Wow, AF, that speech was beautifuk *tears*. Someone standing up and fighting for the poor man.AF wrote:My only beef is that you cant justify something because the msot expensive video card of the day can do it. I buy a new PC that cna do it I've still got the old one sitting gathering dust. Ideally the not so out of date computer should be able to play against the uptodate one.
Core 2 duo and GF8 class cpu/gpu may be ideal but assuming all PCs will have them from now on or better is foolish. Integrated graphics shifts far greater quantities than graphics cards, and there are numerous people on sprign with these chipsets. Should we blame them for not having our wisdom on GPU technology? Should we blame them for having centrino 2 and AMD class cpus? Or being taken in by the dell PCs with the 7900s?
What about the guy who cant play with your super details because he hasnt an 8800 and has a slightly substandard system that only just misses the min spec, but he cant buy or upgrade because he's ind ebt and lives off a low income?
And what about the GF8800 and radeon HD2900 users suffering from repetitive BSOD and TDR crash syndrome?
When your finished making GEM 8800 drivers should be standard stable drivers. Well all be harping on how polycount isnt a direct issue its shaders. There'll be a chorus of people wondering why their not so old PCs cant run some mods getting disgruntled and leaving, and therell be a mass of elitist peopel sayign haha look at me!!!
Supreme commander followed your view caydr, and there are times when our lobby has more people than theres. OTA(not including us or 3DTA) has a larger community than Supcom.
As somebody said, the excessive detail is OK but it sint high poly models that make an RTS good, its houghtful details that make the difference. Wind blowing the trees, flames setting units on fire, better AI, more unusual tactics, environmental effects.
I get the impression now that you just want to argue.
Excessive detail
Moderator: Moderators
ROFL! Do you guys think those are the final gun designs? They're seperate objects, just placeholders. I'm modelling ships right now, not guns. No wonder you're talking about inconsistent detail if you actually think I'm going to leave these 10-poly pieces of crap on there in the finished product. I'm just working on weapon arcs and stuff right now, you need placeholders of some kind for that.that have little guns sticking out like golf flags
That's why I'm not. GEM is a huge project for a whole team of people, it's frikkin massive project for a single developer. Just when did you think I was going to finish this anyway? I've promised alphas and stuff back before I got my job, but you don't seriously think I'm going to waste hours of time optimizing a model so that it'll look good *today* when I want it to look good a ways into the future.Core 2 duo and GF8 class cpu/gpu may be ideal but assuming all PCs will have them from now on or better is foolish.
No sir. My graphs are exaggerated sure, but they're accurate. Post up any example of a total hawt secks model you think looks like the bees knees, and you'll notice it's 200 polygons or something. Yeehaw, optimized, that's good, but it means that even assuming it was released *tomorrow* your GPU would never hit 25% load while your CPU would be chugging along trying to figure out how the hell you want it to compute the routes for 6,000 units 32 times a second while simulating particles, physics, and all that good stuff...Plus, we just hit the current gen tech recently. Less then 10% of our community will have been upgraded to gaming PC standard high end right now... Caydr's graphs are full of BS.
The only way a current mod developer is going to come in ahead at all is if they release a finished version by year's end. You can talk all you want about how "current computers" haven't got this-and-that, but when you go to Best Buy and see that "this-and-that" has been marked down to the amount you spend on pizza or gas every month for the christmas sale or something, it's going to be mighty tempting to just buy the thing. Seriously, picture yourself for a moment. You can buy either the marked-down $250 (at most, considering it's currently $270) 8800 GTS 320mb, or for $125, absolutely any DX9 graphics card you want. There's also a core 2 duo sitting there for $70.
I'm not the smartest guy around (who's getting ready to quote that?), but it doesn't take a genius to realize that when the Geforce 8800 series is about a year old, there will be a "new an improved" 8900 series or something. That drives down the cost of the 8800, which in turn drives down the cost of everything else. Then you wait for christmas sales, and it's MASSIVE DAMAGE to the sale price of anything from the gf7xxx or r1xxx series. If you think my graphs or whatever are BS, find someone who owns a 8800. Play *anything* on their computer at *any* settings. Not a frame stutter, ever. Not a GPU-related one, anyway.
And once more, no, I don't expect the average guy on here can *currently* run GEM or my obscene-detail TA remodels on their computer at 60 fps. Most of you can't even play what you've got at 60 fps. The point is...
Last edited by Caydr on 22 Jun 2007, 00:32, edited 1 time in total.
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Guessmyname
- Posts: 3301
- Joined: 28 Apr 2005, 21:07
Lord of teh Polies wrote:I'm just working on weapon arcs and stuff right now, you need placeholders of some kind for that.
And suppose I decide I want to see how they might look, for instance, to see polygon collisions as they rotate through a chunk of the hull?Guessmyname wrote:Um, no, not really. Models are just models, they have little to no effect on firearcs if their AimFromWeapon piece's origin stay in the same place.
