Low-Detail mod? someone?

[dirtbag]

Since im not a modeller in any case, I wonder if someone are making (or have spare time to make) a mod where the models having fewer polygons, and the textures is slightly worse... And that because I want to join a really big fight without making my computer die by the amount of polygons...
If this is the right forum I dont know but it should be?

 

[LynX]

Texture quality is not an issue, since you can adjust it in the preferences.

But models do need to be as low poly as possible. Normal weapons should be less than 150 polies each, at least thats the limit i set for myself since its rare to have weapons with alot of edges and angles and it won't be that noticeable when the stuff is textured and ingame.

Vanilla M&B is pretty heavy on polies by itself, least my comp lags when there's a big battle with bodies lying all over the place so you can turn off particles, shadows, lower the texture quality, and turn off all the other bells and whistles in the video options to improve performance.

 

[Blackspirit]

well, the crossbow is about 400 pollies, which is a lot higher then i was expecting.

I imagine if a person was going to do a low-poly mod, they'd have to redo the uv mapping, as optimizing the meshes might weird up the textures...a bit of work.

 

[jik]

it could be done. A bunch of the weapons I created (even some of the detailed ones) are 200 polies or less...

 

[MMad]

Reducing the polys on player and horse models should go a long way towards that goal, I suppose..

 

[Lemonfield]

Yes it would on slower machines as I haven't noticed or heard talk of any sort of model LOD system in the game yet. It's very important when dealing with models you see at such dynamic ranges. Forgive me if there is such a system already. I'm talking about the physical models, not just mipmaps(texture lod) here.

If you're planning on playing massive battles, I've found that CPU has just as much or more to do with low framerates in a big battle. So don't count on scaling the graphics down drastically giving you much better performance. For example, 50 horseman charging towards the enemy versus 50 horseman standing around will yield massive differences in fps. On my machine I'd guestimate from last time I played such a battle that it's the difference between say 50fps(playable) and 5(not). Clearly the AI hasn't been optimized for such large battles.

 

[catsoup]

I think the idea has alot of potencial. Not only for low-end machines. If the weapons had around 10 polygons instead of 400 for example, we could a lot more weapons in battle. Same goes for the battlefield. If it looked crappy it could have been a lot larger. The same goes to player, armor and horse models. Even if it would look disappointing, a really huge battle in m&b engine must something marvellous.

 

[jik]

10 polies is rather unrealistic. you could get rather good looking (although straight 't' shaped) swords at a really low poly (under 100), but the problem is partially LOD meshes. I don't think the engine does this, but I could be wrong. Also, the moving meshes are what needs to be optimized to have a real affect. I don't think droping the weapons poly will help alot, but I guess it would help. The problem there is you will loose variet, except for say coloring.

thinking about it, you could do a sword with:
4 sided cylindar blade (no bottom polies). The tip would be 4 polies, the length of the blade would be 8. the hilt could be a single box, thats 12 more, then a box again (without a top) that for the handle thats 10 more. if you really wanted to skimp, then you could extend the blade as the handle, dropping 8 polies from the count. that would be 24 to 34 polies.

 

[dirtbag]

Well, 30-50 polys on a sword wouldnt be too ugly...
I dont really know by myself how many polys there is on a person in the game, but a graphic detail level like Half-Life is at least acceptible and not ugly. And I suppose on an avarage model it will be almost 7/10 compared to M&B?