Hello everyone, after a long period of work on "Disasters Escape: The Island", I realized a significant performance issue stemming from the use of UE5. Specifically, I was utilizing global illumination (Lumen), as you can see in the attached photos. While this global illumination added remarkable graphical details, it made the game visually stunning but caused a substantial drop in performance, with frame rates ranging between 20-40 fps on a mid-range graphics card.
I resolved this issue through a redesign of the graphics, and I'm here to show it to you. The graphics may appear somewhat less detailed, but I assure you that in a game, graphics represent only 10-20% of the overall experience. Below, you'll find some images showing how global illumination worked before and after. Additionally, I'm providing a small spoiler of what the optimized graphics will look like. Thank you for your patience, and I wish you a rewarding wait until 2024 (barring unforeseen circumstances).
Lumen
Image without global illumination (Lumen):
Image with global illumination (Lumen):
Wait, you might be wondering, couldn't you just disable it? Well, it wasn't that simple because all assets were specifically designed to work with Lumen. ːsteamfacepalmː
New Graphics!!
This is a gameplay image from a cinematic camera without Lumen.