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So to reiterate: GEM does not, and will not require a 8800. However, the mere existence of the 8800 will drive the price of everything else down in such a way as to make it affordable by anyone. For instance, my previous card was a reasonably high-end one of the day, a Geforce 7800 GS (in other words, "the last high-end AGP card, ever"). It cost me $300 to buy and runs GEM smooth like silk in any "normal" gameplay situation, and even holds its own in ridiculous testing scenarios. I'll repeat, it cost me $300 to buy, and that was a little over a year ago. The price is now $149.99 as of the time of my writing this, after a $20 rebate. A year goes by, the price drop by half. A little unusual, but not crazy. Now lets look at a PCI-E card. ... crap. Er... well I was going to compare it with the 7800 GT, but it can't be bought at newegg anymore, apparently. There's just the dual GPU 7800 and a "recertified" one...
Ehh... lemme look a bit. Here you go. A 7950 GT, the cost as of the time of this writing, only $159.99. That card should run GEM or my high-detail TA remodel easily, since it's a much more powerful version of the 7800 GS I own and use. Or, take this one, at $129.99. That's just insanity. And this is *before* the impending christmas 2007 price drops. Either one of these, before the 8800 series, would have set you back $300-$400, and probably higher if my memory is anywhere near correct. That's a 2/3 reduction in price, for a card that can be defined as "super high end", unless you take the 8800 series into consideration, since it blows everything else away.
Crikey. Keep this up and I'll start giving the things away as a raffle. Only condition is people can't piss and moan about imaginary "too-high system requirements" after.
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Upgrade from Vista to XP.And what about the GF8800 and radeon HD2900 users suffering from repetitive BSOD and TDR crash syndrome?
There are more posts in the official supcom forum in a minute than there are here in an hour. TAU, PA (hahahaha, gotcha, they don't count) and... are there any others?OTA(not including us or 3DTA) has a larger community than Supcom.
Add them to Spring's total and you still probably wouldn't get a favorable minute:day ratio. Not to say that's a bad thing. IMHO a smaller community is really better for open-source development. It's easier to prioritize stuff, etc... People generally know what they're talking about more. I don't really know where you're going with this. I can go into GPGnet and be queuing up my commander's initial base building commands in less than 15 seconds.
Last edited by Caydr on 22 Jun 2007, 00:59, edited 1 time in total.
I see 7950X2 cards for sale next to 8800GTS cards and the 7950X2 is almost double the price for half the performance. The GF8 series cards did nothing much to dent their price.
But this all assumes that the guy who sees the brand new core 2 duo on the bargain shelf knows howto install it. When I got my first component it was a CD-RW drive for xmas years and years ago, it was in a box for months before anyone got the courage to actually take the case off and install it. People are scared of opening cases, voiding warranty and setting their house on fire when they turn it on again, or just destroying their PC by doing something wrong.
Things are never as simple as 'hey look a core 2 duo for $70'.
Instead the trick I think is to make low poly models that obviously arent detailed but arent optimized either. Then you make 2 forks, one that cleans up the mistakes, one that goes the detail path, which gives you 2 levels of detail, one you keep improving, the other you lave as is and forget about for old users.
That way hey good looking models, oh wow theres a crappy version for my old PC, I can do 1v1 now! woooo!
But this all assumes that the guy who sees the brand new core 2 duo on the bargain shelf knows howto install it. When I got my first component it was a CD-RW drive for xmas years and years ago, it was in a box for months before anyone got the courage to actually take the case off and install it. People are scared of opening cases, voiding warranty and setting their house on fire when they turn it on again, or just destroying their PC by doing something wrong.
Things are never as simple as 'hey look a core 2 duo for $70'.
Instead the trick I think is to make low poly models that obviously arent detailed but arent optimized either. Then you make 2 forks, one that cleans up the mistakes, one that goes the detail path, which gives you 2 levels of detail, one you keep improving, the other you lave as is and forget about for old users.
That way hey good looking models, oh wow theres a crappy version for my old PC, I can do 1v1 now! woooo!
That's why you don't buy it unless you're an idiot. SLI, except in the case where you want to drive two monitors or something, is a waste of money, anyone knows that. The performance improvement is 50% at best for 200% of the cost. Seems like a bad idea tbh... Those "x2" cards were a last-run gimmick to make the best of the current architecture before the 8800 came out, and their price will probably not come down any time soon. A PR tactic mostly.I see 7950X2 cards for sale next to 8800GTS cards and the 7950X2 is almost double the price for half the performance. The GF8 series cards did nothing much to dent their price.
