19 Dec 12, 07:39AM
(This post was last modified: 19 Dec 12, 07:53AM by TheNihilanth.)
That depends on various factors, mainly, what are the target specs of the machine you plan to perform the stress test?
Yes it's possible to use hi-res textures and do other fancy things like bump mapping, provided you do the necessary changes in source code (i.e. changing/adding specific opengl extensions according what you want to do)
There are various skeletal formats for animation, being MD5 probably the best known since Doom3, but there are also others like collada which are open source too (granted, the parsing would be a pain in the ass, duh!). In MD5 format you can attach various vertices to one bone, so for animation you need to weight calculations...which means very intensive CPU/GPU matrix calculations per bone (child/parent), now adding ragdoll...means more physics calculations = more CPU/GPU usage = AC no longer with low specs, also MD5 format uses albedo + specular + bumpmapping materials, AC can only handle diffuse textures right now. MD3 would be the option (IMO), at least for the animation part, if any, someone (lol) should start to port AC to Cube 2 engine, but this would kill (IMHO) one of the reasons AC exists, it (almost) can run on a toaster (1999 GPU tech).
But not all is lost, there are plenty of areas of optimization for the Cube engine, being one of the first to come to my mind, the replacement of specific mapmodels which not contribute significatively to the scene, like the cigarretes, bullets, soda cans, bushes, etc, which only occupy barely the 5% of screen space when in player frustum, and are a waste of CPU cycles (which could be of better use in other crucial areas), when they must be some sort of decal or a simple bilboard (where applicable).
Shinny/stunning graphics would undoubtely attract people, but as I see it AC, should focus on gameplay rather than graphics(provided the devs have the know-how).
Edit: LOL! AC using the infamous inverse square root algorithm ^^ that was a good one!!!
Yes it's possible to use hi-res textures and do other fancy things like bump mapping, provided you do the necessary changes in source code (i.e. changing/adding specific opengl extensions according what you want to do)
There are various skeletal formats for animation, being MD5 probably the best known since Doom3, but there are also others like collada which are open source too (granted, the parsing would be a pain in the ass, duh!). In MD5 format you can attach various vertices to one bone, so for animation you need to weight calculations...which means very intensive CPU/GPU matrix calculations per bone (child/parent), now adding ragdoll...means more physics calculations = more CPU/GPU usage = AC no longer with low specs, also MD5 format uses albedo + specular + bumpmapping materials, AC can only handle diffuse textures right now. MD3 would be the option (IMO), at least for the animation part, if any, someone (lol) should start to port AC to Cube 2 engine, but this would kill (IMHO) one of the reasons AC exists, it (almost) can run on a toaster (1999 GPU tech).
But not all is lost, there are plenty of areas of optimization for the Cube engine, being one of the first to come to my mind, the replacement of specific mapmodels which not contribute significatively to the scene, like the cigarretes, bullets, soda cans, bushes, etc, which only occupy barely the 5% of screen space when in player frustum, and are a waste of CPU cycles (which could be of better use in other crucial areas), when they must be some sort of decal or a simple bilboard (where applicable).
Shinny/stunning graphics would undoubtely attract people, but as I see it AC, should focus on gameplay rather than graphics(provided the devs have the know-how).
Edit: LOL! AC using the infamous inverse square root algorithm ^^ that was a good one!!!