Forums » General

Updated News

Jan 24, 2006 incarnate link

Beolach: I have no plans to pack things as tightly as the Pherona field. I built all the old sectors by hand, and did a lot of performance testing of this sort of stuff. Generally I found it's best to make longer "strings" or "fields" with some "clumps" that are made up of larger asteroids (rather than many small asteroids, which results in a high poly count). As long as all the asteroids aren't right near you, the LOD algorithm does its work and keeps things at a pretty reasonable framerate. When you pack a whole lot of asteroids really tightly together, then it tries really hard but you either get a bad framerate or a whole lot of popping. For densely packed fields I always used lower-poly objects, like our various "shattered" asteroid components, the ice crystals, and other objects that give the gameplay effect of flying "through" stuff without the burden of a gazillion polygons. My old sector umm.. 17? The first secret sector (with all the green-glowing xirite roids) on the way to the black-market station in the alpha universe, used that kind of design. I imagine it's still in the current universe somewhere, but I'm not sure where all the old sectors ended up when Waylon redid things.

Pidgeon: I'm adding specularity to the "black" roids, which tends to make them look a little like the big "iron" type asteroids which are seemingly somewhat accurate (to real life, that is). Accuracy aside, I think the black roids look decent with the added specularity.

I haven't messed with the really "rocky" ones yet, and I don't know if I will.. but it's important to remember that specularity doesn't necessarily mean "making something shiny". It means defining *how and where* it's *more* shiny. So like.. with ships and things I'm obviously making them fairly shiny because they're metal and look interesting with shiny regions.. but even for "duller" objects a specularity map can still make the object look more realistic.. without making them all shiny. Like, in the game right now, many objects have some basic dull polygonal-based specularity (some more than others), which is just defined by the shading algorithm. Using an actual texture map to do it just makes that specular definition much more accurate. So say.. for a rocky texture that, I agree, should not look super shiny.. you can still have parts be "dull" and other parts be "duller" depending on the surface makeup.. to give you a more varied and realistic-looking appearance. Where without using the map, you're stuck with just "dull" everywhere. It's a more subtle effect when the object isn't real shiny, but it does make a difference, and also helps to improve the effect of the bumpmap.

Jan 24, 2006 MSKanaka link

Well...

Sector 7 is Verasi I-5.
Sector 13 is Dau G-11.
Sector 9 can be found almost anywhere...
Sector 10 doesn't exist anymore -- Andy confirmed this
Sectors 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are interspersed around the universe like Sector 9.
Sector 15 is around as well--I think it's the Itani CtC start station, actually.
Sector 14 is still around as the large main part of the Odia M-14 station.
Sector 5's far station is around as well, sometimes with stuff added to the bottom.
Sector 17 is like Verasi I-5, but not enough -- no doughnut roids to speak of.

EDIT: Latos L-7 (I think) and L-14 are a lot like the sector Beo is referencing. Densely packed bone roids.

Jan 24, 2006 ctishman link

Are we ever going to see that ambient light effect again, like there was in 17 and 18? It was really beautiful and scary. Perhaps it would do well in Bractus and Pelatus.

Jan 24, 2006 Chikira link

Anyone have a screen of 17 and 18?

Jan 25, 2006 MSKanaka link

«12

Vendetta-Online

Forums » General

Updated News

Forums »General