Top Down City

**JernejL** · 18-01-2004, 10:21 PM

sorry.. but i won't use any complex polygon soups - anyone that played
gta1 knows what i am talking about, this is a game for pure fun not a
benchmark game like quake 3..

altrough i will consider about bump mapping - the effect would just simply
make the game amazingly more detailed, and don't worry about the fps
the pics are made on a P2 celeron 366 and a geforce4 - it is the slow cpu..

at my other programmer it ran over 300 fps.. and i will limit this to
30fps at the end.

**Goliatus** · 20-01-2004, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by Delfi

sorry.. but i won't use any complex polygon soups - anyone that played
gta1 knows what i am talking about, this is a game for pure fun not a
benchmark game like quake 3..

GTA1 poor graphics or messy C/C++ syntax were not intended to be cool. Poor hardware in those times. Now people buy new hardware and expect more work from programmers. Dont worry about to complex scenes. Real problem are not number of triangles but fillrate so if you add few more triangles framerate wont go down.

**JernejL** · 20-01-2004, 08:28 PM

Originally Posted by Goliatus

Originally Posted by Delfi

sorry.. but i won't use any complex polygon soups - anyone that played
gta1 knows what i am talking about, this is a game for pure fun not a
benchmark game like quake 3..

GTA1 poor graphics or messy C/C++ syntax were not intended to be cool. Poor hardware in those times. Now people buy new hardware and expect more work from programmers. Dont worry about to complex scenes. Real problem are not number of triangles but fillrate so if you add few more triangles framerate wont go down.

thats exactly the problem - the game generates all the geometry from cube
map at runtime, i tried using pre-made display lists for all map cubes, but the
fps was cut into half.. vierd indeed!

the hardware is also my problem - i have poor hardware, 5 years old computer!

**holybyte** · 20-01-2004, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by Goliatus

[..] GTA1 poor graphics or messy C/C++ syntax were not intended to be cool. Poor hardware in those times. Now people buy new hardware and expect more work from programmers. [..]

Do you enjoy a game only because it uses the latest 3d hw features ?

**WILL** · 21-01-2004, 05:32 AM

I don't know what level you're engine runs on, but Quake 1 was quite simple in design, but it it rran rather fast for it's level of hardware it was ment to run on.

Then again, I'm no 3D graphics expert so I cannot tell if more poligons or faces, etc will effect what, but I'm sure that a few more values for natural effect won't hurt it that much.

Then again the other imitated method could work too. What is you're hardware again?

I have a x2 AGP with 8 MB of memory(ATI MOBILITY-1 Rage). Now thats old.

**Goliatus** · 21-01-2004, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by holybyte

Originally Posted by Goliatus

[..] GTA1 poor graphics or messy C/C++ syntax were not intended to be cool. Poor hardware in those times. Now people buy new hardware and expect more work from programmers. [..]

Do you enjoy a game only because it uses the latest 3d hw features ?

Of course not. I'm not 3denginomaniac as You probably think. However I think that it is better to write game which uses not DDraw but DX9. On modern hardware D3D is much faster than DDraw. Think about players

**holybyte** · 21-01-2004, 07:38 PM

Ok.. i agree todays 3d apis are faster than DirectDraw. I don't damn that technical view on gamemaking, no i'm interested in technical aspects too. Programming AI, adjusting player input or creating good textures/drawings /animations is important too.

**Goliatus** · 21-01-2004, 09:08 PM

But saying that "i cant add stairs because of high polycount and low framerate" is a bit funny. Tesselation doesnt decrease framerate because it doesnt change fillrate. Key are details. In older games graphics with better sprites were advantage. Delfi should add more details to his game(?) graphics.

Programming AI, adjusting player input or creating good textures/drawings /animations is important too.

Yeah, and always key are details in game control or other gameplay elements. "Standard games" are not cool

)

**JernejL** · 21-01-2004, 10:48 PM

the game is made with opengl..

i will repeat what i said; this is a simple game, made to be fun.

i will repeat the thing #2: the geometry in other games is read from file,
here all the info for one block is taken from a 3D grid and
each cube face has texture number, rotation, flip and transparent numbers.
and now i generate geometry for this thing at runtime, thats why my fillrate
is slow and would be even slower just because you want stairs to be
completely 3D..

**Traveler** · 22-01-2004, 09:48 AM

I've been following this thread for some time now and I think the project is quite cool. The pas couple of posts however are all about those stairs, something that is completely not interesting at all if you ask me. It's just a detail, compared to the stuff Delfi is yet to do. There still is a very long way to go. Working on such details so early in the project is not only time consuming but give very little results.

Anyway, plz do keep up the work and I hope we can see a couple new shots soon.