Been jamming to get all my loose ends tied up so don't expect fast replies from me until after the weekend when I have time to get an official thread going. Just wanted to drop by and say how much I appreciate every-body's enthusiasm. I've got a few minutes so I'll try to answer a couple questions while I'm here...
Quote: "May I ask what kind of release this will be? Official Model Pack im guessing?"
That's an accurate guess.
Quote: "are these models high poly or low poly?
On a typical model what is the average poly count?"
Another point for TiTaniUm as these run between 3300 and 4100 triangles.
Quote: "what is the impact of these models on the frame rate within FPSC - does it start to lag with a few of these models on screen (coupled with other entities and segments etc)?"
This will depend a lot on the PC's specs. As FPSC advances, PC specs and graphics settings play into the equation a lot more. These are definitely more resource intensive than say, model-pack 1 so if you've been lagging with them you will be more-so lagging with these. Developer's will still have to be smart with enemy placement, that certainly hasn't changed.
The main impact developers will need to be mindful of is that these character's use shaders with 1024 diffuse maps and 2048 normal maps and have extra animations so they will push you to the build cap faster. Of course, you can always downsize the maps if desired to trade visual quality for size/performance. There are certian combinations that share maps though so that with clever level design this impact can be reduced.
One nice thing about Dark AI is that, for me at least, you get initial overhead when you place the first couple characters but after that point you can place several more without so much impact. For example, I don't really notice FPS change from having a 1 vs. 1 battle and a 3 vs. 3 battle. That said, I've taken a lot of time in making the AI difficult so that if the player is fighting 2 or more AI at once they will probably meet a pretty quick death. Also, because the AI is more active, designers can get away with using higher enemy hitpoint values without it looking so silly. I have defaulted to 300 HP/each in the FPEe to reflect that though if you were to give 500-100HP you can get some cool, drawn-out fights.
There will also be a couple different script options- Default AI which is pretty straightforward and can be used for enemy or allies (split into main and shoot AI so you can do a bit of mix and matching) and another optional AI set for advanced users which allows allies you can give disposition, rules of engagement, posture and formation orders to in addition to being able group them into fireteams and give orders remotely. However, it is much more cpu intensive than the default AI and requires a bit more setup on the designers part. I'll reveal more about that in the coming week.
Quote: "Any chance of getting the Max files if we buy them? The models are great but the format is useless to me atm. However Max files I can use."
The street price of the pack will be too low to include max files but I may consider limited side-sales.
Quote: "Hey errant, did you ever decide to do a multi-player version of these guys? I remember saying you made a section of these troops dedicated to the animations in MP?"
If there is enough interest in it, I can do this as a bonus pack. Mostly it's an issue of pack DL size but seeing as how I now need to go through all the 100+ FPEs to add the limb settings now I can also reconfigure the texture paths to use texturebank in lieu of entitybank which should pave the way for a MP bonus pack which would need only to include .x and .fpes. It's sort of too bad the multiplayer anims are so limited because I added a jump/hop anim.
Anyhow; back to the grindstone!
