LucasArts 3D problems

[Luke Skywalker]

Well the people at LucasArts have a big trouble when they design 3D games specially the ones of Star Wars: they can´t calculate or are difficult to they how a think is in size compared with other thing.
For example: if you put a ISD on a side of a X-wing they will be very big because is 1600 meters long compared with the 15 meters or like of the X-W, so the ISD will apear like a big city to the fighter, so will be difficult to see the whole ship when you are near it.
When I attack a ISD using a fighter the result is the same when on a Zero I attack a Heavy Cruiser on other games, that´s wrong.
The 3D things on LEC games are bad sized, the combats are unreal very far far away of the combats that you can see on the films.
The only good ISD attack that I remember of any LEC game is the one of the Rebel Assault, this is on 2D.
And about Force Commander.. the things apear like they are out of the terrain, the things move on the terrain at the same velocity also when they are climbing, when I play it (in the past) I had the sensation that the unist are hovering on the terrain, also the units are oversized compared with the terrain, making the maps little and boring.
The people at LEC need to go back to the scholl (not all only the guys that make 3D objets) and see that a bus is more big than a car, the cat is more little than a elephant and start discovering all the size of the things in the world. Also need to study again the scale of meters, or make the things on foot if it difficult to they to convert scales.

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"We did it!!!"
>May the force be with you<
Luke Skywalker, 38th Kokou Sentai

[Psycho Tycho]

That's great Luke. You know a lot about games.

[Innror]

Shouldn't this be in the Games forum?

[Tek Gunner]

Yes, yes it should.

[Fondas]

Actually, Luke does <u>not</u> know a lot about games ! If he did , he would know that there are a lot of thinks that 3D designers and programmers should keep in mind and a hella lotta restrictions !

Does anyone remember WHEN did this game came out ? I've seen Ms. Talons missions as well as XWAUP screenshots. They both are drop dead beautifull, but... imagine LA releasing a game that would require at least a PII with 64 MB and that would have been the entry level, ie a PIII to run smoothly !

Do you really think that their designers are incompetent. No, they are professionals. They don't just make missions or a game for fun. They have thousands of stansards to keep, limitations and of course , deadlines.

Maybe it's time to understand that game developers make a living from these games and inevitably they have to obey marketing law .

So, stop whining and enjoy the game. If you can't , it's your right, taste and opinion but you can't expect all the others to agree with you.

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"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent"
TZG+7

[This message has been edited by Fondas (edited August 23, 2000).]

[krispy]

uhm, how could Luke Skywalker, in all his wisdom and jedi-ness be wrong about something huh? I mean, we're talking to the Luke Skywalker here...he'll kill you all! Don't doubt the master jedi!!

-krispy

[Tek Gunner]

Originally posted by Fondas:
Actually, Luke does <u>not</u> know a lot about games !

No one was saying that he did. http://www.xwingalliance.com/forums/wink.gif http://www.xwingalliance.com/forums/biggrin.gif

[Topace]

Thank you Fondas after all there was somebody telling them what it is like.
I have nothing to do with LA or TG but I am designing games as well, none of whch has been released anywhere, they where just for fun and education.
There is a major problem in a computer game called:
PLAYABILITY
If you would make the TIE's and X-Wing's as fast as they are in the movies and the ISD's as fast and big as they are there it wouldn't be playable at all would it.
YOu would actually never make it to the deflector shield domes because you would be shot down.
So instead of increasing the speed of the ships they resized them.
Then again I can imagine they had a problem because they would have had to resize the fighters as well.
But if you woul make the fighters smaller again you are at the beginning again so they left it like they were.
To the details: Young Skywalker, have you ever heard of something called polygons if yes have you ever heard of polygon restrictions and performance correlations.
Means:The more polygons you have the lesser performance you have.
Sure you could use ultra high detailed models of the ISD's as seen at
<a href="http://theforce.net/scifi3d">SCI-FI 3d</a> with about 125,000 polys but if you put them into an Endor scene plus some ultra high detailed MON Cals and a fully modeled Death Star:
ENJOY THE PICTURE SHOW (about 0.002 fps)
The same goes for the maps
Normal 3d cards have a memory of about 32 MB,the newest ones have 64.Plus maybe 128 MB's of system memory.Thats everything of textur memory you have.
Now sure you could make ultra high detailed textures of 1600x1200 pixels but that would take at least 6 MB's of texture ram If you have 50 Starfighters plus 10 capital ships that makes about 2700 MB memory (capital ship textures take about 9 MB).
Now show me the computer who has this and i will be happy.
Something as detailed as this takes about 1 Minute to render ONE frame in 3DSMAX (if you haven'T heard of it its a 3d animation program)
By the way I have a 800 Mhz Athlon CPU
with 512 MB memory and a GEFORCE

Hope you won't kill me now big Jedi because this would be your final step to the DARK SIDE

quote:"Strike me down and you will finaly have finished your long pathto the dark side of the force" ;-)

GA_Topace
or Grand Admiral Sven "Topace" Holtzhausen
Lordexecutor of his Majesty the Emperor