Much Ado About Polycounts

[Argh]

Optimized polycount + optimized Piece amounts + optimized scripts + optimized unit sizes + optimized move-data + optimized explosions = optimized mod.

NanoBlobs was built to show you how to do things. Go study it. If I can make it run fairly well even on low-end machines, you can SURELY learn how to make slower-paced mods with lower unit-counts run well, by studying how it was done.

[Snipawolf]

Sure thing, more optimization is more power, hehehehe.. The better you can make a mod run on all computers, the bigger your audience can be..

[Wolf-In-Exile]

I tried to tell you that what buggs me off is when someone has a nice unit at 500 polys at first, and then he goes and decides to cut down polies to 200 and it hurts the appearance of the unit.

Ok, I couldn't really catch what you meant. Still, with a little smart editing and good texturing, you won't see much of a difference at all.

Windows XP Pro
1 gig ram
Radeon 9800 Pro
3 ghz p4 CPU underclocked to 2.8 because I hadn't given up hope and just taken the sides off my case yet.

Anyway. What it breaks down to, in my opinion, is that graphics stuff doesn't slow down the game nearly as much as pathfinding and LoS calculations.

I can spawn 1000 peewees and still run a good framerate, but let me tell you... give them a move order, and it's a different case!

You're using a top of the line test system, of course it doesn't seem to make a difference lol.

I did, however, say that model polycounts are not the biggest nor sole factor that determines the drain on system resources.

Therefore, in my opinion, if there is an artificial limit placed on how many units we can have, why not make sure that the units we can have look pretty?

For one thing, textures make a unit look pretty, geometry only gives it the shape.

Here's some food for thought. If you lessen the poly load on the GPU and CPU, you'd have extra system resources to devote in more resource-intensive things like the pathing and LoS calcs you mentioned, it still contributes to performance.

This means being able to run the game with all the bells and whistles on but still get good performance.

As i'm also running on a similar setup you do, and I like to set all the graphic options to max and still be able to keep a framerate above 30fps.

I don't like compromising on some things, like for instance rounded surfaces. I want em to look round, dammit! I don't care if it's half my overall polycount, I'll have a round cockpit and I'll be happy

Solution: Smooth groups.

Cylinders and round things are the most poly-intensive of all; the barrels on the Dire Wolf mech i'm working on takes up almost one third of the whole unit's polycount, but unavoidable as the unit has many round parts.

For Spring, 8-sided cylinders are best like Guessmyname said, the lowest count that still looks "round", of course with the proper application of smooth groups.

[aGorm]

Here's some food for thought. If you lessen the poly load on the GPU and CPU, you'd have extra system resources to devote in more resource-intensive things like the pathing and LoS calcs you mentioned, it still contributes to performance.

WHat the.... that wont free up CPU cycles. Spring uses a hardwere renedering, not softwear, hence the CPU load is nothing to do with polie counts.

aGorm

[aGorm]

OK, also... I just did some (admitadly dodgy and not real world) number crunching.

A Geforce 4 MX (the worst your goona realy have) can handel 31 Million Triangles a second. Thast still quite a big number, new cards can do WAY more though.

So if thats for a second... how many for 1 frame assuming we want a frame rate of 30 frames a second? I make it 1,033,333 triangles.

Lets assume half of them are used to render the terrain... thats 516666.

Now lets say the squed average polie count on a unit is 800 (Ie lots of units will be less then 1000 polies, some will be more than 1000). That means I could have 645 units on screen at once, at 800 polies.

Now admitadly I dont know what this means in terms of particle affects, explosions ect. Nore do I know if having multiple textures on a unit (IE spring has two) will affect it. However that shows that even teh crapest hardwear can push alot of polies on screen, and so 1000 is surly not that unreasonable.

If someone knows even more than I know (or I dont know) then please clarify.

aGorm

[Wolf-In-Exile]

Here's some food for thought. If you lessen the poly load on the GPU and CPU, you'd have extra system resources to devote in more resource-intensive things like the pathing and LoS calcs you mentioned, it still contributes to performance.

WHat the.... that wont free up CPU cycles. Spring uses a hardwere renedering, not softwear, hence the CPU load is nothing to do with polie counts.

..... I will explain it *again*.

Now admitadly I dont know what this means in terms of particle affects, explosions ect. Nore do I know if having multiple textures on a unit (IE spring has two) will affect it. However that shows that even teh crapest hardwear can push alot of polies on screen, and so 1000 is surly not that unreasonable.

