Addendum to the Public Service Announcement:
There's been some worry here about the desire to have hard guidelines about how many boundary-box vertices are enough vs. too much. To echo Trylobot's advice, there can be no
absolute limits here because the solution is not a single number value; it's a relative
range of effect, dependent upon the complexity of the sprite in question. But total surrender to the over-intricate aesthetics of any given modded-made sprite is definitely not in anyone's best interests.
At this point in the discussion, I thought it would be helpful to provide some concrete examples of what to aim for.
Here are some examples of the bounds polygons for official Starfarer units. These guides should help greatly -- please compare them to your own modder-made creations, and you'll quickly get a better feel for "how many is too many". Official ships often have quite a lot
fewer bounds points than you might assume they do.....
This is a superb example of what Alex mentioned about keeping the bounds well inside of the sprite. And I bet some of you are shocked that a shape as visually irregular as this sprite can be satisfactorily bounded within only 19 vertices. Designers of 100-plus vertex bounds, please take note.
Oh, those lovely high-tech curves! Yet in bounds terms, it's treated like a hand-held gardening trowel. No computer performance hit from
this bounds box!
Even with this fearsome hull, one can see a few places where this boundary box can be simplified further with no ill effects. Check out those side missile slots.
Perfect demonstration of what Alex meant when he counseled ValkyriaL about how to handle the gap in the bow: just zig-zag straight to the bottom, and right back out again.
It's a brick!
Sure, it's a streamlined hull of pure awesome, but still a brick of only
5 bounds.
Imitate it.
Everyone can now see how when it comes to bounds, additional data does not necessarily equal
additional useful information. Ships can and do get by just fine on surprisingly few boundary points. Coverage of engine exhausts does not need to be encyclopedic in its scope; that's often the first place one can delete several vertices from modder-made ships.
And even some official ships can afford to lose a few bounds, as we saw with the Conquest. The Astral is difficult to meaningfully slim down its vertex count further, while the Paragon can definitely afford to give up as many as 8 of them.
There are many customers of Fractal Softworks who do not fit the assumed profile of "serious gamer" from a hardware standpoint. It is very important to remember that. Even if someone does have a
moderate-performance box -- instead of a 10-year-old computer stuck with WinXP SP1 and only 1024MB RAM (how soon we forget) -- their graphics card may still be well behind the curve by a rather
wide margin. For reasons of technical know-how as well as basic finance, many of these acceptable but unspectacular machines are unlikely to improve. It is not reasonable to cut these folks out of your audience when you spec out mods which include ships of fiendishly-clever but also unnecessary complexity.
The RAM, CPU and video card of many older computers thank you for your friendly restraint.
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Topic: Starsector PSA #1: Your Ship's Bounds Polygon Is Too Detailed (Read 168297 times)