I guess I had better ask this question now. I am in the early stage development of a larger scale environment intended (when finished) to be a 30 square block urban neighborhood called Mill Town.

The road grid consists of 16 4K x 4K foundation blocks, so the overall base size is 16K x 16K of terrain space, well within Reloaded's terrain limits. Each base block is 12 polygons with a 4096 x 4096 texture.

On top of the road grid are side walks, buildings, An elevated train track, and dozens of accessories, (cars, trains, trucks, stop lights, etc, even a few characters). Most of the entities are low poly counts, many from the TGC City Pack. When completed I estimate there will be 300 - 400 entities in the environment, plus characters.

On my system it currently runs (in test mode) between 100 and 150 fps, which is fine for my needs.

However, as you can see there is a lot more to go.. SO MY Question

Is something like this too big for GG/Steam and the internet?

Thanks

Sorry... I had planned to attach several screen shots of the environment, but I can't seem to up-load any images???

Sounds like your road grid should be fine. What you add to it, I guess, depends on the individual entities. "Low poly" is a relative term, for sure, but I would think the engine should be able to handle 300-400 entities. I think static entities take up fewer resources than dynamic. I would give it a shot at the very least! One thing that I've done in the past to boost efficiency is combine meshes and textures to reduce draw calls. I don't totally understand how all that works, but it seems to be somewhat of a give and take when it comes to polygon/vertex count and draw calls (fewer polys may not make any difference in the bigger picture). I once ran a pretty extensive experiment to compare them just to get a feel for it, combined vs. separate. It involved several hundred of the barrels. I would just test periodically as I build, and pay attention to those factors (TAB). When I read "Mill Town", I thought you were attempting to recreate Tempe until I saw the elevated train track!

Hey Jerry,

OK, so when you say " Combine Meshes and Textures", you mean how??

This sounds like an external thing, combine the meshes into a single model, and single _D.dds file, and load them as a single entity ?? Or is this something internal?

Actually, I like that idea of Tempe, even though I've been thinking about doing some research on a street corner in downtown Phoenix in 1912, and trying to build that.

Thanks, I intend to finish it (Mill Town), and once I can up-load again I'll post it so you can see what it looks like.
Go Devils

Yes, it's an external thing. I've done it in Blender but you could probably do it in whatever software you use. I just import them and then export as a single mesh. Of course, in Blender you can't import .x models so you have to convert them to a usable format first. I use Ultimate Unwrap to convert most models when necessary. I convert to .fbx, import into Blender, then export as .x. My big experiment involved just barrels so it was fairly simple, but it gets tricky for more complex entities as the texturing can become difficult, at least at my current level of expertise with Blender. A lot of trial and error! The difference was significant though, over a thousand barrels combined in groups of 8, I think, or maybe it was 4 (I've since had a crash on my laptop so I lost all those models.) put the roughly the same demand on the PC as a couple hundred individuals.

I have a question for you. Where did you get your street/pavement/asphalt/ models? I have streets from many different sources, but to be honest, I really don't like any of them. None of them are complete and none look good when mixed with others. A long time ago I had made my own (and IMHO were pretty good) but have since lost them. (They may be on my network drive or on a thumb drive somewhere here but my organizational skills suck so it would probably take as long to find as to remake them. I had dashed white, yellow, solid and dashed of both, fresh asphalt and faded asphalt, intersections with crosswalks, etc., and they snapped together and were seamless. I've been meaning to sit down and make some new ones, I just haven't, and I would just as soon buy them if I could find a good, complete set.

I did a fairly big city area awhile back. Here's the video.



I had a fair few more entities than 500 here. To keep up speed I used a flat terrain, which will give a good boost if you can live with lack of hills.

I remember that video! It inspired me to buy lots and lots of buildings!

@Dvader

Thanks, I get similar speed results, including the slow-down because of the trees. My concern is what will the speed be if this map is played over the internet via steam?

Hey, got the up-load to work so you can see the basics of the layout. This includes a script I'm developing that allows the cars and the elevated train to move through a pre-set pattern. Drive to point, turn right, drive to next block and stop for stoplight, then continue, etc.

Thanks for your responses.

Go Devils

Online play shouldn't slow things much. But we have yet to see it in action. I imagine the number of players will be the biggest issue here rather than the map (obviously the map as well, but that goes for single player also ). Loading times however, would be long... Multi-player is just death match type stuff at present, so a huge map is not ideal quite yet. the loading also would be rather annoying in a fast paced arena game match. Also will depend on each persons PC spec I imagine. Makes me think what will happen to people with vastly different PC specs. Apart from them being shot a lot of course

This is a delayed post, I was just browsing!




LOL, GoDevils and I live in one of the flattest places on this planet! Makes Nebraska look hilly!