I have repeated this at least 3 times already: polies by themselves do not eat alot of resources! but it is the other things like shadows, anti-aliasing, dynamic lighting, distortion effects, anims etc. that do.

These all depend on the model polycount to calculate.
More polies = more Shadow calcs; more polies = more Antialiasing calcs; more polies = more lighting calcs and so on and so forth.

And the resources taken by these things I mentioned all depend on the model polycount! Higher-poly model + shadows + animations + huge texture maps + anything else I mentioned previously = Slideshow.

Model polycounts do matter, but not in the way you think.

Saying that a crappy G4 MX can handle millions of polies is moot, as it has to contend with a crapload of other things.

[KDR_11k]

Those 30MT/s are a theoretical peak number reachable only if you make them invisible and don't run a game. The PS2 has a theoretical peak number of 66 MT/s, no game uses more than 10-15 MT/s on that, due to transform performance and CPU-GPU bandwidth limitations most games use less while still choking the framerate. Spring is very inefficient in its rendering code AFAIK so its maximum performance would be much lower than that of highly optimized PC games.

[aGorm]

Yes, but all those things (shadows, particles, Antialiasing) can be turned off on lower end systems by the user.

Also.... there is no dynamic lighting or distortion effects (except when you turn on super water, were there is a distortion affect, but again, its Turn offable!)

And my Main point was actully that that Still has nothing to do with teh CPU, the CPU is not loaded by the graphical affect such as:

but it is the other things like shadows, anti-aliasing, dynamic lighting, distortion effects, anims etc. that do.

And that is mainly what I was arguing against in the first post. And you cant fault me on that atleast, even if my guesstimate on GPU load in my second post is wrong (which i stresed probalie was not taking everyuthing into accont.)

And also, Im not saying your wrong about keeping polies reasonable, HELL, I even said that lots of units in a mod wont be 1000 polies (and what I ment by that is IMO your stupid to moddel eveything to your max limit just because you can)

Maybe I sould just sumerise what I think, so you can read my posts with taht in mind, cause you seem to be assuming Im form the POLLIE DONT COUNT camp.

I belive:
Why use 20 polies when you can use 1?
Why take a unit teh size of a flee and give it the polie count of 1000?
Why use barels with sides more than 6 or 8 as they only need to be 6 to be smothed.
Why moddel somthing you expect there to be 1000's of in 1000's of polies?

And inversly:
Why can't I make the super mega ultra huge unit that you'll prob have only 1 of at a time have a 2000 polie count?

So.... realy were like arguing on teh same but opisit sides?

aGorm

::EDIT:: Oh and KDR, whilest I dont doubt your right, why on Earth would someone post a figure for Invisible Triangles? I mean... if there invisible you may as well just have no triangles surly (as in both cases you cant see anything! )

::EDIT:: Oh and the point that got lost in there somewere was, You should also not mod so someone with a crap computer can run at max settings, you should model so someone with a good computer can run at max settings.
I guess the best way to find this out is to model your mod, give it a run on your own system and if it works for teh settings YOU use and works well, then your probablie goona be OK. Helps if you have acces to a slow and a fast machine admitadly.
Starting off saying "I shoudl watch my polie counts" is good, but starting off saying "I MUST USE NO MORE THAN 20 POLIES ON THIS UNIT!!!1!" Is maddness!

BTW, how many polies do You think is good for a unit (out of intrest?)

[Snipawolf]

I wonder if one of Argh's secrets to lowering polies is having all quads.. I am going to optimize as much as possible in that section. Like I said, the more comps you can run it on, the bigger your audience can get.

PS: I use a Geforce4 MX on one of teh comps my family got

[rattle]

I wonder if one of Argh's secrets to lowering polies is having all quads..

I hope that was a joke.

PS: I'm on a GeForce 2 Ti, they should be equivalent to the 4 MX or slightly faster. Spring's fast here even with lots of low or high poly units on screen as long it's paused or nothing's moving.

[Snipawolf]

Why would it be a joke?

Spring actually has an optimised tristripping routine that handles objects with all quads (that's what we call 3D rectangles) very efficiently. It gets used for any model format, but only ones that are 100% done with quads.

[rattle]

...never mind.

[Snipawolf]

Why don't we bring the discussion of polys over here, IN THIS THREAD MADE FOR POLYGON DISCUSSION!!!???