Graphics chatter

[targon]

OK, but this guy definitely needs something nasty looking in his hands. May be, he's 80% complete

[aaglo]

A wave blaster! ( not the soundCreative's soundcard). A weapon that blasts a circular wave across all battlefield. All foot soldiers in range are tipped over, unless they have some counter-measures against this wave...

[targon]

Ha-ha , aaglo, but
Shock waves are't dramaticaly effective in planet surface vicinity, as they diffracts, what's why nuclear charges are usualy employed in "on air" detonation variant. Energy weapons are to heavy and unwieldy to be mounted on foot soldier. It may be some advanced projectile gun. My "marine" already has some ammo packs hanging around along with some rockets for his "on-hand" launcher.

[aaglo]

- Net launcher (not inter-net )
- Mini-rocket launcher
- Mini-gun :traditional:
- Chainsaw

[Rasbelin]

BTW, "cool" pictures may be useful in unit statistics, game encyclopedia etc.

Yes, that's true. Especially the in-game encyclopedia "Encyclopedia Galactica" (don't ask from which famous sci-fi book I stole the name from ) will be great with some nice looking art.

I think you should know here are some people drawing graphics. Currently this graphcs are sprites, so if your wish us to switch to true 3D (much better, IMO), please inform poor folks doing artist jobs ASAP, so volume of wasted work will be keept minimal. I believe engine you're working on will be pure killer, but we are team, or possible I'm wrong? Some time ago some high-ranked SPDT people seemed to agreed with true 3D, but I still compeltely out of information about _possible_ graphics formats etc.

I fully understand your concern and I agree that we need a consensus. However one has already apparently been made as now the issue seems to be what libraries are used for the 3D graphics (this would mean that sprites have already been excluded and we're now only planning to use 3D graphics). So I suggest we make a decision now that the graphics are 3D (looks pretty much so anyway) and the libraries used or chosen within the next few days or so. Right now it seems to be a tie between OpenGL or Allegro and AllegroGL, so the choice is up to Blake, Kurilka and Vultur. Plus any others involved. I think the pros and cons Blake came up with point at the use of Allegro and AllgeroGL, but we need a final resolution of that. Plus I also wait for a list of used libraries by Blake as until that GOD will not include any information regarding that. Otherwise I think things are quite clear after that.

[targon]

All parise the GOD!
I think clever folks from SPDT will choice right format, so anyone may use it. This, among other things, involves bashing commercialware. I suggest your take a glance over Blender (yes, it's still alive), Vertex and others. Old friends are also good, including Lightwave (the program itself is evil commercialware, but format itself is well documented), .obj (seems somewhat stale now). .3ds is't well documented and is keept "secret" for years. I hope SPDT will't invite its own yet another 3D format, there are too many already.

[vovan]

Originally posted by targon
All parise the GOD!

What if you are an atheist?

Very nice pics these are, targon.

Can't wait to get my hands on the outlook thingie, so that we can finally do some coding

[Blake]

Alrighty. How about I say we'll use SDL+OpenGL.
3D terrain, 3D cities, 3D spaceships. Maybe 3D units, but remember units will only be found in armies, and you cant exactly render 3000 units, so it'll be an army icon... but each unit needs models anyway.

For coders, who like myself, have limited knowledge of OpenGL, this site has some very good and relevant tutorials.

http://www.gametutorials.com/Tutorials/opengl/OpenGL_Pg4.htm

Go back to page 1 for the basics of OpenGL.... the link is directely to the tutorials on heightmaps and model loading. These tutorials all come with SDL code.

The NeHe OpenGL tutorials are also good. http://nehe.gamedev.net/

Btw, the Quake2 model format, MD2, could be a good choice, altough there are also tutorials on loading 3DS, OBJ, ASE and MD3, so it really comes down to which is closest to our needs.... and which is easiest to edit, I'm under the impression that most popular 3D modelling suites can save a wide range of formats, but I have 0 experience with such utilities so any advice would be appreciated...

Due to the nature of OpenGL, it is possible the minimal requirements for good performance will be set to 400MHz and a cheapo 3D card (that incidentely is the min specs for most recent full 3D strategy games....), however it could possible work on a system much slower....

[Kurilka]

Blake!
What has influenced you to switch from Allegro to SDL?

[carbaher]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, at last, we're going to develop a 3d-engine using SDL+OpenGL. Or isn't it decided yet?

I think I'm a bit lost in all these messages saying different things...

[Rasbelin]

Exactly, Carbaher. We're going to do that.

[Blake]

Why SDL?

I think that deserves an explaination.
SDL is more mature, the core SDL library has been stable since the beginining of time (or atleast since the release of CTP and SMAC on Linux, which is close enough), this means there is quite a lot of SDL+OpenGL code around, I find atleast 3/4 of OpenGL tutorials have a SDL version available.

SDL is also easier to set up with most compilers, for example the windows Dev C++ IDE has a SDL package that can be installed simply by running it.

There is also the fact that "SDL" is shorter than "AllegroGL" by 6 whole characters , and when every darn function has "allegro_gl_ appended to the front, that is a consideration.

[carbaher]

Why SDL? Isn't it enough reason that we know it better and have experience with it?

Well, if we have decided this then we can just start doing some stuff. I don't know if we just have to wait to the web page to know what to do

[Rasbelin]

The website isn't something that will give magic answers. Actually Blake is responsible for co-ordinating the coding work, so you'd better bug him for instructions.

[targon]

OK, I've used SDL for some pet projects and it behaved smoothly. Allegro, in other hand, is somewhat stale and, last but not least, it succesfuly compiled build managed to sigfault several examples somehow .
Concrning Q's .mod files: they are good, IMHO, but keep searching, there are lot of other formats.
About 3000+ units: it's really possible using reasonable new (elder GF2 (?), GF3 and 4s) to draw up to ~billion triangles a second and even more! nVidia recommends keeping triangles about 100 pixels each with average overdraw (~2-2.5). If your have less triangles in the scene, your FPS is cutted by fillrate, so you can add some detail for free. And "reasonable modern" cards will surely become "reasonable outdated" in times of this game release. If you're very frustrated due to heavy "wasting" of processing power, you may use impositors instead of rendered units. With 3000+ (or even 100!) units, player can't distinguish, esp. if units are 1) properly animated; 2) impositors do't mess up z-buffer with its transparent parts.
P.S. Still can't shut up, I'm artist, not a coder... my apologizes...