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Planet Defense Animation |
Guyton (Angel of Death)
Marshal
Joined: January 25, 2004
Posts: 706
|  Posted: 2012-07-18 10:17
Hello Gents,
An idea I was thinking about runs with the planet defense animation. Currently we have guass guns firing on ships when are in orbit. Instead of the current animation, would it be possible to place small cannon models or tiny platforms around the planet atmospheres. To simulate the planet defenses. Even for planets with shields have a white/blue cover or nebula type aura. Just a curious concept.
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Hakketak
Grand Admiral
Joined: March 24, 2009
Posts: 301
| Posted: 2012-07-18 12:50
every structure had a tiny model on the planet surface a while back, but i think it got removed cause of massive lag once u enter range where u can see them
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Cold Death
Admiral
Joined: July 24, 2011
Posts: 106
From: Right behind you...
| Posted: 2012-07-18 14:02
Fancy animations may seem like unnecessary fluff, but these days its what people are looking for in science fiction in general(movies, TV series, games). People are just use to amazing visuals, they don't care as much about tactics as they do about how good looking an exploding dread is.
My point is, if it can be added to the game without having massive consequences , it should be added..
And, what kind of lagg did you mean?
A ping spike, or FPS lagg?
If it's an increase in ping, then it shouldn't be added. If it's fps lagg, then I don't think it would be that bad, but only the devs can tell...
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
| Posted: 2012-07-18 18:50
It would be FPS lag, the server doesn't render anything, so spawning a projectile at x,y,z makes no difference than a,b,c.
We enabled (accidentally) turret models a year or so ago, and people thought it was fantastic. What they didn't understand though is that in a real game situation (not beta, where there was one system at the time), you're having to render a lot of polygons, and unfortuantely, this is one area of hardware design that has not progressed in the years (as it requires large areas of memory space on the GPU).
I'm not really a fan of having orbital cannons for defence bases (as people would be able to run through them and not shoot them, etc). We can certainly work on the art aspect of the projectile, but we don't really have any artists working on the game, so sprite art is limited (as are effects really, but that's a limitation of the tool).
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Cold Death
Admiral
Joined: July 24, 2011
Posts: 106
From: Right behind you...
| Posted: 2012-07-19 00:05
Well, can't you have them render only a given distance away? Say 350 gu or something? Certainly the models on only one planet won't be that big of a frame rate drop.
Or perhaps have it as an option in the options menu.
Also, In some darkspace videos I saw that ICC once had shield animations. What happened to that?
[ This Message was edited by: Cold Death on 2012-07-19 00:08 ]
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Blackjack [DBL]
Grand Admiral
Faster than Light
Joined: February 25, 2011
Posts: 344
From: The land of venomous reptiles.
| Posted: 2012-07-20 20:50
Cold death, even when the turrets can't be seen by you, the models are still being rendered by the server, Therefore there will be enormous lag from the larger amount of polys being rendered even when you are in deep space in Sag.
[ This Message was edited by: Loyalty *TO* on 2012-07-20 20:51 ]
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Tellaris
Grand Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: April 30, 2002
Posts: 830
From: Land of Chocolate
| Posted: 2012-07-21 00:27
Quote:
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On 2012-07-20 20:50, Loyalty *TO* wrote:
Cold death, even when the turrets can't be seen by you, the models are still being rendered by the server, Therefore there will be enormous lag from the larger amount of polys being rendered even when you are in deep space in Sag.
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Quote:
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It would be FPS lag, the server doesn't render anything, so spawning a projectile at x,y,z makes no difference than a,b,c.
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IE, the servier doesn't give two craps about "models." All it cares about is that there is a "noun" of type (whatever) at (location).
As to what I think the OP wanted...
It sounds like he wants a graphical additive of platforms that orbit the planet, that shots come from, but can't be shot at with standard weapons, in place of the defense bases. It would simply be cosmetic. Wouldn't change game play in any significant way. (This also helps solve the issue of shots spawning from the planet itself instead of dbases if there aren't any, which frankly looks odd imo.) Thats what I think he's getting at...
You could easily render the plats as minitureized versions of regular space based platforms without it looking that much different.
[ This Message was edited by: Tellaris on 2012-07-21 00:28 ]
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