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Re: Concerning units and building models
Aurelius
We tested the idea of building out the models with armament and such. While it makes things abit more unique, our testers found that everyone was designing everything pretty much the same. Given the cost it was placing on the rendering time, we removed the code and went toward a huge array of ships, units, and structures instead. This made things easier for the video card and made the client work better. While it has been done in other games, a game of this magnitude must always consider the ramifications of adding all the models when considering 1000 objects on the screen at one time. If each model had 4 armaments, that increase to 4000 objects to render. This makes things slow for some cards.
Our goal therefore shifted to make the game great fun at the price of some finer graphical enhancements. This adjustment made a side effect that is really great. Our players started to build two different prototypes of the same hull design. One prototype was weak and easy to kill…the other, not so easy…I am sure you understand how this could be a good strategy…meat-grinders are always fun to construct.
In conclusion, the hulls you select have a fixed appearance, but the shields, the engine glow, weapons firing, etc, are all configurable.
Csaj
and of course the stats of all the components held within the unit or building are customizable.
