FreeOrion

I was thinking (I know, a terrible thing to do) and it occurs to me that having 3D models for every small and numerous object on a battle screen seems like overkill on epic scales. Is it really necessary to detail them as much as ships? Obviously, elaborate graphics are the first to be blamed for serious lag for example, but a game can still be good and aesthetically pleasing without vulgar amounts of processing power. We can "fake it" if you will.

What if 2D sprites, or flat squares with textures on them were used for very small objects instead of fully 3D models? I've seen them used in the likes of games like Conquest Frontier Wars without too many problems. Check it out. What I want to know is: has this already been discussed somewhere? Or perhaps there are new thoughts now that v.04 is slowly approaching? If this idea were to be added, now is the time to approve it.

edit by pd: moved to the graphics forum

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Photo-dump.

Musings

I imagine point sprites will be used when approptiate, such as particle effects, including perhaps (part of) explosion effects. Small things like missiles or perhaps fighters could go either way, and may depend on zoom level; there's no use to having a 20 poly missile or fighter model that takes up 2 pixels.

It makes sense to have 2d sprites for basically everything on the combat map. The engine should switch to those when zooming out. This might also be useful for people, who don't have proper hardware or people who simply prefer a tactical view without any 3D models. How pictorial or how iconic those sprites should be has to be discussed..

If you have a 2d sprite and a 3d object for the same ship, viewed from the same angle would there be any noticeable diffrence in quality or the required workload? Because if not then why not lock the camera angle and stick with detailed 2d units, Starcraft did this and its graphics look pretty good even by today's standards.

Mostly, I had this in mind for just the fighters and missiles; they are so small in proportion to everything else that somehow I doubt anyone would really look at them.

Anyways, I would like to illustrate my proposal. First, think of shogun total war and medieval total war and how their graphics were generally treated. 2D sprites for small, numerous items, and true 3D for buildings, terrain, catapults and large items. Compare it to Rome total war, which conversely renders every detail in true 3D, including every single unit. Also consider Reviewers first opinions on Supreme Commander upon public release. One of the biggest gripes was that only high end systems could enjoy everything it had to offer, and in some cases only high end systems could even run it. The latter two cases were entirely capable of causing hideous slowdowns on anything short of a processing monster, entering the realm of gigahertz of power and memory in requirements.

Lag is no fun.

Still, this all depends on how epic the battles are going to be on a regular basis. What I'm talking about doesn't have much to do with the interface, but rather the units or ships or what have you themselves, particularly the fightercraft and missiles. If 100 ships at once is a rare occurrence, It might still merit 2D sprites to ease the amount of rendering that needs to be done, but not as much if 100 ships was common place. It wouldn't necessarily be 2D sprites either; perhaps a work around in the system could be programmed to reduce the number of polygons that are rendered in proportion to the distance from the camera.

So I got a few ideas on how this could be handled:

1. Rome:Total war. Polygons "fade out" as the player zooms out.

2. Medieval:Total War. 2d Sprites for the things that are very small and the player is not expected to pay attention to in great detail.

3. Supreme Commander. Player zooms out and the units magically transform into icons.


Or you could also come up with our own unique twist on how to handle this, having the design benefit of a custom tailored engine.



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As a final note, I understand Homeworld is a big inspiration for the combat system, but I can't remember how Homeworld handles it's combat interface (or anything else for that matter), so perhaps someone could refresh my memory.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

That's called LOD(Level of Detail) and Ogre does this automatically AFAIK. Homeworld had this do, but it wasn't done by the engine, but by the artists - providing 3 different models for every ship.

Homeworld is not really an inspiration for our combat system(in terms of gameply). it's merely a visual inspiration. The interface is rather simple and typical for RTS games I think. What exactly do you want to know?

What do I want to know about Homeworld's interface? Mostly how the camera works in comparison to FO, whether we have a full 3D battlefield, how close we can zoom, whether panning and rotating is allowed, etc. Another useful thing to know is what kind of buttons Homeworld had, which would come in handy if I wanted to use examples for the combat UI. I don't remember anything about that.

Anyways, I forget exactly what kind of models the graphics people have to come up with. Is it 6 ships per race or 4? I was thinking about this in relation to concept designs, and then lag, which prompted this thread. I figured somebody is going to be modelling ships sooner or later I was just wondering what would be an effective way to go about making these models. From what your saying it sounds like Ogre has got it under control; there is no need to give very small ships their own extremely low poly or flat 2D sprite treatment instead of a 3D rendering. We're going to do it similar to Rome:Total War?

Unless of course you DO want to treat 2D sprites like Supreme Commander did, which is a topic for the 0.4 Combat UI thread.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

You can rotate and pan in Homeworld and we will need this too. You can select objects and choose them as the new rotational center by hitting spacebar AFAIR.
We don't have a 3D battlefield in freeOrion, but rather a 2D battlefield, layout out in 3D space. I am hoping for some pseudo 3D, meaning some variance of height, so that ships can fly on top of each other. This might provide some additional game play values as well. Although it is possible to choose a certain height in Homeworld, everything still played basically on a 2D plane. This makes navigation and orientation a lot easier.

There haven't been to many buttons, besides the build menus, which we don't have. Selecting and ordering was done using the mouse buttons. Selection grioups could be created and selected using some number keys.

I assume, that in freeOrion, unlike in Homeworld, formations and such will play an important role. Also there might be more options, than just attack(fire with everything you have) the enemy. Is the player able to selected specific parts and use them?


My aim for 0.4 is 6 hulls for 2 races(12 alltogether). Since we don't have any races, those could be assigned arbitrary to the empires.


It still makes sense to keep the polygon amounts reasonable and it still makes sense to use sprites for small things like missiles or other weapons. I haven't seen the Ogre LOD in action yet, but I don't trust it too much. We don't need to create multiple meshes per hull, but we shouldn't use 3D meshes for every tiny detail either.



Yes, I do, if you are talking about the mesh replacement by icons when zooming out.