performance

scott · Post by **scott** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:14 am

i dont know if you can help me but my question is what polygon count should we aim for with RF2? i know its some time of being completed but its more of a graphics engine question more than anything else.

say for a system with 2Ghz cpu, 512Mb ram, 128Mb graphics card, a sort of mid range machine

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 12:50 pm

I think you could look on the irrlicht site? Im not sure if that would help, but also you might think of aiming higher with that mid range PC cause i belive that the "average" gamer PC by 2010 will have AT LEAST 1gig ram about 512video ram and possibly a dual core so about 3-4GHz

BLACK_PHOENIX · Post by **BLACK_PHOENIX** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:03 pm

lol r u serious. ive already got a better pc.

by 2010 we will already have single silicon quad core gaming processors and
directx10 will be very much inside the gaming world.

thats the problemwhen working on long term projects. hardware gets faster, smarter, more powerful and smaller in size/bigger in memory.

the 2007 ram standard is about 1-2gb ddr2. with vista taking a minimum of 1gb. new 3D renderes will require 2gb. and soon the standard will be 4gb ram ddr2 (or 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

with my project i want to use the newest and best technology so that when im finished it will fit in with the standard era.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:09 pm

well that may be true, but I think that games that now have beautiful graphics will always be beautiful, i mean does a picaso become anyless beautiful because we can now just take a bloody photo?

scott · Post by **scott** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:58 pm

i have 2 pc's that are higher specifications that what i mentiond erlier and i belive psyco is right they would get higher, but i belive its pointles having all that power to make it look better, looking at the ps3 for example, its followed successful ps2 and playstation, but its gone over the top, yea it has the latest graphics and best specs for a console, but i would rather settle for a good game on the xbox 360 that is a third of the price and i belive that the nintendo wii is the best games console out, its gone and took a very good path in interactivnes, the ps3 seemed to of coppied it from the wii thats how good it is, i dont want to walk round levels and see a glass on a table thats 200 poly's and smash up into lots of 3d segments if u hit it, what i want is a good stoory line, good game play and lots of fun.

the reason i wanted to know the limitations of RF2 was it makes my life a bit easier to create models with the ability to have more poly's on screen.
for example, i made a human from scratch, my second atempt, first went completely wrong, it had 2800 poly's i spent 3 hours last night cutting it down to 2200 and keeping alot of the original shape and am still able to cut it down more, the main reason its so high is because i wanted it too look more human than low polly models, i modeld the fingers seperatly and not a block and a thumb and for the face so i could give my chracter expresion, while this may seem that i want to make it look better expresions on faces can say things that words cant and makes it a better story.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:09 pm

I completely agree scott, also I think that (having looked at Irrlicht as it stands now and having played around with it abit) 2500 - 3000 polys per character is fine, so long as you dont have like 50 on screen or 10 different ones. And even with those reasonably high poly characters, you should still be able to have very pretty looking terrains.

Oh and about the whole console thing, i got a 360 for Xmas, and now playing on my mates Wii I almost regret it, the Wii really works and has reminded me just how much more important game play story and the FUN FACTOR is than GFX, I think that weve come to a good place in graphics where things look nice and we can easily get lost in the game world with visuals automatically recogniseable, sure its nice to push forward, but its not really nessasary.

scott · Post by **scott** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:14 pm

that sounds greate, i want to use lod alot anyway and this 2200 poly model is for closeups as things like expresion cant bee seen from a distance.

Post by **AndyCR** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:50 am

In 2010, I would aim at 3,000-5,000 polys for characters and 750,000 - 1,000,000 polygons total visible at any time.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:38 pm

YAY! That means that all of my stuff is fine! And im happy with the way it looks and it should run on anymachine!

Post by **AndyCR** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:56 am

Not quite ANY machine. I would call it average for an average gaming machine at that point. Whether it will work with an average non-gaming machine I do not know, since that will depend on the way integrated graphics improve; considering vista requires better graphics I would guess it would get better though.

GD1 · Post by **GD1** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:33 pm

lol, this question again. you shouldn't even be worrying about that, because without an engine to test stuff in, at this point making the final game art is pointless. by the time RF2 is out there will be a whole new set of effects and techniques that you'll want to use, so you'll just have to redo everything anyways.

scott · Post by **scott** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:49 pm

somethings will stay the same tho like polygons, no matter what realy a human still needs the shape of a human even if there are techniques that improve the model, and buildings they need their shape so could make them, while things like texture processing can be improved modeling is realy a basic fundamentel process that improves in the construction techniques but not different techniques of creating entire models.
i hope that make sense.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:06 pm

well im making my whole game in RF, and then just porting the stuff over, and we can kinda test our stuff to see what it looks like in the engien, simply by getting irrlicht and rendering in it, of course this wont be quite the same, but we can see how itll look...

Post by **AndyCR** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:41 pm

The point of the backwards compatibility is that the engine you use to test stuff in is RF1, and you can import it into RF2 later on.