Wolfire Development Blog!

Nuky · Post by **Nuky** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:49 pm

You know... Moving a couple polyons and doing some maths (to select which polygon to move/stretch where) isn't really that bad...
Also, I don't think you'll have to wory too much. Unless you have a reaaaaly old computer (like pII or something, and a hercules 3d card) you might get it barely over 15 FPS ;P

KZeni · Post by **KZeni** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:42 pm

If you have growing/random trees. It wouldn't really drop the FPS. It would hurt the loading times. As it has to process the changes/creation while you enter areas/load up new areas.
Little things such as those would give the game a much more "live" experience. A living environment really grab's people's attention.

Zantalos · Post by **Zantalos** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:44 am

Ya, only if it is growing like that of Harvest Moon (you wake up the next moring to see all your vegatables have grown up and produced full yields).
Jeff mentioned that everything will be grown frame by frame, I'm not sure if that would actually effect the loading times, maybe loading times would be longer or happen constantly every once in awhile (kinda like Oblivion, I didn't mind the loading times every hundred feet).
I dunno, maybe the loading times is in a different catagory than the fps, I can't really say what creates loading times or effects fps.

zip · Post by **zip** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:06 am

Zantalos wrote: I dunno, maybe the loading times is in a different catagory than the fps, I can't really say what creates loading times or effects fps.

"Loading Time" is the initialization period that happens when you enter a new level, new textures are cached, the map geometry is loaded, scripts are loaded, etc.
FPS = Frames Per Second, if the trees really are growing frame-by-frame and not just at loading time then it will affect the FPS, but probably not so much you'll notice.

Nuky · Post by **Nuky** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:45 am

zip wrote: it will affect the FPS, but probably not so much you'll notice.

See? That was what I was talking about.
You may think that this is a superheavy process cause you never see it, even in newer games, but methinks it's just the devs who are lazy

rudel_ic · Post by **rudel_ic** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 9:31 am

If there are textures on each tree and growing does mean that a lot of vertices move and edges split up, the textures have to be remapped all the time. That is a difficult operation with quite some maths involved.

Nuky · Post by **Nuky** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 8:55 pm

But I don't think a little math will be too heavy for the computers lying around your house, hm?
As far as I know, computers and maths go hand in hand.

Post by **David** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:05 am

I posted another few updates in the blog with various features I have been working on (also a glimpse of Turner's new model and texture courtesy of Ian Wells).

http://blog.wolfire.com/

Zantalos · Post by **Zantalos** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:19 am

Oh man... Can it be?
JESUS CHRIST MONKEY BALLS IT IS!!
Holy crap trees! Oh man there so pretty, so pretty, pretty, pretty. Awesome, I waited my whole life for this moment to come.

<tears of joy>

Ok that may be a bit exagerated but dude! Those are trees, self growing trees man, awesome.

rudel_ic · Post by **rudel_ic** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:21 am

Yay, the optically correct refraction of light underwater is cool!

The twigs are bitmaps, right? The trees look good! Will we be able to destroy the whole tree?

Specular reflection is nice as well. I remember seeing it in Day of Defeat for the first time, that was a nice surprise back then.

Edit: Zantalos, we are already used to your exaggeration moves

Post by **David** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:28 am

The really small twigs are bitmaps, for performance reasons. However, they are going to be normal-mapped and actually drawn well; the current leaves are really fast programmer art to test out different ideas for leaf/twig rendering

Yes the plan is for you to be able to destroy the whole tree.

Nuky · Post by **Nuky** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:28 pm

In a precise and detailed manner? I mean... chop of smaller branches with your knife, break weaker trees with enemy-bodies (

) and chop each little poligon part with an axe untill the tree is reduced to a particle emulator?

zip · Post by **zip** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:50 pm

Nuky wrote:a particle emulator?

Emitter maybe?

Albab · Post by **Albab** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:11 pm

Man oh man. The water is quite cool. I'm still waiting for you to come out and say we can have farms, though. I swear. I'd be like: "-comes back from killing wolves- I wonder how my tomatoes are doing? -waterwater-"

Silb · Post by **Silb** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 12:47 am

I guess these two activities could combine quite well.

Alpha wolf: I am the Alpha Wolf. I slaughter your kind for breakfast.
Turner: Same here. I'm using your predecessor as compost for my tomato patch.