If people want low detail, they can stick with the standard ones. If they want low detail with eye candy, they can use the CA ones. If they want high detail, they can use mine. I make stuff modular, check my AA sdz packaging. You can make mutators super-easily, especially ones that are purely to give the game a better appearance. And something like that certainly wouldn't be ruled out for GEM either, for the 486 users.gives you 2 levels of detail
Last edited by Caydr on 22 Jun 2007, 01:06, edited 1 time in total.
Hmm... tricky to say. Would purely visual changes make multiplayer desync?
Only thing that could probably cause a desync would be if there was descrepancy between hitbox sizes... but that could theoretically be overcome through the hitbox system that, if I remember right, is currently being developed. Would just take a little bit of fancy programming to make sure the game doesn't get confused, but it's technically feasible and shouldn't take much work.
Models are purely for eye candy and to help differentiate one unit from another. The only thing that matters to gameplay from a technical standpoint is the hitbox, which is generated on-the-fly IIRC. If the hitbox was defined in the unit FBI (as it will be if everything goes according to plan) then there would be nothing at all preventing interchangeable eyecandy modules... which was the idea I had from the beginning.
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Addendum to my bit on the "x2" nvidia cards. Their whole purpose was basically to allow a person with only one PCI-E slot to run SLI. So.. here's a crazy (srsly) comparison for you: it's like a unit that has the firepower of two of another unit... but... HAS A CLOAKING DEVICE!!!!
See, so it's got this extra fancy feature that, although useless from a practical standpoint since nobody who'd be interested in the card has a non-sli motherboard, drives up the price. The x2 series is also the only (practical?) way to get quad-sli in a computer. To take a totally wild guess, there are about 1000 of these cards in the world, and 900 of them are owned by now-burned PC enthusiasts, while the other 100 sit on shelves because their reseller would take a loss if they reduced the price even another penny. That's the reason why that "x2" card is more expensive than simply buying two of the cards I mentioned, which would actually yield you better performance anyway.
Only thing that could probably cause a desync would be if there was descrepancy between hitbox sizes... but that could theoretically be overcome through the hitbox system that, if I remember right, is currently being developed. Would just take a little bit of fancy programming to make sure the game doesn't get confused, but it's technically feasible and shouldn't take much work.
Models are purely for eye candy and to help differentiate one unit from another. The only thing that matters to gameplay from a technical standpoint is the hitbox, which is generated on-the-fly IIRC. If the hitbox was defined in the unit FBI (as it will be if everything goes according to plan) then there would be nothing at all preventing interchangeable eyecandy modules... which was the idea I had from the beginning.
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Addendum to my bit on the "x2" nvidia cards. Their whole purpose was basically to allow a person with only one PCI-E slot to run SLI. So.. here's a crazy (srsly) comparison for you: it's like a unit that has the firepower of two of another unit... but... HAS A CLOAKING DEVICE!!!!
See, so it's got this extra fancy feature that, although useless from a practical standpoint since nobody who'd be interested in the card has a non-sli motherboard, drives up the price. The x2 series is also the only (practical?) way to get quad-sli in a computer. To take a totally wild guess, there are about 1000 of these cards in the world, and 900 of them are owned by now-burned PC enthusiasts, while the other 100 sit on shelves because their reseller would take a loss if they reduced the price even another penny. That's the reason why that "x2" card is more expensive than simply buying two of the cards I mentioned, which would actually yield you better performance anyway.
Last edited by Caydr on 22 Jun 2007, 01:22, edited 2 times in total.
We just need some LOD. Sooner or later we will have it I think, and normal mapping... drool...Caydr wrote:Hmm... tricky to say. Would purely visual changes make multiplayer desync?
Only thing that could probably cause a desync would be if there was descrepancy between hitbox sizes... but that could theoretically be overcome through the hitbox system that, if I remember right, is currently being developed. Would just take a little bit of fancy programming to make sure the game doesn't get confused, but it's technically feasible and shouldn't take much work.
Models are purely for eye candy and to help differentiate one unit from another. The only thing that matters to gameplay from a technical standpoint is the hitbox, which is generated on-the-fly IIRC. If the hitbox was defined in the unit FBI (as it will be if everything goes according to plan) then there would be nothing at all preventing interchangeable eyecandy modules... which was the idea I had from the beginning.
Auto-generated LoD models would be cool, yeah...
Speaking of normal mapping, I've seen some of the stuff that can be done with it, and is scares the heck out of me. Texturing alone is hell, I hope there's some simple process to get that extra detail without going through the sort of stuff I imagine could be involved.
Normal mapping, unless I'm mistaken, is basically a super-duper form of bump mapping. Either of these would require shadows to be activated if I remember right, and I don't think Spring's current shadow computator-thing is up to snuff. Normal mapping looks best in FPSs, since they can have super high quality shadows on fewer models. I'm not sure how much benefit normal mapping would be in an RTS.
re: "Supcom went for high detail, and it's suffering as a result"
TA also went for high detail, crazy as that seems as we look back at OTA units. Try to play TA on the typical computer from the time it came out - it ain't pretty. 640x480 with anti-aliasing off looks like death and even then it still ran slowly if you had a real battle going on, but it was cutting edge. And yet here we are today, playing it ten years later. If SupCom was doing so badly, it wouldn't be so easy to get a multiplayer game up, and there wouldn't be hints among the devs about an expansion pack being in development.
