A Modeler's questions about TGEA

[Hutsofkranky]

Technically I have a lot of questions. But i'll start with a few if anybody can help me.

I'm creating a racing MMO using the TGEA. In the game you can have 8 players racing at a time.

Can anybody tell me what kind of poly-count I would be working with?

I'll be building everything in 3Dmax, using square polygons. Should I count the polygons by the number of squares or by the number of triangles?

[Reedbeta]

Your first lesson: don't cross-post on the forum. ;)

Vertex counts are dependent on many factors. First of all you have to decide what the minimum system requirements for your game will be. Higher-end computers can handle higher vertex counts than lower-end ones. Second it depends to some extent on how complicated the lighting/shading is - the more lights there are, the lower the vertex count will have to be.

Unfortunately there is no magic formula for the vertex count. You can get a rough estimate by finding the vertex bandwidth for your target GPU and dividing by the target framerate (e.g. 30fps). You don't need to worry too much about quads vs triangles, as vertex caches make that question largely irrelevant. However there is no substitute for getting a test machine, doing some prototyping and running some benchmarks.

[Hutsofkranky]

Well, the reason that I ask is because every other game engine that I have used (the original Torque engine, UT2004, etc.) has had a general cutoff point for the amount of polys that can be used without crashing the engine. For the original torque engine the maximum recommended poly count was fairly low, and I was trying to find out what the general maximum poly count for TGEA was, so that I could build the models with enough polys to make them look good without crashing the engine. Of course when you have more effects occuring that utilize the engine, things will slow down or crash if the poly-count (or vertex count) is near the maximum; effects such as more complex lighting. Doesn't change the need to know the maximum count so that we can decide how close or far we want to come to that based on the other factors.

Any ideas?

Also, I had a couple of other questions:

1) how many material IDs for character's textures can the engine handle (ex: UT2004 can handle two per character)?

2) do instanced objects (i.e. crates, barrels, etc. that are repeated throughout the level) save on geometry?

3) for textures, do the maps need to be powers of two, and what is the maximum size and resolution that TGEA can handle?

If I could get even some general answers for these questions, it would be really helpful.

Thanks!

[Reedbeta]

a general cutoff point for the amount of polys that can be used without crashing the engine

As far as I know, the number of vertices you can realistically use is much more likely to be limited by the hardware platform than by the way the engine is coded.

The rest of your questions are quite specific to TGEA and though it's possible people here can answer them, they would be better asked on the TGEA forums.

[mmakrzem]

Run a few quick tests on your system to see when things start to get slow. Just get some sort of geometry with lots of verts in it and start multiplying it. (example a model of a car). Now stick in multiple cars, moving back and forth on the screen and watch your frame rate. As soon as things get too sluggish you have your answer.

Don't forget that video cards, processors, bandwidth, etc will all play a roll, so add a safety factor to your calculations.