Typical irrlicht polycount on low-end hardware?

ben · Post by **ben** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:43 pm

Hi,

Roughly what max number of polygons should I aim for on screen at any given time if I want to create a game that will run with a decent frame-rate on low end hardware?

Its going to be an RTS-esque sort of game, with a maximum of perhaps 100 units on screen at once, so I'm wondering how many polygons I should be restricting myself to per-unit. I will only be using low-res textures, (if any in some cases), no fancy effects etc.

Cheers,
Ben

JP · Post by JP » Thu May 28, 2009 4:13 pm

Trial and error will give you the answer.. that's probably the best anyone can realistically offer you...

Especially without knowing what you mean by low end

Different people would consider different systems low end I would think!

ben · Post by **ben** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:25 pm

Trial and error would have been my first approach, but I'm currently a few hundred miles away from the computer I'm wanting the game to be able to run on!
By low end I mean 512mb ram, 1.3 GHz processor, integrated intel graphics.

I'm only looking for a ballpark kind of figure, ie would it be closest to 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 100000 polygons?

I've made some very low poly models with ~20 polygons each, but they're the absolute minimum # of polys I can get them down to, and I'm wondering if I can use slightly nicer models than that.

Strong99 · Post by **Strong99** » Thu May 28, 2009 5:49 pm

It also depends on the other calculations your application wil make, like shaders, amount of scenenodes and others

mc08 · Post by **mc08** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:00 pm

strong99, didnt he say he didnt want any "fancy effects" and about 100 units(scene nodes?) at screen at once.

comeon, i have no clue myself, but give him an estimated number instead of "dunno, depends on...* "

JP · Post by JP » Thu May 28, 2009 6:14 pm

I'm sure you'll be perfectly alright with models as low poly as that

ben · Post by **ben** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:16 pm

Just to clarify, I'm asking about a scenario with absolutely nothing except basic geometry. No shaders, no textures, no nothing... i.e. absolutely everything that could be disabled without affecting the core game play is disabled.

My reason for asking is that I wish to make this playable by multiple people over a network... and for it to be possible for me to test that, it will have to run on this low-spec computer too!

ben · Post by **ben** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:20 pm

JP wrote:I'm sure you'll be perfectly alright with models as low poly as that

Okay thanks, that's reassuring to know. In that case, I'll stick with the models I have and include an option somewhere to chose whether to use high or low-poly models. If anyone happens to run irrlicht on a pc of similar specs or can provide a guess as to an absolute poly-count it would still be helpful (because ideally I'd like to make some of the models a bit nicer!), but its good to know that I can fall back on the super-low poly models if I need to.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Thu May 28, 2009 7:11 pm

Problem with numbers is that it really depends on so many factors, often stuff is slower on cards which should be faster, etc. But anyway - as a rough guess I would say you are fine somewhere between 10000 and 50000 polygons.

Frank Dodd · Post by **Frank Dodd** » Thu May 28, 2009 9:29 pm

I have just managed to get a 'new' Athlon Thunderbird for my machine which is 1.33Ghz, 512Mb RAM with a 64Mb GeForce2 Ultra so its all up and running again and sounds close to your target machine. At the moment I am running the CPU at 1Ghz too. Its still a remarkably effective platform that can run World of Warcraft, not bad for an 8 year old graphics card

I knocked up a fast test with the Irrlicht supplied BSP map and 49 animated quake models. It contained 40774 prims and ran at 20fps. At 100 quake models it contained 72853 prims and ran at 12fps.

The quake 2 model 'Zumlin' contains 629 prims, I would imagine the models for an RTS game could be 1/2 this density or less and / or paged in based on level of detail rules.

ben · Post by **ben** » Fri May 29, 2009 7:17 am

That's great guys, thanks!

In that case I'll try to keep it below about 20000. That should allow me a few extra polys per model, which is nice.

Thanks again!

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Fri May 29, 2009 8:22 am

Hmmm, that is a fairly low end machine (compared to current ones) but something like 150 or 200 triangles per unit can make a very decent design for an RTS. Besides, the buildings and the static details can be sped a bit up if your hardware supported vertex buffer objects

As a recomendation too, you should have only 1 texture per unit, and it is said that 256x256 pixels offer a great eficiency in old hardware.

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Fri May 29, 2009 8:23 am

Once you have tested that, add more until it starts lagging. then you can find good balance rather than a random guess.

Adler1337 · Post by **Adler1337** » Fri May 29, 2009 1:23 pm

You should be able to get around 30000 polys with textures

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:33 pm

Mmmm, that is something i learned to avoid, to try and make the polycount limit in the scene's polycount. Obviously is a very intuitive limit, but can be deceiving. It is the same important as the highest amount of polygons the kind of materials they have, the variety of the textures and the number of meshbuffers each model may have. If your units render with only 1 meshbuffer, it requires less processing than if you have several in one single model, that is what means to have a single texture in your model. Just 1 meshbuffer.

Im not too sure either, but also, batching the rendering of the same kind of meshbuffers can help too.