i want to make it so that objects are not rendered beyond a certain point. i mean, i dont want the engine to even think about them how would i do this?

var clip_range = thedistanceyouset;

[EDIT] Place in top of main or better yet, get into scene management where you ent_create and remove items as the camera comes into and out of range (you need to pre load with a non default preloading system though to drop lag rates as they are created)
Then, there is clipping them according to camera view again where, if they are not in the cameras viem they get clipped and just before they come back into camera view, they are 'unclipped'

There are some references to this in archives so if you can brave the 'search' function, you might come across them. (search is getting so hard to use now)