughts so I'm guessing any sort of statue downloaded or included with the content in an area works?

 

[LN]

What do you think, is this a general problem?

A lot of the stuff that is available on the Workshop is built in an empty park.
That way the user won't ever notice their lavish use of scenery pieces as performance stays okay.

Pick 4 or more of those workshop items, and you are importing 100s of unnecessary pieces that will have an impact on performance on the long run.

Workshop builders are not interested in what impact it has on performance, and will not check back on their work to see if it contains unnecessary items.
They only check when done if their work looks great.