TA Spring needs more impressive graphic

[Masse]

1 gb = 1024 mb -> 1024/25 =~ 40*25mb maps , not 40'000 :)
And I played 2 years Starcraft with a 28k , and it was not so poorly.

If everybody say "we have as many mb that we want" we will shortly have 100 mb maps.
Plus I don't want a 5gb spring folder like UT2004.
IHMO a good quality map should have a reduce size. Like a good game don't waste your CPU cycle..even if it could run on a 200mhz.

mine UT2004 was over 13gigs
ohh the red orchestra... i miss it allready... hmm

[jcnossen]

I'm guessing the new map renderer will make maps smaller, although I'm not sure how much in practice because I've only been using my own crappy maps with 3 different textures.

[Masse]

I'm guessing the new map renderer will make maps smaller, although I'm not sure how much in practice because I've only been using my own crappy maps with 3 different textures.

screenshots ?

[Forboding Angel]

zaphod I would be happy to help ;P

[AF]

ISP's use Gb not GB hence GigaBits not bytes, so that they can give you less bandwidth than you think you're getting. Hence why they used 56Kb modems rather than 7KBps modems
from google:

1 gigabyte = 8 gigabits

1 Gigabit = 128MB, thats about 5 maps.

I've seen 1Gigabit upper limits on isp packages such as BT or wanadoo in the UK, and the onyl ISP's I'ma ware of that have no upper limit are AOL and maybe bulldog. All ISP's I know of elsewhere in the UK have 1/2/5 Gbit limits, and maybe the odd 10 Gbit limits.

[FLOZi]

Line speeds are in bits, download caps are not.

[jcnossen]

Screeny:


However I'm quite sure the skilled artists here can produce something much better, this is just a small landscape I use for testing...

What you see is 3 different textures (rock, cracked surface for the lowest parts, and some weird sandstone texture for the high parts).
These are being blended together in realtime, however if bumpmapping isn't enabled, it can also cache the textures so it renders a single texture on old crappy hardware. It runs actually quite fast with the caching enabled, even on an old geforce 2 mx of me :)

[FLOZi]

Very nice!


And did I read that 4000 x 4000 right?

[jcnossen]

That's 4000x4000 heightmap pixels, calculate how big that is in spring map size yo damn self
At that point, the heightmap is
4000*4000*2 = 32 mb already... combined with heightmap mipmaps and blendmaps that gets bigger quick.
The map also needs to be square and with sizes that are a power of two + 1, so these sizes are possible

33x33, 65x65, ..., 2049x2049, 4097x4097...

You could go to 8193x8193, but that would take up:

8193 * 8193 * 5/4 (mipmaps) = 168 mb of heightmap data
and 256*265 * 108(internal structure size) * 5/4 = ~9 mb of terrain nodes.

However that is the terrain renderer only, the other spring heightmap data would be 8193*8193 * 32 = 2,1 GB not counting pathfinding information!

Now that I'm at it... a fully reachable 4000x4000 map would take up
4096*4096*32=540 MB not counting pathfinding!!
So in practice spring would only be able to use about 2000x2000 maps unfortunately

[FLOZi]

[Weaver]

However that is the terrain renderer only, the other spring heightmap data would be 8193*8193 * 32 = 2,1 GB not counting pathfinding information!

Now that I'm at it... a fully reachable 4000x4000 map would take up
4096*4096*32=540 MB not counting pathfinding!!
So in practice spring would only be able to use about 2000x2000 maps unfortunately

I could be wrong but I think you might be counting bits as bytes.
8193*8193 * 32 = 2,1 Gigabits! Which is a more manageable 256 MBytes.
and
4097*4097*32 = 533 MBits or 64MBytes
Not so bad if I'm right.

Edit - Which is for a 128 x 128 map! - Edit

[Gnomre]

Caydr: Ignoring the bad math (since someone else already corrected you), you still didn't reply to the "bandwidth isn't free" line. The servers the files are hosted on still have to pay... even if you're not. Why should you waste their money just because you refuse to learn to do things correctly?

