[Aginor]

Knight flies on your wing in the Dakota system, in a Raptor. That's right.
Also on the losing path in Port Hedland in a Scimitar.

[Wobble73]

His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! 

[Spoon]

His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! 

"I'll bite your legs off!"

[Wobble73]

His name was Knight and he was black....HHmmmmmmmmm! 

"I'll bite your legs off!"

"Pfftt, tis bearly a scratch!"

[Woolie Wool]

In WC1/2 I think Doomsday was actually Maori despite appearing black.

[Lorric]

I see black guys is still a subject here. Well, I found one. I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol. At the last nav, a black guy gives you an information packet.

[Dragon]

It's a very small part though. IIRC, there was one captain (TCS Cabot?) who also looked black.
They have only a few lines though.

[Scooby_Doo]

I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol.

Oh that reminds me.... to whoever it was who was wondering why I needed so many textures for one model... thats the model 

[Aginor]

And it turned out great.
I'm still blown away every time I see that station.

@Woolie Wool:
Correct, as I mentioned earlier in the thread you could easily tell by the black lines on his face. That's a Maori warpaint.

[Dragon]

I just got past the mission where you're at the Torgo base and run a patrol.

Oh that reminds me.... to whoever it was who was wondering why I needed so many textures for one model... thats the model 

Eck. That's the most inefficient model I've seen since Steve-O. 25 textures? That makes for at least 82 maps in toto. Surely, you don't need all of them. Thankfully, no mission should require more than one. But it still has too many textures, even more than some old WCS models, like the Concordia-class from WC4 recreation.

[newman]

There's a simple solution. Model and texture that station so it looks as good as the one in WCS but is more efficient. In the mean time, the current one seems to work just fine without FPS drops for me. It's tempting to say things like that, but speaking as someone who's fully modeled and textured quite a bit of stuff, when you see someone doing something as enormous you might want to cut them some slack, especially if it works in the end. Getting huge stuff just looking right (let alone working right) in the game is a whole different ball game to pretty much anything else. You want it to look good while you're still reasonably close, and you want it to be nice and detailed. And it's huge. Sorry, that's going to cost. Sure you can optimize and save here and there by smart planning, tiling where applicable, etc, but in the end anything that huge will be a resource hog if you want it looking right. If it works on most current systems without issues, it's probably best to count your blessings and leave it.

[Dragon]

Combining it's model-specific maps into 5 4096^2 maps could already give a performance improvement, and those maps could be scaled down to 2048 for low-end users. Also, for some reason, two of it's maps are duplicates of your general-purpose maps. So, there's potential for even more cuts. It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.

[karajorma]

So now you need two separate sets of VPs for high end and low end users.

Welcome to the start of support hell. Enjoy your long sledge ride down the slippery slope.

[Aginor]

@Dragon:
Well, the low-end users don't seem to mind.
Those with performance problems usually complain about the huge fleet battles' performance on their PC, I think I haven't read a single complaint about performance in the missions with the station yet.

[Dragon]

Maybe they heven't got there yet.  WCS missions are really long, and it appears more than 20 missions in.

[NGTM-1R]

Torgo

ThE mAsTeR wOuLd NoT aPpRoVe.

[Tolwyn]

Combining it's model-specific maps into 5 4096^2 maps could already give a performance improvement, and those maps could be scaled down to 2048 for low-end users. Also, for some reason, two of it's maps are duplicates of your general-purpose maps. So, there's potential for even more cuts. It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.

Torgo alone would not result in an FPS drop. Our VRAM/RAM memory consumption is fairly low and the Torgo model does not put a lot of strain on the GPU. There is also a reason why Torgo uses "duplicate" maps.

Using 4096 maps is out of the question since older GPUs do not support texture resolutions above 2048. It is a support nightmare. Actually, the only models that cause slow downs (according to the received feedback) are asteroids from the media VP.

Torgo HQ works just fine in our missions. If you use it in a large combat scenario (which will have a huge fps impact), now that is not my problem.

[Alan Bolte]

For the purpose it was meant for, i.e. "Holy crap that's huge and doesn't look like someone scaled it too big," I'd say Torgo is very effective.

[newman]

It seems like you don't care for low-end users though.

If that was directed at me, I'm not (and never was) a WCS member, so even if the above statement was true, it would be rendered irrelevant by the fact that I'm not on their team. So you might want to cool off a bit. But as someone who has quite a bit of experience modeling and texturing assets to be used in a fs2_open based projects, I can tell you that you definitely need to have a lot of experience with this sort of stuff, then have first hand knowledge of the project, speak with the artist and understand why he made the choices he made, and finally have some test results that actually confirm that there is a problem, before you go making qualified statements that the author didn't optimize enough.

Or, you could talk out of your @ss. Throwing the statement about "not caring for low end users" and then requesting 4096x4096 maps - 5 of them, no less - which low end graphics cards don't even support was worth a chuckle, though

[Sombre]

I've played the first 10 missions or so of WCS then replayed them since the mouse patch arrived.

I found this a useful review. I think the main points it raised aren't being discussed though - the posts here are about the minor diversity issue and the potential for one model to possibly cause problems.

Personally I'm wary about the campaign now because I was expecting some development of/around the main character who already seems like a mix of doormat noob and battle hardened veteran (in his own eyes only apparently). Is WCS supposed to be character driven, or is Sandman just a way for us to be there like Alpha 1?