Gun Models. What you don't understand. Srsly.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Darkhand, Aug 3, 2013.

  1. Darkhand

    A Developer can come in and tell me I'm wrong but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they cannot re-do all of the models as much as everyone in here wants. At least not so everyone sees them.

    What I'm saying is if they can re-use the same model over and over it keeps the memory cost of the game client down.

    If they use completely different models then your client has to cache all of those models and the memory footprint of PS2 will increase expotentially.

    MAYBE they can make it so your view of the gun is different but I don't think they can do it so everyone else sees it.
  2. gigastar

    So what youre saying is that you have no confidence in what the devs want to do.

    Nothing to see here, move along.
    • Up x 2
  3. Vaphell

    it's 'exponentially'
    yes, devs have a bunch of building blocks in few variants and put them together to create the whole model. Yes, it's a nifty hack and i applaud devs for it but what's preventing them from churning out few variants more with more unique flavor to them? Currently the variants have rather minute differences, eg i have 3 BASRs and they look the same to me. Few times i picked wrong loadout, didn't notice it and then was very surprised that the rifle didn't behave as i expected when i fired (different model, different ballistics).
    I think adding few uniquely looking elements would be peanuts memory wise compared to the effect all these paid cosmetics have (dozens of helmets, armors, trims, camos, etc).
  4. Arcanorum

    I'm doing game development at college and in my own time, and having unique models for more guns would have minimal impact on the game's performance. Considering everything else that is taken into account when when play the game, having a few extra models will make almost no noticeable difference. It is just fluff.

    I imagine the reason they haven't all had unique models so far is due to time constraints/having better stuff to do. The weapon artist or whoever they have making them will no doubt be making new models for existing weapons when not working on new ones.

    I doubt many people have stopped playing just because loads of guns look the same.
    • Up x 3
  5. ovakin

    Imagine going into a fight when your faction has 40% pop, and both sides have 48+ people. Each of them has their own guns model, attachments, camo , shooting animation, reload animation... etc
    And PS2 is x86 and cannot be allocated more than 4 GB of memory.
    Ever notice that stutter when a large number of people spawn suddenly to save a base, that can be as bad as crashing your game?
    • Up x 1
  6. whitupiggu

    Guns already use separate files. New models will have no more effect on performance than the current ones.
  7. ovakin

  8. whitupiggu

    The stuttering is caused by your CPU processing all the tracking data its getting. Has nothing to do with the amount of data being cached.
    • Up x 1
  9. Darkhand

    Files on your Hard drive is not the kind of memory we are talking about here. If you want to understand the difference I'll be happy to explain it.
  10. Darkhand


    I do believe you're wrong here as well sir
  11. ovakin

    That's a good point but I've just checked, all of those individual meshes are LOD0 for First Person View. I cannot seem to find meshes for guns on other people view. But based on naming convention my guess is that levels of detail for different guns in one weapon class on third person view are the same. IMO only of course, but pretty sure.
  12. windexglow

    Right now most of the weapons in the classes all look very similar. In the preview pic and first person, let alone third person. Some of the vanu smgs look more like assault rifles and vice versa. Switching to NC or VS all the weapons look damn near the same to me. It serves no point at all. I've wasted real money because of how similar they look.
    I don't understand why the developers spent so little time on such a critical feature of the game. The damn thing takes up a significant portion of the screen at all times. How is that not important? Next to UI your weapon model is probably one of the most important things on the screen.

    Ram : What ram? We're talking about a single relatively low polygon object with a diffuse, normal, spec, and maybe a reflection (which is shared anyway). And that's only going to be for your weapon, no one elses. Any other weapon is going to be very low res. Since most weapons only have a particle effect when fired, they could be batched together so rendering cost is even lower.


    I don't get what you're talking about here. I don't get how ram goes up exponentially with more weapons.
    • Up x 1
  13. FrontTowardEnemy

    No, doesn't work that way. The big impact is texture maps with respect to memory. That being said, you can use a single texture map for multiple weapons if you map the same map to multiple models, and the models can be different, the UV maps different as well, and still use the same texture map.

    Maybe I need to set about extracting the models/maps/textures from the game and play around with them a bit in Max... o_O
  14. HerpTheDerp

    Dear OP,

    You have no idea what you're talking about.

    Sincrerely,

    Herp
  15. GhostAvatar


    Short answer; LOD
  16. LowTechKiller

    I'm calling shenanigans here. NO ONE playing this game has free time for college.:p
  17. ovakin


    OK lets talk about First Person View models
    -Complex meshes for third person view is pretty much insane, and a dead end when it comes to makes more guns to sell.
    -Simple meshes for TPV, completely different meshes when in FPS. There will be people whine about that.

    Which they did, for example every "stock" NC guns use the same 5 textures, total size of those on disc is 32.5 MB. The official recommended system requirement is 1024MB video memory. And the gun is not the only thing rendered onscreen.
    Now they need to makes new guns somehow, and new meshes need to all be UV-ed to those maps.
    And that restrict creativity, ask me, I know, spent a whole year a while back just to optimize models UVs.

    The re-skinned update a few GUs back means that they acknowledge the issue and were trying out a few things to see if they can be applied to the rest.

    Mad respect to the DEV team, I learned a lot digging through your files.


    Do your home works before talking in public, or at least put a IMHO.
    And yeah, all the things I said, is IMHO.
  18. Darkhand


    Dear Herp,

    Learn how to use forums.

    Sincerely,
    Darkhand
  19. Darkhand

    This is how things work in my opinion.

    Everything in your game needs memory to run so lets make a simple game.

    O = You
    X = Your Weapon

    Lets say each piece of information you game client needs for you to play takes 1 bit of memory. So the game needs to know where the player is, who (faction) the player is, and what kind of gun the player is holding. So that means each player takes up 3 bits of memory.

    So if you have ten players you now are taking up 3 bits of memory you now have 30 bits of memory being used for 10 people on the screen.

    Now lets add in weapons If there are like 5 different types of weapons it's like this

    O = You
    X = Your Weapon (1-5)

    So now the game not only needs to keep the players location and the weapon they are holdin but it also needs to be prepared to show what kind of weapon each person is holding so you're adding another bit so now each player is 4 bits.

    Then you add in gender, helmets, armor, etc., etc., etc. sure your player is still 7 bits a person of data but you need to keep all of this information in your resident memory so it doesn't have to chug every time a new model shows up on the screen your client hasn't pre-rendered.

    O= You
    X = Your Weapon
    S = Scope
    G = Gender
    H = Helmet
    A = Armor
    C = Camo


    So that's why you want to cut down on how many variables each person can have or at least what they look like in 3rd person view.

    Yes you can use LOD (Level of Detail) to scale things up and down but it will impact people with slower computers more than not. LOD not withstanding.
  20. whitupiggu

    If it uses a separate file on the HDD it will put into memory separately as well.

    He could have been referring that stuttering when you first enter a large battle. Which is data being read off the HDD.