Spring RTS Engine

Saktoth wrote:You shouldnt waste polygons by any means, but you shouldnt have to scrimp and save on them either.

Dude, needless polys are wasteful. Remember that when you have half a gazillion units in the game, with a few wasted polies on each, it adds up.

Not use transparancy == stupid imo.

THiats like saying that the trees should have every branch and leaf modeled, because some peoples mom's dell can't keep up.

I can haz BAW? Ppl have to upgrade soemtime, and you can't keep trying to play spring with the same machine that was fine for OTA. Sorrehz, we has enjun update lolz.

Saktoth is 100% right on this one.

I guess I jsut don't get it...

How is modelling everything as polies and not using transparancies (where appropriate) better than saving polies where you can, and modelling an individual piece when you have to?

I'm talking on a effeciency level here. Assuming everyone has the fairly low end card that I do (7600 gtx - reg 7600 gt is less than 100$ usd) or better, I use reflective units (and by extension in spring, transparancies) which causes me little to no fps drop.


I just wonder how you come about this logic, cause it makes very little sense to me.

Transparency is fairly expensive, Forb. It involves another rendering pass each frame. Moreover, it usually looks like ass. On things like wheels, I think it's pointless to use transparency to save 6 tris, frankly.

Ok, now that makes sense. Thanks.

Well I'm screwed then, cause I used transparency on wheels for the Raider, Slasher, and Weasel to keep the tri count as low as I could.. and I had planned on using transparency for the Garpike too.. lol

So either way I go, there is something to complain about

On the raider and slasher it looks fine- those are just little turning pieces in a larger tread. But on a fully modeled wheel, it just looks wrong to have that sort of cap on the end. Also, i believe you used black as the colour for the transparent areas on those other models- if the weasel used black instead white, it would be better. In the long run though, as has been said, transparency will eat more CPU than 6 extra pollies- and most people play with it off AFAIK. Spring can handle 6 extra pollies you dont need to stick to the 10 year old polygon budget of the OTA units.

When i say 'you arent modelling for OTA', i mean you are modelling for spring, specifically for AA based mods. What i mean by this is 'Make the Garpike and Wolverine, it doesnt matter that they arent OTA units'.

As for CA, yes we'll use it. In the long term we want to go TA-IP free, which means removing the logos. We might also need to edit the models textures slightly for visibility (teamcolour, contrast)/consistency. But they are high quality units, fit the new core style pretty well as we envisage it, and we have 400 units to replace- we need all the quality contributions we can get. They'll probably be in our final unit set when we are totally TA-IP free.

will it eat more cpu? How do you know? Maybe still does the pass, just with none of the pixels being transparent? Just because you have not designated any transparent pixels does not mean it is not doing a extra pass. I loev all this speculation.

It's his model, shut the hell up and do some models if you guys know so much. Mr D can do them however he pleases because they are his and frankly at least someone is doing SOMETHING.

Naturally i mean that playing with transparency on will eat more CPU, than if you played with it off and just used the extra pollies.

I dont think he needs you defending him smoth, prettymuch everyone here has been offering encouragement.

Pressure Line wrote:

smoth wrote:FUCK THEM

DO THE MODEL

AND LOL WHEN IT GETS USED

+9001

And some icing to boot.

The only downside I see is that people without reflectivity get to see black squares, that is all. Besides quads with transparencies look way better (and rounder) than 6 or 8 sided cylinder caps.

I didn't realize that using white in the texture area that should be 100% transparent would still visible after the alpha was applied...

At 658 triangles, the weasel using Planes as caps (2 tri x 6 wheels =12 tri total) opposed to keeping the cylinder caps (7 tri x 6 wheels = 42 total) I was just trying to save triangles.

If poly really isn't a big deal, it will only take me 10 minutes to get rid of the need for alpha transparency on the Weasel and use just regular cylinder caps for the wheels.

Weasel is fixed now, new .zip file uploaded with the updated .s3o and Textures, I even lowered the Triangle count.

I didn't realize that using white in the texture area that should be 100% transparent would still visible after the alpha was applied...

That's because of bleeding. Using black backgrund usually works out fine.

This sounds so backwards, going out of your way trying to go from an alredy low polygon count, to a slightly lower one, but at the same time screwing the ones who has a slight imaginable chance of benefiting, those with really crappy videocards. Of course, I agree with the "it's your models and your work/time, so it's up to you", just find it strange.

Also consider pixel fillrate. When you use tricks to get less polygons that involve large polygons with hidden parts, the amount of pixels to fill goes up.

SpikedHelmet wrote:

Leveler was a flame tank origionally too right?

No wtf

Leveller was a lvl1 "siege tank", basically lvl1 goliath.

no wtf. It is a "Riot Tank"

This sounds so backwards, going out of your way trying to go from an alredy low polygon count, to a slightly lower one, but at the same time screwing the ones who has a slight imaginable chance of benefiting, those with really crappy videocards.

He was just mis-informed, and didn't understand the issue very well. Happens to everybody from time to time, lord knows I've made similar mistakes

no worries sak, I wasn't just directing my post at you. I was just making a statement. It's all good.

so... how's the model coming.

Got it nearly unwrapped, just starting to get the .s3o together before I start doing the texturing.

btw.. :D 420 triangles now, and I'm going to stick with alpha wheels since they're only side caps.

I can make the wheel cap perfectly round by using alpha, and keep tri cost to a minimum when using square planes.

This is 2008, I figure screw it.

There are games out that use 6 texture layers to produce normal maps, specular maps, occlusion maps, color tint maps, and all that eye candy.

1 transparent Alpha layer can't hurt much.

I think you're absolutely right about the weasel though, I should have just left the caps instead of shaving them off, for what little I saved it just didn't give the appearance it needed, was worth a try though.

I've got the tri count only 100 over the original now with the Garpike, and the visual quality of the model vs the old one is good, and I'm happy with it Plus it will have animated tracks and hubs.

MR.D wrote:There are games out that use 6 texture layers to produce normal maps, specular maps, occlusion maps, color tint maps, and all that eye candy.

Spring uses at least 4 already:

• 1st texture: diffuse color + teamcolor
• 2nd texture: reflectiveness (== specular map basically, though I don't think the specular exponent is actually in any texture in spring), transparency (for features at least), and some other stuff in remaining 2 channels, which I forgot about
• environment map (for reflections)
• shadow map

That said translucency (which I suppose is what you're talking about, since you talk about alpha and stuff and S3O already has transparency, though I never tested it with units, just with features) is A LOT harder to do right, fast, then just throwing 10k polies at the GPU with zbuffering on.

This is because for really correct translucency polygons needs to be sorted on the CPU. (can shortcut by just sorting models or pieces usually (that only gives 100% correct results if all pieces are convex), but that's still pretty expensive compared to rendering a few k more polies)

Also translucent stuff is a pain to render with emerging techniques like deferred shading etc.

That said Spring is in the majority (if not all) of the cases CPU bound and definitely not polygon-count bound or fillrate bound, so the question whether to use polies or transparency wrt efficiency is pretty much a moot point.

Just realize that by using transparency you exclude users who can't have advanced unit shading on (for whatever reason), while their cards probably would have been able to render the extra polygons without slowdown.