Rob : Thanks for the offer, and that is a great model. Here's the problem. The screenshot above is taken from my options screen where the camera revolves constantly. It's better for screenshots because it adds a bit of variety to the angle and it's the only game mode I have where two CPU players play each other.
If I use a static camera for the rest of the game modes, that limits the portion of the crowd that is visible. But a static camera has to be zoomed out slightly in order to show all the playable court. I'm not switching the camera when the players change ends ( you play from the top and the bottom of the screen ) so that saves that. But even so, that's a bare minimum of 18 rows of people visible from the static camera. That's 16,416 polys for the crowd. That number of poly's alone would probably slow some of the onboard Intel chips down too much for the game to be playable, and I'm very serious about making the game playable on low spec machines.
If I thought I could get this published commercially, then I could afford commercial minimum requirements, but I don't see that happening. If there are any representatives of commercial publishers prowling the board, feel free to prove me wrong :P I can see this being published as on a shareware site though, and I really need to maximize my customer base if I'm only earning on a per-sale basis ( no advance. )
If the demo proves unplayable on low spec machines, and the extra poly's don't do too much damage on the cards that can play it anyway, I might consider it.
I'll drop you an email about the model, and take a look at it in game. It'll probably be a temptation to use it once I see it in action, but I really can't see being able to afford another 16,000 poly's.
Thanks Ruz, I'm glad someone likes it the way it is, because it's probably not gonna be viable to do differently.
If I use a static camera for the rest of the game modes, that limits the portion of the crowd that is visible. But a static camera has to be zoomed out slightly in order to show all the playable court. I'm not switching the camera when the players change ends ( you play from the top and the bottom of the screen ) so that saves that. But even so, that's a bare minimum of 18 rows of people visible from the static camera. That's 16,416 polys for the crowd. That number of poly's alone would probably slow some of the onboard Intel chips down too much for the game to be playable, and I'm very serious about making the game playable on low spec machines.
If I thought I could get this published commercially, then I could afford commercial minimum requirements, but I don't see that happening. If there are any representatives of commercial publishers prowling the board, feel free to prove me wrong :P I can see this being published as on a shareware site though, and I really need to maximize my customer base if I'm only earning on a per-sale basis ( no advance. )
If the demo proves unplayable on low spec machines, and the extra poly's don't do too much damage on the cards that can play it anyway, I might consider it.
I'll drop you an email about the model, and take a look at it in game. It'll probably be a temptation to use it once I see it in action, but I really can't see being able to afford another 16,000 poly's.
Thanks Ruz, I'm glad someone likes it the way it is, because it's probably not gonna be viable to do differently.