FreeGameDev

Hello!
I had an idea to make a different version of STK for slow computers. My plan is to use old version of certain karts and tracks to make smaller filesizes and lower-poly models (for example, Crescent Crossing back to Little Volcano). What do you think?
P.S. Yesterday was my birthday! I turned 13.

You should be sure that the older models actually have less polys then - some of the older content weren't too efficient either if my impression is right.

A good idea as it could also be used for mobile devices.

Yes, I would welcome a set of lower-poly material for STK mobile, or just old computers. However, as stated, this will probably need hand-crafted material, the old material is not much less demanding at all. What we would probably need instead is to use billboards (which may require code support)

To count polys, do you have to go to each individual mesh and start counting in your head?

Hello.

In Blender, there should be some statistics in the upper right corner, after the version number. One of them is "Fa:<x>" where "<x>" is the number of faces Blender sees. If you want the face number for a specific object, just select it.

I do not know for sure if Blender's face count would equal STK's poly count for a given object. One of the devs should be able to anwser that.

Hope this helps.

Pixel {l Wrote}:I do not know for sure if Blender's face count would equal STK's poly count for a given object. One of the devs should be able to anwser that.

It should be a close enough approximation (at least to compare tracks and karts). E.g. not sure if blender counts a quad as one face or two, in irrlicht it would be two faces afaik.

Cheers,
Joerg

Auria {l Wrote}:Yes, I would welcome a set of lower-poly material for STK mobile, or just old computers. However, as stated, this will probably need hand-crafted material, the old material is not much less demanding at all. What we would probably need instead is to use billboards (which may require code support)

I don't think that STK will be easy to port to current mobile devices (with acceptable performance I mean) without many changes - LOD, billboards etc. I won't focus on this. ATM the bottle neck (based on a single measurement or two) are mainly the kart animations, but we will be looking at that soon.

Cheers,
Joerg

stked {l Wrote}:To count polys, do you have to go to each individual mesh and start counting in your head?

Hehe, that would be funny, especially for high poly models with millions of triangles.

In Blender's object mode you can see the total number of faces (triangles and quads) of all objects on the active layer. To get the correct poly count, you have to go to edit mode and convert the quads to triangles (Ctrl-T).

What's a good poly count for karts and tracks? And are you expecting this to use 0.6 PLIB or 0.7 Irrlicht? If Irrlicht, there won't be animations.

stked {l Wrote}:there won't be animations.

So, I think it would be good to remove all the code about animations in STK Lite.

You're not expecting blend files of the tracks, are you? 'Cause ya won't get any.

sure, it takes longer to port from notepad, but it's all I know how to do.