RTS game performance drop can't A5 handle it??????

im making an RTS game this is my first game in A5. I tested the level and i got a big performance drop.

The level is only in a big hollow box. which is ok but when i build about 10 buildings and 80 soliders that's when the performance drops big time.

The solders are the guard.mdl's and the buildings are just box's

the machine tested on is
900mb Atholon
tnt2 32mb graphics card
320mb ram

if A5 can not handle this then well there goes my game down the drain

please say help if any one can can give me info on how i could solve this performance drop

thanx
Inferno

Press Double "D" to have a look, how many Polygons are Paint. 80 * Guard and 10 * Houses are more than 40000 Polygons. Take a look, how many Polys your Graficcard can Paint in one second. When you have 50 FPS, Your card must Paint over 2Mill Polys in one Second.

Use Models with less Polys, and your programm will run faster.

Please thing about, that every trace make your game also slower.

Try to design your level with more blocks and connect them, this might help!

Nemo

Most RTS games DO NOT use polygonal models for their soldiers, units, tanks, etc. Most use 2D sprites. They may look 3D because many of the sprites are rendered from a 3D model, but they are rendered as 2D images.

Try converting all your soldiers into sprites with the number of sides you would need for each facing position. This will significantly speed things up.

80 models on screen at a time ... even very low poly ones ... will definately slow things down. I would guess this would even slow down the QuakeIII engine .

We´re making a TBTCS (TurnBasedTacticalConflictSimulation)

Our Levels are about 10.000 x 10.000 quants,
we filled them with about 100 Models and 20 Buidings, when you stay high in one corner of the level and take a look on the complete Level with all models & co. you´ve got a frame rate of 20~22 (800x600x16) on a AMD-K7-Duron 700 with an 16MB ATI-128-Pro, build in preview quality and not resourced

So let me say A5 is very fast (if you can handle "her" right )

good luck and good night

Dan is right, but don't give up with your idea of a 3D RTS game. You could render them as 2D images as Dan said, or you could just make very low poly models (they will be small anyway). But 2D will always be faster. RTS games are slowly making the jump into 3D, though I still like Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

USE the LOD function of A5. So you can use mor polys for near objects.