[Roanoke]

maybe they could be towed.

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by Roanoke
maybe they could be towed.

My thoughts exactly.  If this was in FS2 era, I suggest the following tow configurations:

Terran: Argo
Vasudan: Argo (since Vasudans have been known to use them), Satis, Bes
Shivan:  Dis

If they're for FS1 era:

Terran: Chronos, forward bridge docking port
Vasudan: Satis
Shivan:  Asmodeus, forward ventral dockpoint

The dockpoints and paths on these platforms are gonna need to be quite precise to make sure the ships can get into position properly.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Starman01
All that stuff

I dunno what's with your setup, but my PC (see siggy for details) can run with the big dogs. I have my settings on highest standard res (1024x768x32) All of the options enabled (except pcx32, which is useless) and I get framerates of ~ 45 at the lowest, and 120 at it's cap. And I don't have a 'super machine' I'm a student, on a very limited income. This rig only cost me ~$5-600 and it runs perfectly.

So your hipoly phobia is limited to you. If your game is stammering because of two Fenri, then I think there may be a bottleneck somewhere that needs to be looked at.

[Krackers87]

Originally posted by Starman01


No offend, but wake up. What good shall those Ultrahigh-Poly models be ? When I look so around in the forums, who has a  computer strong enough to run a mission with 10 or 15 fighters with  8K Polies, or two of those highpoly-fenris's? All of those models are extrem cool, but more or less useless. (I remember the cool Discovery-Model (from the 2001-Movie) Gevatter Lars once made. It had nearly 100K polies. It was awesome to look at,
but beside being used for renders (which take ages) it is useless.

I bought a new computer myself these days, and picked the best
stuff available, and paid nearly 1300,- € for it. Which pupil or student out there can afford this ? And seriously, why should someone use highpoly-models when he then can play only in 640x480 resolution, because his computer goes in his knees? If you want to have cool graphic, the first thing to change is the resolution.

Take the WC-Saga for example. Our missions containing dozend of fighters, and big fleets fighting together, everything glow and spec-mapped, and with TGA-Backgrounds. Now guess how good the performance is ??

Seriously, HighPoly are really good looking, but at least today they are more or less useless for game-design. That's my opinion, now you guys can stone me.

@Lars : No, but I can create you a table-entry in a matter of seconds (somehow it seems hard to get screenshots of laserbolts).

.....HTL makes it so that a ship with say 2500 polys,  causes no more slowdown than a ship of 600 polys in vanila; maybe you should keep more track of the advancements in the scp before criticising my statement. And theres a big difference between 2,500 polys and 100,000 polys.

[Flaser]

Originally posted by Krackers87



.....HTL makes it so that a ship with say 2500 polys,  causes no more slowdown than a ship of 600 polys in vanila; maybe you should keep more track of the advancements in the scp before criticising my statement. And theres a big difference between 2,500 polys and 100,000 polys.

I have to agree with Krackers87 on this one.

The biggest misunderstanding about HTL models is the source of their resource drain:

Their polys are fine - I used to have several HTL Fenris on screen.
The true problems began when a lot of textures were assigned to them.

The real killer of performance in HTL is the number and size of the textures - some big textures are beareable. Several small textures are really bad - and several high-res textures on a single model are the worst.

What determines wheter a model is well optimized or not depends on how well it was mapped. The first screen is the number of textures - each new texture means another pass when rendering.

[Sandwich]

So why not just take every HTL model mapped with multiple textures and UV Map them on there?

[Taristin]

It's possible. Given enough time, I could probably bake the Leviathan, and in doing so, create the base, spec, and glow maps from the current, just, I'm not sure wether or not alpha channels get baked.
Nor do I know if I can get the baking process to not darken, or overly lighten any part of the ship because of Max's funny lighting techniques...

[Krackers87]

Use Lithium.

[Krackers87]

Use Lithium.

[Sandwich]

Isn't UV Mapping it a seperate process from baking the textures?

[karajorma]

The way I understand it baking gives you one texture and a model with a UV Map that fits that single texture.

[StratComm]

More or less, yes.  But Max creates maps lit by the current scene rather than just combining the maps.  It's nearly impossible to make the textures from a Max texture bake to come out looking the same as they would before being processed.

[FireCrack]

Originally posted by Starman01

And this "overpowered" brings me to the second point I don't like about freespace's sentryguns, the Mjolnir RBC. We all see it's incredible fire-power, and it's rather tiny hull. If that wouldn't be bad enough, it has also rotating parts, which certainly use up some room for the mechanical equipment. So I must really ask, where should this thing house a power-plant strong enough to power such a beam. (but don't take my opinion here to start another scientific discussion, at least it is just MY opinion)

i'm preety sure the rotating parts are part of the beam generation assembelly, not just decoration.

[Sandwich]

Additionally, the Mjolnir is anything but tiny. The hull is a freaking 108m long!

[FireCrack]

I wonder what happened to that second beam weapon and the 3 misslile banks though, owell..

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by FireCrack
I wonder what happened to that second beam weapon and the 3 misslile banks though, owell..

*ahem*

[FireCrack]

Originally posted by Sandwich


*ahem*

are you just pointing me to the thread in general or to that specific post? i'm confused

[Sandwich]

Oops... I meant to remove the goto=lastpost thingy. That thread in general.