Technology constantly moves forward, yes. But you know, there's a reason RTSes are the way they are (large and relatively ugly, or small with good graphics): they are the hardest type of game for a computer to manage. There's a reason why modern RTS games like Dawn of War and WC3 have relatively high poly models but a very small scale, and games like TA sacrifice graphics to an extent for large scale, and it's not strictly the game's age alone.

Internet connections don't just get better in the blink of an eye. Australia is just now starting to get out of the stone age, but they still have a very long road to go. England doesn't tend to be in a much better state. Connections in mainland Europe also sound to be very expensive for what we consider normal, from what I've heard. Scandinavia has good connections because many large, global telecommunications firms are based there (Nokia springs to mind first), so they cater to their home countries first. Asia creates a large amount of the technology they use. That's why they get 100 mbit connections cheaper than we get five. Yes, connections will continue to get better, but not at the rate you are predicting.

Actually I think some random MMO is the largest multiplayer game. Starcraft probably comes close, if not surpassing CS, simply because of Korea. Even so, that's not the point. Yes, people only play it on broadband these days, but do you think that was always the case? People only play TA on broadband and when it came out 28k was blazing...

There's no reason a map has to be 20+ MB anymore in the hands of a good mapper. Good tiling, smartly used compression on compile, and good usage of 7zip should get any currently possible map under that mark. Secure's River Dale package is just under 11 MB, and it contains 4 maps, the largest being 12x20. Sure, it's just several sections of the same map, but the heightmap and metalmap data still has to be duplicated.

Your rants are just a front for your incompetence; you did it when you were still learning to UV map (OMG THE TEXTURE SIZE IS NOT ENOUGH THIS SUCKS EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A CRAY), and you're doing it again now with maps. Just learn how to do things right. You don't need 4,000 triangle models and 2048x2048 textures for models in an RTS, you need skill. Any tool can make a decent looking model given those resources; a truly great modeller will achieve the same visual quality with significantly simpler resources. The same applies to maps and any other aspect of creation.

[Das Bruce]

Did you say only square maps?

[jcnossen]

Weaver, I'm counting actual bytes here...

To clarify:
these are the things spring stores for a heightmap (a C++ float is 4 bytes), some of these might be lower res, but that would maybe reduce it to 1.5 GB (still to much)...

Code: Select all

	float* heightmap;	
	float* orgheightmap;
	float* centerheightmap;
	float* halfHeightmap;
	float* slopemap;
	float3* facenormals;

The renderer requires square maps yes, but the idea is that the map can extend beyond the game area... so you can still have a rectangular game area only it extends beyond the borders.

[Caydr]

Sorry about the horrible math. I was confusing bytes and kilobytes during the division.

When stand-alone game demos, modern ones, from companies I doubt you'd call incompetent, are more than 150 megabytes, you can't claim that I'm stupid because I attain to the same level of quality. What I said about UV mapping with a single texture was rash, but it was literally on the first day I'd attempted to UV map. A certain degree of confusion with the process, especially when Max makes it such a needlessly complex one, is understandable. As far as modeling goes, don't say I'm incompetent because I demand the highest quality. I could easily make ultra-low-poly models like the ones from the newcomer SW:War in Space mod. But in my experience, the fun part of TA doesn't come from just throwing massive numbers of units around, it comes from clever use of strategy. Where my models are 1000 triangles, theirs are 100. Where they want a million billion tie fighters flying around with a random outcome based on chance, I want a few squadrons of fighters. Their mod is about huge numbers, my mod is about huge detail and quality. If you want an example to prove that I'm not "incompetent" with low-poly, check out AA's Core Commander. I made it. I also remodeled the Guardian and Punisher turrets, and have done dozens of other model changes.

Bandwidth isn't free. Unless you get hosted where it is free. It's not hard to come up with a wide variety of such free hosts. Sourceforge, Filefront, and FilePlanet are just a few. Basically anyone who wants to and puts out a free product can be hosted on Sourceforge. Filefront is easy as pie. FilePlanet is a more complex matter, but they suck anyway TBH. For the longest time I've been asking for the "More Mods" link to direct to the relevant Wiki page. All mods should have a listing there, the page can be fixed up a fair bit, and above all else, people can choose where their files are mirrored and provide international ones if such is available. This way, we won't have FU panicking and closing its doors when the first next-gen mods start coming out for Spring. They will be large, but that's the price of admission - there's no way around it.

