.dts Limits?
by Nate "Nateholio" Watson · in General Discussion · 02/06/2004 (3:07 pm) · 2 replies
I'm wondering if there is a limit for how many .dts shapes Torque can work with at once. Obviously there is a limit as far as hardware, memory, etc. are concerned, but thats not what I'm concerned about- as I'm sure its pretty high from those perspectives.
What I'm thinking about doing is constructing buildings and other shapes from .dts sub-shape files. Basically, you would model and texture shapes like walls, floors, ceilings, etc. and then use them to cunstruct a building in-engine. Of course, texture memory may be a small problem if a lot of different textures are used.
I thought about doing this when I was pondering modelling a large city that had been nuked a couple hundred years before the player's time, using twisted steel frames, broken walls, rubble, etc. If I'm thinking correctly, texture memory consumption would be lower compared to having a lot of different shapes of entire buildings. You would model 10-20 different steel beams and assemble them in different patterns to produce destroyed buildings. The same would be done for destroyed walls and rubble piles. Not taking into account the limits of the engine itself or the hardware, you could theoretically have 104857600000000000000000000 different building frame models using only 20 textures and 20 .dts shapes using this method (I think I did that right -- 20 .dts shapes/textures ^ 20 beams per building??). Of course this assumes that the engine only loads one instance of a texture and .dts shape even though there may be more than one instance being used.
What I'm thinking about doing is constructing buildings and other shapes from .dts sub-shape files. Basically, you would model and texture shapes like walls, floors, ceilings, etc. and then use them to cunstruct a building in-engine. Of course, texture memory may be a small problem if a lot of different textures are used.
I thought about doing this when I was pondering modelling a large city that had been nuked a couple hundred years before the player's time, using twisted steel frames, broken walls, rubble, etc. If I'm thinking correctly, texture memory consumption would be lower compared to having a lot of different shapes of entire buildings. You would model 10-20 different steel beams and assemble them in different patterns to produce destroyed buildings. The same would be done for destroyed walls and rubble piles. Not taking into account the limits of the engine itself or the hardware, you could theoretically have 104857600000000000000000000 different building frame models using only 20 textures and 20 .dts shapes using this method (I think I did that right -- 20 .dts shapes/textures ^ 20 beams per building??). Of course this assumes that the engine only loads one instance of a texture and .dts shape even though there may be more than one instance being used.
#2
02/08/2004 (5:19 pm)
So does the engine load only one instance of an object and work from there, or does it load as many as are required? For example, does the engine only load one tank and tank skin into memory, even though there may be many more than one instance of the tank? Also, should I continue with this idea, or use hammer (a pain in the butt in my opinion, although its a great program)?
Associate Ben Garney