Speaking of normal mapping, I've seen some of the stuff that can be done with it, and is scares the heck out of me. Texturing alone is hell, I hope there's some simple process to get that extra detail without going through the sort of stuff I imagine could be involved.
Normal mapping, unless I'm mistaken, is basically a super-duper form of bump mapping. Either of these would require shadows to be activated if I remember right, and I don't think Spring's current shadow computator-thing is up to snuff. Normal mapping looks best in FPSs, since they can have super high quality shadows on fewer models. I'm not sure how much benefit normal mapping would be in an RTS.
re: "Supcom went for high detail, and it's suffering as a result"
TA also went for high detail, crazy as that seems as we look back at OTA units. Try to play TA on the typical computer from the time it came out - it ain't pretty. 640x480 with anti-aliasing off looks like death and even then it still ran slowly if you had a real battle going on, but it was cutting edge. And yet here we are today, playing it ten years later. If SupCom was doing so badly, it wouldn't be so easy to get a multiplayer game up, and there wouldn't be hints among the devs about an expansion pack being in development.
Last edited by Caydr on 22 Jun 2007, 01:30, edited 1 time in total.
Hash checks file not contents, that's a given... hm... hmm.... Tricky situation, that it is... lemme think. I'll come up with a solution tomorrow while I'm "working"...
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If the hasher dealie is clever enough to check all the files referenced as dependencies, I bet it would be possible to
1: specify a file as being resource-only (is that the right term? resource?)
2: have a super-fast check run on the file to verify that it contains exclusively model and/or texture files (it takes time to extract files, but you can double-click an archive of any size and instantly get a perfectly accurate reading of what's inside it)
3: if files besides textures/models (and possibly modinfo.tdf?) are detected, prevent multiplayer connection
OR
More simply, specify a file from which only models and/or textures can be read in the applicable modinfo file. Generate hash of all files but the resource file, match them up, and have the engine read ONLY object/texture date from that file. You can't hack the game with models and textures... unless you're hacking it by crashing your computer (with 32768x32768 textures or something)...
*Should* be foolproof if done properly and would open up a lot of doors as you can imagine, not just for me.
~~~
If the hasher dealie is clever enough to check all the files referenced as dependencies, I bet it would be possible to
1: specify a file as being resource-only (is that the right term? resource?)
2: have a super-fast check run on the file to verify that it contains exclusively model and/or texture files (it takes time to extract files, but you can double-click an archive of any size and instantly get a perfectly accurate reading of what's inside it)
3: if files besides textures/models (and possibly modinfo.tdf?) are detected, prevent multiplayer connection
OR
More simply, specify a file from which only models and/or textures can be read in the applicable modinfo file. Generate hash of all files but the resource file, match them up, and have the engine read ONLY object/texture date from that file. You can't hack the game with models and textures... unless you're hacking it by crashing your computer (with 32768x32768 textures or something)...
*Should* be foolproof if done properly and would open up a lot of doors as you can imagine, not just for me.
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Guessmyname
- Posts: 3301
- Joined: 28 Apr 2005, 21:07
Well presumably, placeholder models are different to the final models, and presumably the final models, because they are different will clip the hull differently, and so presumably, using the final models is a better idea as a result, not to mention allowing you to take better screenies of the ships and guns in question and meaning you don't have to waste time making placeholders and you get to see what the unit will look like all duffed up with snazzy weaponry. It's also faster, and easier.Caydr wrote:Lord of teh wasted polies wrote:I'm just working on weapon arcs and stuff right now, you need placeholders of some kind for that.And suppose I decide I want to see how they might look, for instance, to see polygon collisions as they rotate through a chunk of the hull?Guessmyname wrote:Um, no, not really. Models are just models, they have little to no effect on firearcs if their AimFromWeapon piece's origin stay in the same place.
EDIT: PS, Spring does actually have some sort of auto LOD, but it's not very good (it appears to involve hiding pieces of the model at certain distances) and icons usually come into play before the LOD does anyway
Thats th old lod routine.
The new one renders the unit from a few angles then creates a low res image from the render and uses that instead fo the model at a distance. When viewed froma far it doesnt look bad, but up close its butt ugly.
Put the unit view distance to min on the slider and icon distance to max.
The new one renders the unit from a few angles then creates a low res image from the render and uses that instead fo the model at a distance. When viewed froma far it doesnt look bad, but up close its butt ugly.
Put the unit view distance to min on the slider and icon distance to max.