I've been thinking about modelling for Freelancer but there are some rather important questions that came up. Mainly concerning the game performance.
1. tris counts. How many should a fighter have ideally? How many a cruiser or battleship, transport or small, medium, big station?
2. To how much could those tris counts be pushed each without making Freelancer a slideshow?
3. The same regarding the textures. From what I've seen the textures are tiny compared to what is used nowadays. How far could these be pushed up in terms of resolution without affecting performance too seriously?
Note that I'm not necessarily talking about the requirements for a game with the Discovery Mod installed!:)
for fighters and bombers, the approx poly count is around 1-2k.
for small freighters/gbs you're looking at about 2-3k ish.
cruisers 3-5k, same for med/large transports
BCs about 5-7k at best, battleships can be around 7-12k.
there again, there are exceptions where certain ships have more or less polys. like i said, its a general "guideline", doesnt mean you HAVE to be exactly in that range. it can be a few polys up/down etc, as long as its not too extreme- for example, a VHF with 8k polys wont fly.
for texturing for discovery, you should be sticking to using vanilla textures. sizes can by anything upto 1024/1024, though there are some (very very rare) textures that are 2048/2048. avoid going bigger than 1024, if you decide to make custom textures, and another point, they have to be seamless, so that they can be used multiple times (like all vanilla textures etc that are used in disco, they are all seamless).
even for your own mod, these are the "guidelines". remember, many people who play fl dont necessarily have top end machines, so loads of ships with high poly counts or huge textures will cause epic amounts of lag. that said, you can achieve alot of top notch work with a 64/64 tile just as well as you can with a 128/128 or a 512/512, etc, so dont forget that.
texturing should be done properly. half arsed jobs which end up having unmapped faces on the ship, distortions, warped faces, etc should be dealt with accordingly as well.
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that said, its nearing 11pm. i need to get to bed, toodlez.
Meaning that it won't fly because something bad would happen regarding performance or meaning that it wouldn't get through the model submission process for Discovery?
Regarding textures: From what I gather, most (if not all?) models in Freelancer are textures with tiled textures. Is that correct?
Or more like: In what cases is which technique (tiled textures, unique textures) used? Standard-ish "tiled for large stuff and unique for small stuff"?
Ah, and also: What are the usual resolutions for tiled / unique textures? Are there certain "rules" / common points regarding their resolutions?
Furthermore regarding animations. Is it possible to insert animation loops which play constantly into a ship / station model? Or even animations that trigger when a certain event fires? (Cruise drive acitvated, deactivated, docking etc.)
Lastly regarding object sizes. What happens if I insert huge objects into the game? Might it break NPC flight behaviour? (I'm thinking of collision avoidance going crazy here. Not sure whether this is ever a problem in Freelancer but I've experienced enough cases while modding for the X series to know that things can seriously break when there are large objects around)
Meaning that it won't fly because something bad would happen regarding performance or meaning that it wouldn't get through the model submission process for Discovery?
Both, as far as I know. It wouldn't get through the model submission process because something bad might happen regarding performance.
It won't fly because the Dev's won't put it ingame.It will stress the server too much.Fighters are used more than say a Bs, therefore, imagine 10 fighters, each of them with 8k of polycount, outside Manhattan.
takes its tole one server.
Animation loops...not sure about those.Station models in Freelancer are made by sections.Usually, if a Dev wants to make an animated docking point for a station, they will usually use the ones pre-made in Vanilla Freelancer, and add it to their model.It's easier, and rids any potential bugs.
And in ships, making an animation for cruise drive activation cannot be possible due to the game's engine.Docking either.It might be doable though, as I've seen some videos on youtube in which Defenders, Valkyries, Dragons had parts moving when jettisoning cargo.
About object sizes.There has been some talk a few days ago about an Arena Station in Conn.The same problems come when trying to go bigger than usual.Polycount and the section building.I'm not sure, but you could build everything in one piece, don't know if it's recommend however.
And about the NPC's... in this version of the mod, battleships and cruiser patrols still plunge straight into planets.Expect the same results.
I haven't seen any unique textures at all on ships until now.I think the reason for this is the fact that the ships are supposed to be built in mass, therefore you should not be able to differentiate them from each other texture-wise.Unique textures, by nature, would stand out.I'm not sure I explained this right.
What I'm essentially getting at concerning texture resolution and tris count is: What is the limiting factor for the game and where does it lay?
Is it the computer of the player? If so, most newer computers should be able to handle quite a lot of VHFs with 8k. Even in a well-populated sector.
Or is it the engine itself, which will start to make problems from a certain point on because it cannot handle the increased strain.
This is completely independent from the Discovery mod or server. Of course there are stricter rules for all submissions for the mod which are also due to what the server has to do.:)
Regarding animations: What I'm talking about is for example a radar structure which rotates continuously around its axis on a station.
Something else that just occurred to me: Is it possible to make it possible for objects to pass through certain parts of a model? For example like it most likely happens with cloud-texture-planes in nebulas.
And also: Do textures in Freelancer support alpha channels for transparency?
The limiting factor lies with the player, at least in Discovery.I don't believe the engine of the game would have problems with high polycount models.
The animation is doable.
The thing that comes into my mind when you said "objects pass through parts of the model" was the lack of a surface file.At the same time, the lack of a .sur file would make the shots go through it also.
Quote:The limiting factor lies with the player, at least in Discovery.I don't believe the engine of the game would have problems with high polycount models.
You absolutely sure there? It just seems rather strange to me that apparently nobody has done it before. I also think I remember to have heard somewhere that the Freelancer engine is simply too old to be able to cope which today's higher-quality stuff.
Then again, I'm not versed in Freelancer modding at all... ^^
Yes, that's what I was thinking of (passing through geometry) - for example like the fog which comes out of gas miners, through which one can fly even though it is part of a station which is otherwise not "pass-through". Good to know.:)
What else does Freelancer support texture-wise? I'm thinking of spec maps, light maps and occlusion maps here - and of course bump maps but from what I've heard those are used.
Depends on how high you want to go.Ofc it won't fly with crysis-range textures and polycount.It does have a limit.
It wasn't made with with high expectations for the future you know.Even at its time, the graphics were considered quite low... as it required a 32Mb Video Card to run.
Like i said, depends on how high you want to go, how much you can put into the server, and even so, the limit would come pretty quick(My apologies, I red through your posts again, you seem to want to go pretty big).
At this moment, the FLServer software cannot use more than one core.That should be your primary concern.
' Wrote:Depends on how high you want to go.Ofc it won't fly with crysis-range textures and polycount.It does have a limit.
Yeah, that's understandable.:)
Quote:Like i said, depends on how high you want to go, how much you can put into the server, and even so, the limit would come pretty quick(My apologies, I red through your posts again, you seem to want to go pretty big).
What I'd like to and what can or will happen are not really in tune.:D
ATM I'd just like to know the limitations a little better - and the possibilities.
Quote:At this moment, the FLServer software cannot use more than one core.That should be your primary concern.
Yeah, but the core is usually not the limiting factor for graphical stuff.:)
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