RE: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy

[Amir L. <am...@ze...>]

How long does it take to build a functional, stable rendering engine?
 
We had a really tight deadline for our first Renderware project and had to
decide whether we had time to build an engine AND a game in time. The way I
looked at it at the time was, if we had time, we could always replace
Renderware with our own engine with all those spare months that we'd have at
the END of the project (as if!!) ;).
 
As to which is best? Renderware is great, stable, good support,
multi-platform and also very importantly ... cheap ;)
 
amir.

-----Original Message-----
From: Toong See Wan [mailto:se...@su...]
Sent: 25 July 2001 13:26
To: gda...@li...
Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy


How much time do u save using this 3rd party engine?
 
which one is the best?
 
seewan
surreal Online

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Amir Latif <mailto:am...@ze...>  
To: 'gda...@li...'
<mailto:'gda...@li...'>  
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 6:36 PM
Subject: RE: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy


> Does anyone have any comments on Renderware? Specifically, the performance

on PS2. The RenderWare wepage www.renderware.com <http://www.renderware.com>
seems a little misleading, 
giving 2 different throughput quotes but both saying "theoratical maximum". 

We're using RenderWare here and we love it, primarily because of the
multi-platform solution it provides. You can't underestimate the power of PC
debugging tools over console ones ...

In terms of performance, we're getting pretty good throughput but in our
experience, the figures on the website are inclusive of degenerate triangles
pushed the the transform engine, which are rejected pretty gast on the PS2.
So the supposed 100k - 150k per frame (@60Hz) feels more like 60k-70k of
"actual" polygons. The API is pretty solid and fairly fully featured
too.Static objects fair fly off the shovel on PS2, dynamic objects on the
other hand ... that comes down to shifting memory about on a console really
- pretty snide ;). Skinning, blending animations and all that is taken care
of. There's source for exporters for Max/Maya which is ready to go and
easily extensible (works with Max4 too). Plenty of demos. Ummm ... what else
?Any other questions, feel free to mail me offlist ...

> Any more opinion on middleware rendering on PS2, XBox, GameCube and PC,
will 
be appreciated. 

We'll be evaluating it on GameCube soon too, but am informed that it's
shaping up similarly. 

amir