RE: [Algorithms] Scalability costs

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? You certainly need some sort of
order-of-magnitude scalability - existing cards and systems have that large
a variation in performance - so you need to invest the coder development
time anyway. The real trick is getting that scalability without chewing
through artist and animator time. And for most things, the stuff I talked
about at WGDC(*) fits the bill nicely, which is cool. Particle systems are
dead easy to scale as long as you build it into the system at design time
(ditto for explosions, lightning, etc). And landscapes have been talked
about endlessly...

Then there's the basic scalabiity of what texturing and rendering you use -
that's a case of picking sensible fallback rendering styles when your
fabulous eight-texture bumpmapping shadowed thing doesn't run fast enough on
a Voodoo1. Resoloution, texture memory, display depth, etc. fallbacks
(basically, make mipmaps, and be ready to ditch any stencil-buffer or
destination alpha effects).

All these things need to be done anyway to cope with current cards, and it's
a good idea to plan ahead for two reasons. First, you can re-use a lot of
your engine (assuming it fits the game type), and second, if you slip by six
months, your game doesn't look obsolete when it's released (which certainly
has happened to some games that slip).

Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke.
Whizzing and pasting and pooting through the day.

(*) http://www.muckyfoot.com/downloads/tom.shtml

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jamie Fowlston [mailto:j.f...@re...]
> Sent: 31 July 2000 12:06
> To: gda...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Scalability costs
> 
> 
> It's a nice idea, but is it worth the cost in development time?
> 
> Jamie
> 
> 
> Jim Offerman wrote:
> 
> > Hail to scalability :-)
> >
> > Jim Offerman
> >
> > Innovade
> > - designing the designer
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Tom Forsyth" <to...@mu...>
> > To: <gda...@li...>
> > Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 11:04 AM
> > Subject: RE: [Algorithms] Terrain Organization
> >
> > > Indeed - my goal for graphics systems is that when they 
> are released, they
> > > should be able to bring even the best existing machine 
> down to sub-1Hz
> > speed
> > > if you turn all the detail levels up, and yet have 
> perfectly acceptable
> > > performance on five-year-old machines with the auto-LoD 
> system on. That
> > way
> > > you know (a) you've done a good job of scaling stuff, (b) 
> you're pretty
> > sure
> > > you can re-use the engine (or something derived from it) 
> for the next
> > > project, and (c) people will still play your game in five 
> years - it won't
> > > look sad. Oh yes, and (d) you might get some good 
> bundling deals with new
> > > graphics cards - and they're always welcome.
> > >
> > > Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke.
> > > Whizzing and pasting and pooting through the day.
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Jim Offerman [mailto:j.o...@in...]
> > > > Sent: 31 July 2000 08:09
> > > > To: gda...@li...
> > > > Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Terrain Organization
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > As for not everyone having TnL cards, well, I thought that
> > > > any game which
> > > > is
> > > > > *now* in development will probably run on fast systems. By
> > > > fast I mean
> > > > either
> > > > > TnL, or on CPUs which are fast enough that regular cards
> > > > don't suffer too
> > > > > much. Anyway, this is up to you, it depends on you budget
> > > > and a lot of
> > > > other
> > > > > things.
> > > >
> > > > If you are going to implement some form of CLOD (this is
> > > > where Tom Forsyth
> > > > would promote using VIPM - which is not a bad idea at all), I
> > > > think you
> > > > should couple the runtime error calculations to your fps...
> > > > i.e. if your fps
> > > > drops, crank down all lod levels in the game until the 
> fps reaches an
> > > > acceptable level. Your gime might be spitting out 100K tris
> > > > per second on a
> > > > souped up PIII with GeForce2 GTS and pump through a humble
> > > > 15K on a PII with
> > > > TNT PCI.
> > > >
> > > > And, since you have tied your CLOD calculations to the 
> fps you could
> > > > (theoratically) also truly design your game for the future -
> > > > i.e. use models
> > > > which by todays standards contain far to many triangles, the
> > > > CLOD will keep
> > > > performance acceptable on today's high end hardware and
> > > > increase detail on
> > > > tomorrow's hardware. Imagine playing Half-Life again, 
> finding that the
> > > > overall detail has increased by a factor ten.
> > > >
> > > > Jim Offerman
> > > >
> > > > Innovade
> > > > - designing the designer
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > GDAlgorithms-list mailing list
> > > GDA...@li...
> > > http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/gdalgorithms-list
> > >
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > GDAlgorithms-list mailing list
> > GDA...@li...
> > http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/gdalgorithms-list
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> GDAlgorithms-list mailing list
> GDA...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/gdalgorithms-list
>