Im having an issue with my basemant and optimizing the light, my problem is that the main floor omni-lights effect radii is reching objects in the basemant, and the lightsi n the basemant is reaching the objects on the main floor, making it so that when i look at "# of lights" there's red and purple EVERYWHERE and the game runs quite slow inside the house.

So, as i see it, my options are to work for days and says on getting the lights as best i can, probably have them still be each affecting too many objects, but living with it.

Or, I take my basemant and split it off into another cell and put a door up.

I was wonder what everyone thoughts were on separated basemants? does it break immersion? would having a door just to go the basemant be frustrating to the player do you think?

have you tried optimizing with rooms/portals?

tried that, my interior design doesn't lend itself well to room bounds and portals, ive tried like 5 different configurations of room bounds

I could of course change it out for the hole in the floor with the ladder but i love how this looks

http://i.imgur.com/MoYiCl.jpg

Areas shouldn't have more than 4 shadow-casting lights in them or you start getting weird behavior. But you can put gobs of the non-shadow-casting lights in the area with little performance impact, and they're still directional, potentially flickering, lights that provide atmosphere. You might try experimenting to see where you can live without calculated shadows.