Re: how to add assembler?

[Erik <br0ke@math.smsu.edu>]

On 18-Oct-99 Pierre Phaneuf wrote:
> Erik wrote:
> 
>> > you don't tell anyone it's 3D, they'll know; you can't get the polygon
>> > count high enough for the models to have truly rounded edges like you can
>> > when you render for a 2D game. So you have to make up for the lower
>> > polygon count by
>> 
>> Not yet, but many games are remarkebly close. q3 has pretty curved surfaces,
>> I think by tesselating bezier surfaces or nurbs. UT demo is well crafted and
>> difficult to find where under-tesselation gives it that polygon feel.
> 
> Yes, but doing tesselation adds a bunch of polygons and works for adding
> a single curve (or a very limited number) to a scene. But the number of

obviously :) the better approximation of a curve you generate, the more
polygons will be involved. By having a dynamic level of detail, a good
approximation can be made that will be visually smooth, but use less polygons
at smaller scale.

> polygon that would be required to get a typical StarCraft screenful of
> objects looking as good with OpenGL as they did with regular 2D graphics
> would be amazingly high. Or would have to be "flatties" and thus just as

I disagree. As a models scale is decreased, less polygons are required to
generate a 'perfectly smooth' curve. the scale of the models on a starcraft
scene are extremely small, and each model could look excellent with just a
couple dozen models. Paint a skin on that and polygons would be hard to
identify. With starcraft, you rarely have more than a couple dozen models on
the screen at a time, even just a hundred would totally cover the screen. Now
we're at 30*24=720 to 100*24=2400 polygons pushed per frame. Add on a few
hundred for landscape features, missiles, explosions, bloodsplatter and we're
still inside of 1000-3000 polygons. I wrote a crude mesh ogl demo with smooth
shading, and some heavy trig, and on my cyrix 120mhz cpu with an old 4 meg
voodooG 'monster3d' card, it runs smooth to about 1500 polygons. With flat
shading, 2500 polys. Probably with better fps that starcraft, my demo
purmutates sine waves thru the mesh in a couple directions, so the movement is
smooth and undulating, and frame rate slowdowns are painfully obvious.

if my numbers are off, by all means, lemme know. I personally think that
pushing the edge could produce excellent visual results in less polygons

> statically lighted as the 2D graphics and would requires a 200$ 3D
> acceleration hardware for basically the *same* that StarCraft gets you
> with a regular 2D that you can get for 30$.

I never said that it'd be a cheaper solution :) but decent cards are available
for $100 USD, and almost everyone who plays games has a 3d card anymore. Hell, I
got one, I don't play games often at all, and the rest of my system is several
years old :) Software emulation via mesa will give poorer speed results,
naturally, than a game made to take advantage of 2d hardware. The possabilities
with opengl allow faster development and neat features of the game :) Much less
work is dumped on the programmers and artists, and small changes (like where
the light is) are easy and quick to implement in ogl, but would require
re-rending almost everything in a 2d pre-rendered game.

> 
> -- 
> Pierre Phaneuf
> http://ludusdesign.com/
> 
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        -Erik <br0ke@math.smsu.edu> [http://math.smsu.edu/~br0ke]

The opinions expressed by me are not necessarily opinions. In all
probability, they are random rambling, and to be ignored. Failure to ignore
may result in severe boredom or confusion. Shake well before opening. Keep
Refrigerated.