"Right ... and? If that's all that's on the screen, save for the board, hud and some GUI thingies here and there, why would 60,000 polygons be a problem?"
Well it depends on what sort of PC you're aiming for, doesn't it.
If you are making a chess game for fun, you can aim for whatever minimum system requirements you want. However, if you intend to sell this as shareware, then you should aim at low end systems.
You MIGHT be able to just squeak by with 60K polygons on a TNT2 card. Your framerate won't be spectacular though. Of coruse, I could be mistaken. I am basing my estimate on a test I did with 50,000 trees on a Blitz terrain a while back. Now that I think about it, that would be between 100-200K polygons, and Blitz terrains are slow as hell.
Sooooo maybe 60K polygons for a chess game is a realistic benchmark to aim for. But it may not run so hot on the systems of people who still have Voodoo 2's.
Well it depends on what sort of PC you're aiming for, doesn't it.
If you are making a chess game for fun, you can aim for whatever minimum system requirements you want. However, if you intend to sell this as shareware, then you should aim at low end systems.
You MIGHT be able to just squeak by with 60K polygons on a TNT2 card. Your framerate won't be spectacular though. Of coruse, I could be mistaken. I am basing my estimate on a test I did with 50,000 trees on a Blitz terrain a while back. Now that I think about it, that would be between 100-200K polygons, and Blitz terrains are slow as hell.
Sooooo maybe 60K polygons for a chess game is a realistic benchmark to aim for. But it may not run so hot on the systems of people who still have Voodoo 2's.