FreeOrion

We can have a really nice and visually appealing UI, and one that fits the theme at the same time. We should take the opprotunity.

And also, I don't know about that texture thing, but it isn't a big problem to have it square, and in powers of 2. The highest texture on a game model should be about 512 x 512 anyways.

Though, if that is a guideline, it should be made so now before we start to make the textures.

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

512x512... hmmm.... are we talking about licensing the Doom3 engine here?

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

I did say highest. That stuff is like revolutionary, at the moment. I know that there is a CG Sov for Bridge commander that uses 512 X 512, looks amazing.

I would say like 128 X 128, and like 256 X 256 for the biggest things. It could also be easy to make smaller textures for low end machines. I just dont know about the programming aspect of that.

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

Just bear in mind that this *isnt* an FPS we're talking about here. The reason there are such highres textures in fps games is because there are some big walls around and when you can get up really close to them, to the point where one texture fills the players screen. Similarly, bridge commander is very much a one-on-one battle simulator, where you often get up close and personal (using a first person view as in an FPS) and spend a long time looking at the one ship that youre firing at at that particular moment.

In a strategic space combat game, youre not likely to need to zoom right in to one ship until it fills the screen. Even if you did (which basically means youre just gawping at the graphics, not actually play the game in any useful way), that ship is made up of hundreds of polygons, so chances are the largest polygon on the screen would be at most one fifth of the screen size. So you wouldnt ever need more than 256x256 textures.

And at the levels of zoom necessary to actually *play* the game (i.e. fit , say, half a dozen ships on the screen at once) you could easily get away with 64x64 textures and not lose any detail at all.

I dont mind it being an option for those with the latest graphics cards, as long as its also an optional *download*, i.e. a separate file from the main game package. A 512x512 texture is 4 times larger than a 256x256 one, 16 times larger than 128x128, and 64 times larger than 64x64.

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

Ok, either way. I haven't done much of realtime rendering work, and the stuff I have done was high lvl of detail.

What ever requirements are put on things, I will follow. But it is my opinion that the ships should be able to hold up if they are viewed individually (EI one ship as the focus, but you can see the entire ship). Though you are right, this is a strategy game environment, and most graphics are low key in them.

Lol, sorry for my newbishness, I am still new to graphics, and game development.

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

I would much sooner license the Rome: Total War engine than the Doom3 engine.

-Aq (with a couple hundred thou lying around to pay for licenses)

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

A big engine is probably overkill for this game. The physics will probably be simple and in deep space the screen is not so filled with objects that a brilliant culling algorithm is needed. I'd try free engines or self-made systems first before shelling out cash, after all only a part of the game is 3d.

i guess aq was kidding. I don't think anybody will license an engine.

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Can COWs fly?

Yep, he was joking Otherwise we'd start up a fundraising project needing more money than what it cost for the community to buy blender.

Umm, isn't blender free?

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

it is now. didn't start off that way:

http://download.blender.org/documentation/html/x74.html

It wasn't open source, but is now. The community had to raise 100,000 pounds, if I remember correctly, to make it open source. It would probably cost us more than that to license an engine.

Oh, now I get it. I thought it was always that way. I just haven't been around long enough.

As for the engine, we could prolly use something like what is it Star Wars: battle for Endor. We won't need much to beat the MOO 3 engine...

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

FYI:

Ogre is not right for this project, but VRS is check out http://www.vrs3d.org for more info. I'm not married to it, but it looks pretty perfect for us right now.

All textures must be stored in powers-of-two sizes; this is an OpenGL requirement. They can be any size when loaded, but if they are not powers-of-two on each side, they will be stored in the next largest power-of-two texture size, which is a waste. They do not need to be square, though.

The engine responsible for Geoff the Medio's avatar would be fine...

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!