There's no reason a map has to be 20+ MB anymore in the hands of a good mapper

Bull. Even experienced mappers have admitted that a map of the quality you find in Altored Divide can't be tiled. If you don't want to host the inevitable large maps and mods that are coming up, you should make preperations now.

[Gnomre]

I wasn't implying that FU is in any kind of trouble. I'm just saying even filefront, sourceforge, etc have to pay the bills, nothing in this world is free. Even if FU does stop taking submissions or close or whatever, it won't be overnight. There would be plenty of warning if that were the case.

Your point about squadrons vs numbers just proves the point I made above. Spiked is hardly a newcomer, by the way.

I do still think you could get even that Divide map under 20 MB. mufdvr's version of The Pass has equally impressive terrain graphics and is only 12 MB, and it's the exact same size (16x16) as Divide, which is 24.5 MB. PD Remake is 18x18, 10 MB. So, what's your excuse?

[Caydr]

More complex terrain graphics. There's so much variation it's literally impossible to tile. And it's been a while since I last played it, but if I remember correctly his map had rather bland grass texture. I'm just going on memory though.

Trust me, Sourceforge is in no trouble - AA and my maps are just one of thousands of projects on there, and mine isn't even a particularly large one. All their file serving is done on contributed servers on various network backbones around the world. FileFront makes a point of advertizing how many files and terabytes they've served, and the majority of those terabytes are things like 200 megabyte game demos. Fileplanet, well, if they go out of business I couldn't care less. But they're clearly not in any financial trouble...

I think people are grossly underestimating the Spring engine. On my system, which is by no means on the cutting edge, I can get 400 of my fighters onscreen before dropping below 30 FPS - assuming shadows are off... that's the engine's achilles heel right now.

There is one detail I think everyone's forgetting about. See, the pathfinding engine is the game's main resource hog when there's a large number of units. There is no denying this. I don't care if you have 1000 50-poly tie fighters onscreen, it'll perform the same as 1000 or my 1000-poly fighters. Spring is limited more by pathfinding for units than by graphics rendering. So why use low-detail models when they're not even the issue? Why use low polygon models with low resolution textures when this won't even address the issue? Why not exploit the engine to its maximum as I'm doing?

BTW, I'm aware spiked isn't a newbie, I was referring to his mod. It's a relative newcomer... I think the only thing newer than it is the "blob wars" or whatever.

Two victims of the evil overlord, Compressor:







But a small band of rebels have... ok enough bullcrap. Here's AD, a map which is about 10 megabytes more than the above maps.




How far does this war to get the smallest filesize have to go? People are willing to effectively destroy what they've spent hours or even days rendering just to save a couple of megabytes?

[cyclerboy]

i think it looks awsome right now with the all the graphical options turned on. it has come a very long way scince the beginning. go look at the screenshot page.

[NOiZE]

well most ppl don't play eith the camera on the ground.. so those compression artifacts will not even be shown..

[smoth]

not true, they are apparent to me. If you are running at a decent
resolution and have a good machine it will be blatant. I did not know it
could be helped but an extra 10 megs or even 20 megs is worth it.

This isn't 2000, games look alot better with much more detail. I do not
thing that people on 56k modems should be playing something like spring
and controlling the map format.


Games look like this now and yeah spring.. it deserves better maps. I
delete maps that have bad artifacts or simply refuse to play them. Part of
enjoying a game is suspending your disbelief to become immersed in the
game. However if they used tonka trucks in the movie greesed or rubber
band guns in full metal jacket noone would enjoy them.

The fact of the matter is we NEED the detailed maps. I don't know why
people freak about map sizes but then we also have some of these
people making maps xantheterra that would be a nice looking map if not
for the artifacts. Also alot of people are OVERUSING the tinting feature of
spring. Subtle tint is ok but maps like corrosive pits are awful. We had the
same thing back in the days OF QUAKE 2, people using overly strong
lighting.

PLEASE, do you people on 56k play other games? The average demo size
past 100 megs YEARS ago. When I was on 56k I would set all my
downloads to happen overnight and by morning I would have what i
needed. Get with the times the compression is not worth it.