dim3 Forum

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Thankyou! I had it before but I accidentally deleted it.

ggadwa Wrote:

ggadwa Wrote:

Alexander Smith Wrote:•Quads and Triangles do NOT work together in lighting. A completely triangulated map works fine with the lighting. A completely quad-based map works fine, but when you put quads and triangles together, the lighting screws up.

I'm chasing this one but haven't recreated it yet, can you send me an example?

[>] Brian

Actually, forget it, I'm trying out a new rendering setup (might be too slow but I need it to get speculars fully working) -- so if this works out all that code will be new, anyway.

[>] Brian

infact i just realised, the meshes are drawn with what is effectively vertex lighting. Thats BaaAAaaaaAAAahhhhdDD. Thats about 10 years old.

mafoo Wrote:infact i just realised, the meshes are drawn with what is effectively vertex lighting. Thats BaaAAaaaaAAAahhhhdDD. Thats about 10 years old.

That they are, that's the problem, there's an optimization that skips triangles; the reason being is in the old system I expected them to be small, but here they could be part of a giant polygon.

This is something I'll need to work on, note that it's one reason it seems faster; so there could be a downside.

[>] Brian

On that same note -- there's no need to tessellate your OBJs into triangles before loading them into Editor; as a matter of fact, the opposite (quads) is MUCH better.

There's much less work to be done by the engine and by the physics code.

[>] Brian

I'm still trying as hard as I can, but holding down system requirements is getting to be a real problem for me. I end up doing some effects in very cheap ways and they don't work out right.

I'm trying to come up with some new ways of doing things that hopefully won't slow it down (a lot) ... it's something we'll have to test out.

It just gets harder and harder to chase the more high end engines that have much larger system requirements.

[>] Brian

ggadwa Wrote:I'm still trying as hard as I can, but holding down system requirements is getting to be a real problem for me. I end up doing some effects in very cheap ways and they don't work out right.

I'm trying to come up with some new ways of doing things that hopefully won't slow it down (a lot) ... it's something we'll have to test out.

It just gets harder and harder to chase the more high end engines that have much larger system requirements.

[>] Brian

How about... much larger system requirements? :P
Nobody is using G4s and 10.3.9 anymore anyway and most people probably have at least 1GB RAM or more and a dual core processor. :/

I don't think going higher and higher in system requirements in the way to go with dim3. There's almost NO games released for dim3 right now, and what we need is better basic support.

Unreal Tournament 2004, Halo, and many other FPS games run on G4s and 10.3.9. I find it hard to understand how upping the system requirements is going to help anyone.

What would be the advantage of a higher OS requirement anyway?

EDIT: I'm not worried about computer system requirements though, if effects have to be done using more powerful hardware, fine, but there are still plenty of people who use lower end OSes, and I want to be able to support them. Lets not go the way of XQmod, requiring Intel Core 2 Duo Intel Macs ONLY.

Alexander Smith Wrote:I don't think going higher and higher in system requirements in the way to go with dim3. There's almost NO games released for dim3 right now, and what we need is better basic support.

Wouldn't this be a reason not to support older systems? As long as all of the games are works in progress, you can safely target state-of-the-art* configs; a year from now when your game is actually done, today's state-of-the-art* will be the standard. After all, the G4+10.3 user base is only getting smaller.

* in this case, state-of-the-art means three-year-old software (10.4; released in 2005) that is almost ubiquitous and five-year-old hardware (G5; released in 2003).

Alexander Smith Wrote:I don't think going higher and higher in system requirements in the way to go with dim3. There's almost NO games released for dim3 right now, and what we need is better basic support.

Unreal Tournament 2004, Halo, and many other FPS games run on G4s and 10.3.9. I find it hard to understand how upping the system requirements is going to help anyone.

They also get about 10fps.

The fact is that no one is really going to really use dim3 while it looks like Java3D, and runs about the same speed.

The editor and the skeletal animation combined with the ease of the javascript for the coding are the major selling points.

Maybe it would be worth looking into attaching the renderer from another opensource project to the dim3 core.

For reference here are the sys requirements for World of Warcraft, which you should get about 10fps at with mid range settings:

933 MHz or higher G4, or G5, or Intel processor
512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
-------

On the other hand, you could do the more sensible thing, and leapfrog the others engines. Make shaders a requirement and have the lighting system written in GLSL.