Polygon Limit TRUTH image - Yuuzhan Vong at War mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
Behold the Yuuzhan Vong Army! This mod adds the Yuuzhan Vong Race as a playable faction and all units of this era. We are a community of modders working for the greater goal, so anyone who wants to help or support us is welcome!
The discussions that have been held over polygon limits have been wrong for years, and have severely hindered the modding potential of this game by deterring skilled modders away from EAW.
This game has incredible untapped modding potential. It can support higher-than-thought polygon sized models, it can support better quality textures and IT CAN SUPPORT NEWER AND MORE CREATIVE IDEAS.
Thank you Jedi_Clone_X2 for proving that the game can support high-poly infantry, seen here using DICE Battlefront infantry and texture models.
[5/18/2016 4:33:20 PM] Jedi_Clone_x2 .: Okay so let me explain a bit here
[5/18/2016 4:38:50 PM] Jedi_Clone_x2 .: I at first wasn't going to use DICE's infantry cause I thought it would take me more time to create different variants of it outside of the planet variants cause i had a bunch of them already finished for my other mod but I went ahead and used them, in that video the game can handle the models just fine but since I have them not in a squad it lags the game when you get over 100 in play, if you had them in say a squad of 9 like FOC does stock stormtroopers I don't think it would lag as bad cause it doesn't have to render so many health bars and selection boxes. This game can handle this and more on the field at the same time and at the moment i'm working on the rebels so i'm going to test them as well.
[5/18/2016 4:41:47 PM] Jedi_Clone_x2 .: you could also reduce parts of the textures like the backpacks and shoulder pauldrons on the other variants from 1024x to like 512x to help the load as well
This is good news indeed.
The thing's y'all modders are doing got me so excited!
Haven't we known this for years though? We did do a bellator stress test a long time ago, large battleships can have quite a bit of polies, it's the fighters, bombers and things like projectiles and particles (which are on the field many times as opposed to large warships) which the game can't handle as high poly. This is easily testable by changing a turbolaser or missile model to a sized down star destroyer. It's not like this is some revelation or news.
One would think this would be more commonly known...
...but then again I recently read a forum blog where someone said that a certain Nebulon B can't be used that many times....
I believe each of the infantry models used in the video is a higher polygon count than that nebulon B....
It is. Ported models have been used for years, that you don't check other mods on moddb and thus haven't seen it done, that's not our issue.
Don't take my word for it though, feel free to try that test I mentioned about replacing projectile models with high poly star destroyers or whatever, and see if the game runs that at anything higher than a dreadful 10 fps.
I do not know why you are talking about projectiles...
You, and others have criticized people for using high poly models. This is referring to warb's thread on EEAW. The game can run high poly models just fine, it can run easily more than 10 ships of greater than 16K poly, as seen in any of our videos.
People should not be blindly misinforming the public. We prove what this game can handle.
I agree, which is why I decided to nuancate your post here so people don't get the wrong idea, there's a reason people don't use 200k polied models for every ship in their mods.
Again, don't take my word for it though, if you want to give it a shot, go right ahead.
I believe it was determined that the Alamo engine can display about 250-300 million polygons before failing. This includes all elements on the screen: models, projectiles, icons, etc. Shimrra discovered this.
And back then I certainly thought polygons were the only limitation. Polygons however aren't a real issue in an engine. They're easy to render (we're talking O(n) time here) and it's easy to do culling and other optimization algorithms on them, essentially reducing the number of polygons that even make it to the render stage. I'd even go so far that the actual amount of polygons rendered is capped and it does not really matter how many polygons you have in theory.
Furthermore, I did NOT test it with a full-fledged particle system back then. Neither did I factor in high detail shadows, high-res textures or the likes. Lastly, EaW/FoC was developed with a 32-bit engine in mind, so there are certain limits anyway. It does not matter that there is a 64-bit patch, the underlying structure in the .exe remains the same.
Therefor I strongly object to your statement that petros engine has an incredible potential and I especially object to the notion, that polygons are the deciding factor in the rendering capabilities.
We are simply stating that the game can handle larger poly models than previously thought.
Let's please stay on topic here.
People criticized Jedi_Clone for using DICE infantry models. The video clearly shows that they work just fine.
Apologies for misunderstanding the topic, I was under the impression (from the description) that this post served to point out, that petros engine can handle larger polygon amounts and you can do whatever you want now.
While the poly part might certainly be true, it is not a representative statement for the capacity or capability of the engine. Tests with the polygon amount alone will not pass as a test for the capacity, therefore your deduction that the "Engine is strong" from the poly count alone is neither complete nor correct. I'd even go so far as to say it is wishful thinking or at the very least a misleading statement.
Let me put it another way: To say just because the polygon count can be increased the engine is capable of a lot more is like saying just because you can add a lot of sand into a glass, the glass is capable of holding large rocks as well.
Though I do agree, "IT CAN SUPPORT NEWER AND MORE CREATIVE IDEAS." sounds a lot better than the precise statement "The engine can handle a large polygon count of a couple hundred millions, if you don't take other GPU- and CPU-based elements into consideration, which will limit the engine long before the poly count" =) I propose you should make a complete guide on what the real limiters are, so that new modders aren't mislead and despair at their creative ideas, which can't be handled by this outdated engine.
This completely ignores that there's more that goes into system load than a single kind of mesh. Nobody's ever debating that you can physically export the model.
I manage to get the game crashing with my 80k poly Starbase and only a few other highpoly ships (1000 - 5000 polys) on the map. It can handle some of them, but not too much and rather not as much as nowerdays engines.
Too many different Material IDs can be bad as well.
(At least it´s like that in Unity 3D)
So a ship with like 12 Materials is not a good idea ;)
One day...when Modders went to war...
Lol, not war, just open discussion with a passionate following.
Talks like these are good so that new up and coming modders can gain valuable insight. As a general guideline, most of our frigates are between 10K poly to 20k, cruisers and battleships are about 20-60k, and our largest ships might be around 200-300k poly.
Having hundreds of ships on the screen at huge poly counts is certainly not a great idea, but ships can definitely be more detailed than previously thought. Rotating turrets is also fine and handled quite well. The majority of issues appear to stem from massive amounts of particles and most notably from improper coding and scripting.
As more of the mod progresses, we hope to create more tutorials and guidelines to help new modders. While EAW/FOC may not be the most powerful game out there, there is certainly a lot more possible for modding than people thought a few years ago.
It is still the only game that I am aware of that allows both space and land battles along with a dynamic Galaxy map, which can provide a lot of freedom for creative modding.
One could imagine a WW2 style mod with air and surface battles for example, there are a lot of possibilities for modding this game if someone wishes.
All I wish are more advanced tutorial so new modders don't have to sit through tutorial videos that are like 5 fps. (Though I'm certainly grateful for those.)
Which types of topics are you most interested in?
Modeling is most lacking of tutorials and if there was one out for land units it might just answer the lack of land modelers out there.