Spring RTS Engine

Yay Cadyr, somehow knew you were going to do something like this, and I think they look awsomes so far, way to go overboard in proving a point... on the legal side of things, does all new models and textures free us of copywrite issues?

I am withholding my judgment untill the texutres are in place. A good texture can make a good model great. Or a bad texture could make a good modle...bad.

SinbadEV wrote:... on the legal side of things, does all new models and textures free us of copywrite issues?

I seriously doubt it. They're still TA units.

names, sounds, scripts. Also the Texture could not use the ARM/CORE logos anywhere on em to be GPL.

Yeah... after all those things were changed... then Caydr could claim, successfully, that AA is "inspired by TA". The new models are different enough to be "new art".

A fair bit of the detail on these could be done through bumpmaps, but seeing you've already made it, nevermind...


Anyways, this things are looking preety awesome, I can't wait to see the sumo...

i like the thud...apart from that extra extrusion on the front bumper looking bit...you can't see it!

j5mello wrote:names, sounds, scripts. Also the Texture could not use the ARM/CORE logos anywhere on em to be GPL.

slighty tweaked ARM/CORE logo's should be kay i reckon.

Caydr wrote:I've already demonstrated 10 times over that some excessive detail here and there doesn't impact anything in Spring. What slows it down is the LoS and pathfinding. I can probably dig up the thread where I prove this undeniably with ingame screens.

Even so, you did say yourself that turning on some of the other graphical features with these more detailed models does have a noticeable performance hit, and if some of this extra detail is entirely invisible in normal game use (which it seems to me it is) then you ARE adding a performance hit to those using these features without adding visible detail after a certain point. (Was that sentence long enough? )

I model these units with the originals side-by-side, and they are proportionately identical. The Thud's barrels are a bit skinny compared with the original ones, I agree. (edit: fixed that, see pics below)

With the original models, they are VERY low-poly, and designed to look OK at that level of detail. I have found in a few cases that remodelling and trying to stay too close to the original gives something that looks wrong - like the front and back of that part of the Thud does to me.

You can't see the 3D view so I can understand why you'd think the thud doesn't look well-armored. But it definitely looks like a rough fighting unit. All the areas I'd say are critical are protected by double-layered thick metal.

Still looks a bit wrong to me, but...

As for the flat front on the cockpit, I think it looks stylish or unique or something like that. Looks different, but not in a bad way.

Still don't really like that bit. :)

NOiZE wrote:

j5mello wrote:names, sounds, scripts. Also the Texture could not use the ARM/CORE logos anywhere on em to be GPL.

slighty tweaked ARM/CORE logo's should be kay i reckon.

Probably not good enough for a court of law, and definitely not good enough to prevent someone trying to scare you into a settlement before going to court, if that's what they wanted to do.

Remember this is planned for 8-12 months down the road. 62 models down (68 now), still about 300 to go Just wanted to give you something to look forward to.

Because it's planned for the future, I feel that adding excessive detail isn't being excessive per se. The old story that every year computing speed doubles isn't much of an exaggeration. I mean, really, look at just how much faster the X1950XTX is compared with the best ATI card from the previous year, the X850. Seriously! long url (the two are highlighted in blue)

That's real-world performance in a cutting-edge game, more than doubled in the span of a year. Now add DX10 into the picture and the hardware improvement that will come as a result. OGL will make a similar quantum leap (if it hasn't already) or face being completely obsolete.

Now figure that these run on my computer NOW at the same speed as the low-detail models you have now. The major things that slow the game down moreso when compared with low-detail models are shadows and reflectivity. The god of programming, his sexiness JC, has said he'd like to improve shadow code considerably, not only increasing shadow detail but increasing performance, according to a recent post. Now, even if reflectivity isn't improved at all, it's not a major decrease in FPS compared with shadows.

Yes, I could probably reduce polygon count by as much as 25-50% with little noticable decrease in eyecandy. But I'm just not going to because I'm making no compromises here. I'm using 16-sided cylinders for my weapon barrels, knowing full well that 8-sided or 12-sided would be adequate. But will you notice a difference either way, performance-wise? No.

Excessive isn't necessarily excessive anymore.

I'm going to post some GEM shots here shortly to help illustrate my point better. I'll even turn off my beloved vsync

I like the storm, even though the cockpit frame is excessively over-detailed, but your Thud model needs to be binned and rebuilt from the pelvis on upward.

FWIW, the Thud is basically identical to my mental image of it.

Props for doing this, it's a _massive_ undertaking.

QFE

Caydr wrote: I'm going to post some GEM shots here shortly to help illustrate my point better. I'll even turn off my beloved vsync

QFE?

Enthusiasm? Excitement? Extra tomato sauce?

Everything... aka... drop everything cause caydre is about to post GEM shots.

Caydr wrote: Because it's planned for the future, I feel that adding excessive detail isn't being excessive per se. The old story that every year computing speed doubles isn't much of an exaggeration. I mean, really, look at just how much faster the X1950XTX is compared with the best ATI card from the previous year, the X850. Seriously! long url (the two are highlighted in blue)

The X1950XTX kicks everything elses ass at Budget* prices. Seriouesly, On some games, the X1950XTX gets DOUBLE THE FRAMERATE OF THE NVIDIA 7950 GX2. Thats right, it does better ON ITS OWN, then a DUAL GPU CARD.

Also, one of my good friends is getting a PC with 2 of these. Seriously, he'll be getting about 300 FPS on HL2, with everything on full with a 2500X2000 ish resolution. They are that good :O

j5mello wrote:names, sounds, scripts. Also the Texture could not use the ARM/CORE logos anywhere on em to be GPL.

So how about LEG and KERNEL?

Kernel's slow-moving massive bot Wrestler is really of level 2.5, and the Tin is more of a medium level 2 bot that can take a lot of punishment too. Leg has the small and fast Mite for very early harassment as well as the trusty BeeWee light bot. Banger and Thump for plasma, Rocky and Blast for rockets... Fifi is Leg's bot for skirmishing and JC is Kernel's light scout.



Reminds me of how Q3F did team fortress things so as not to violate TFS ip. Scout -> Recon etc...

BeeWee? You mean Herman.

I still think you're wasting too many polies on the Thud's barrels.

Also, some places, like the leg joints on the storm, can have less polies without any drop in detail at all.

this "without any loss of detail at all" thing is basically that sping's rederer asumes any six sided cylinder is treated as roud anyways... or so rumor has it... and if it's true then basically spring is going to ignore those polys anyways so you can probably leave them in their without any issues anyways.