I will start working on a top-down management game. I was wondering what scale should I use for my game, considering the fact that multiple meshes will be present in the viewport at the same time, but far away, (min 1000+ units camera boon arm length).
So my question would be: should I struggle to keep things tiny/small (10-20% of what the ue4 mannequin is) or go for 100% scale since good LOD setups will prevent performance problems. I would prefer a 100% scale so I can use the navmesh and navsystem. If I go smaller, I need to implement my own, and since I only know blueprints, the A* i’ve made is VERY slow (3-digit ms) on larger grids.
TLDR: Does world scale matter in terms of performance in a top-down game (with no camera zoom-in)?
Well UE4 uses real world scale of 1 unit = 1 cm and since UE4 uses physics and lighting models based on real world values your environments and map objects should be made to this scale value else you could experience unusual results. Changing the relative scale should not introduce performance issues as UE4 is very good at maintaining a high performance curve as long as what is expected is provided.
Making something smaller will not make it faster, as to performance, as your only changing the relative scale as to world scale that UE4 uses so the only thing that would change is the objects behavior as referenced by world scale. You could start experiencing unusual lighting artifacts or physics behavior as expected on objects of a smaller size.
Another consideration is ready made assets are generally built using real world scale