Hi, I was wondering if someone could give me an opinion on what they think about this: Most games never support a situation where there is lets say 50 fighters in one area as if it is a real war. In order to that, polycount has to be cut back alot and this would result in graphics that are worse than other games at the time. I have always been very interested in a game where you can be part of a massive battle almost as if it is a full war situation. I really don''t want to cut back on polys that much but what if multi-resolution meshes was used to bring down polys only during the times when there is lots of people on screen. The quality loss would probably be very noticable. What would the player think of a sudden drop in quality? They might not notice if they are into the game but would it be considered a big minus to the game for a big quality loss to come out of no where? Would it be considered a bad factor of the game or do you think the player wouldn''t really notice or care as much since its only temporary and occurs during war situations? I really want to place such a thing into the game but would really like to know what some developer''s opinions are on a system such as this which results in a quality drop in the middle of the game. Thanks in advance

I think that is a great idea. I think the players would notice, but not care because it only happens during those times, I think the player would understand the reason why. As long as it increased the gameplay value, it sounds like a good compromise to me. You could do a LOD thing where as the overall resolution is reduced as more characters come on the screen, the closest characters are still higher res than the background characters.

that''s nothing to my vision =D. My ultimate game would be one w/ massively huge battles w/ hundreds of soldiers on each side, hundreds of armored vehicles and aircraft duking it out. If this isn''t enough polys then add in the real-time terrain deformation and accurate physics/collision detection/damage models. WWIIO comes close to some of these things, red faction comes closest to the real-time terrain deformation, soldier of fortune has good damage modelling. We just need a single game that has everything =)

Shogun, Total War

Erm... The player won''t notice when the 50 fighters start to cut down on poly''s... When there are 50 fighters on the screen, more then half are shooting at you!!!! (including friendly fire off course :p )

In a *good* game, you are too busy to notice under such conditions...

Thanks all