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IrishBlood
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can anyone tell me what is a good pc limit for mods? and if there is a thread on this please forgive me and direct me there. thanks
babywax
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5k for average players, if it's a plot specific, like Alyx or Gordon, they're up to 7k. These are not hard limits though, you can go as high or low as you want, however, performance will suffer or get better with higher/lower polycounts.
The Dark Elf
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Don't forget LOD (Level of Detail) too.. So you could if you wanted have a really high detailed (providing the end users machine can handle it) character at a very close distance, then incredibly low poly usage further away
Also consider where the models will be seen. A bird that flies around in the sky of your mod which the player will never ever see close up can be just a few polygons, if that even, you could probably fake it with a single polygon and an animated texture + alpha channel
If on the other hand you will see them close up at some point. Do two versions, one with very few polys and one with more detail and use them in the correct places.
Also consider where the models will be seen. A bird that flies around in the sky of your mod which the player will never ever see close up can be just a few polygons, if that even, you could probably fake it with a single polygon and an animated texture + alpha channel
If on the other hand you will see them close up at some point. Do two versions, one with very few polys and one with more detail and use them in the correct places.
As Fenric and babywax have said, it depends on where the models will be seen, how close up they'll be to the player, and how many will be on the screen at once. With single player modifications, there's a little more leeway in the counts because it isn't as dynamic of an environment as multiplayer, where there could be 20 players in one area at the same time. With multiplayer mods, situations like that can occur, and with a 5,000 polygon character, that's 100,000 polygons to render, plus the maps and view models. Continued in the post below due to me not being able to post larger amounts of text, for some reason.
LOD is also very important and is a great thing to take advantage of, but don't forget the dynamics of a mulitplayer modification. If I remember correctly, Source scales back the LODs to what the user's machine can handle in real time. Say, for example, you put all of your eggs in one basket and rely completely on LOD so you can have those super high polygon characters. Players on lower end machines will suffer from wildly different visuals at different points in time. If they're moving around with a few teammates up close, they'll see them in all of their 5000 polygon glory. However, when things start to heat up and large battles are occuring with a large amount of action on screen, you'll suddenly look over to a teammate and see a 1000 polygon character that will look like a set of blocks compared to what he just saw a couple of minutes before. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this point. It's been a while since I've read anything on the specifics of the engine and how it handles dyanimc LODs.)
If you want to be safe, you could always follow Valve's specifications for their own models, which I do not know off hand. I don't want to discourage you from pushing the limits, but keep those things in mind.
If you want to be safe, you could always follow Valve's specifications for their own models, which I do not know off hand. I don't want to discourage you from pushing the limits, but keep those things in mind.
