Re: [Algorithms] Scalability costs

[Jim O. <j.o...@in...>]

> It's a nice idea, but is it worth the cost in development time?

I think that any form of scalability (whether it is achieved through some
pre-calculated LoD levels or through advanced techniques, like the
forementioned VIPM, or even just scalability/modularity of your engine it
self) is worth the cost in development time, since it potentially increases
the replayability of your game and/or the reusability of your engine.

So your game can potentially sell more copies of a longer period, since it
can still compete with the newest releases (hence you earn more money with
it) and you can potentially reduce the development cycle of your next game,
since you already have a good basis to start from.

Scalability combined with modularity can even save you development time. If
you implement a general case CLOD algorithm in your engine, you can apply
this technique to both your game entities (units, buildings, etc.) and your
terrain. Such a decision may have far reaching consequences: Since all your
geometry is essentially the same, you can also handle all your geometry in
the same way, which means less special case algorithms (which makes sense,
since everything is evolving to more general case algorithms anyway...) and
thus less code to write and debug.

Jim Offerman

Innovade
- designing the designer