Need advice from experienced developers

[Sd-RawK-Cab25]

Hi all,

I'm just wondering about many aspects of game development, as this is my first time trying to develop a game (or at least a project in a game-like environment). Hope you could shed some light.

My current project involves a whole building (student dorms); 5 levels where each level has 4 dorms, and for each dorm, there are 6 rooms. The objective of this project is to simulate an evacuation process, so until now I know that - a) I don't need to model every room in detail except one room (start point), b) It'll still take up lots of models to be rendered.

Currently, I just finished modelling 2 dorms, where basically I just modelled the first dorm and duplicated the second one in 3DStudio. The problem is that, since the development PC is on the high side with its specs (1gb RAM, 64bit CPU, etc.), when the project runs on a lower end pc, it lags like hell (obviously).

So what I'm trying to solve is - how should I design/manage/program the project, so that when the whole building is modeled, it could still be run on a low end PC.

So far, after searching the forum I've come up with one basic solution (although not 100% solving my problem, just giving me basic ideas):

- splitting up the whole environment into smaller areas, loading them only when needed.

Ok, fine. I've read the seamless world tutorial, and a couple suggestions on the boards. Somehow, what I could visualize from the tutorials is that it describes a flat, repeating world.

Cut to the chase, I would really love to hear suggestions on:

1. What could I do to make the project cater for low end PCs? Any suggestions during the modelling phase, the Irrlicht coding phase, etc. ? Basically, I need to know what would be feasible to lessen load on RAM (what actually uses RAM in the 1st place?)

2. How do I go around applying the seamless world concept to cater for my building environment? Or should I go with another technique?

I'll add more questions when they come up. :)

Please be gentle, LOL! I'm a n00b but really interested in developing games and I'd really appreciate all the help and suggestions from you pros.

Thanks!

P.S: A simple and easily understood step-by-step concept/tutorial on creating lightweight, large environments would REALLY be appreciated!

[bitplane]

1) re-use textures as often as possible, put as much as you can into each mesh buffer (sharing a texture too), use a polygon reducer on your models (see vermeer's tools collection), less splits in your uv maps (each split causes more vertices), use the hardware mesh buffer patch (no gain here on really old cards), use oct tree scene nodes for large areas, add options for configuring draw distance, a choice of smaller textures, etc.

2) For indoor rendering a simple portal system might be best. a bunch of room scene nodes that don't get populated with meshscenenode children (or at the cost of memory, maybe they just aren't visible) until you step into a bounding box that it can be seen from. when the camera has moved over certain distance, check to see each room can be seen and load/remove/show/hide the mesh if needed.

[Sd-RawK-Cab25]

thanks a bunch bitplane! i think i can understand your tips mostly, and i'll try to implement them. thanks! think i'd be refering to you bitplane, in the future. thanks again! :D

[vermeer]

your doing VERY hi poly for each model.

imho, you need to master the art of low pol techniques in modelling. Don't trust in Max rpimitives for that, you need to work with extrudes, and low level vertex work, and working well with the smooth groups (not meshsmooth or any subdivision) , as normals can give round aspect to avoid extra polies.

Yup, a quick way is use Vizup optimizer, is the best I have tested for free, specially 1.8. I guess bitplane means the link in my sig, I think I uploaded there long ago, as 1.8 is not anymore in internet (i have it)

But imho, much better to do all low poly from start.

I have modeled a whole neighbourhood , of streets, and all, and not killing a much lowe pc. Of course, using loads of low pol and texturing techniques.

[vermeer]

oh, now it is ...lol.
maybe ppl rrealized how useful it is.

http://www.softsland.com/VIZup.html

[bearSoft]

@ vermeer
Dont know if u are getting regular praise for keeping this usefull and up-to-date collection of plugins?
If not u can considder this as one
Thank You! :)