Elemental makes use of a brand new 3D engine developed specifically for PC strategy games. Its multithreaded design along with dynamic LOD (level of detail) allows for it to look great on a wide range of hardware.
To see and understand why Elemental can look good on low end hardware and yet benefit further from higher end hardware see for yourself how the dynamic LOD works:
Look very very closely here. This isn’t one 3D object. This is dozens of 3D objects. The engine determines how powerful your hardware is and based on that can choose to display objects based on that.
As more objects come into view, certain “less important” objects start to fade away:
Did something change?
Look closely. Did something change?
How about now?
As a result of the object-based system that Kumquat provides, the graphics look identical at a casual glance and yet, the polygon count is dramatically less in the third image.
And users with very low end hardware can simply play using the sprite based output (cloth map mode):
Because Kumquat is a PC-only graphics engine, it can make a different set of trade offs than the traditional cross-platform engine. Namely, it can assume players have a considerable amount of memory (1 gigabyte is the minimum total system memory to play a Kumquat based game – very little on a PC but twice what a current generation console has). Thus, a given game object can be made up of many sub-objects (which use more memory) but can be dynamically turned on or off based on 3D hardware instead of having to load up lower-quality 3D models.
"the 2 GB limit for 32 bits Windows?"
Actually 4gb total. So 2gb is the effective limit for system ram only if you have a 2gb graphics card.
Example: I'm currently 3gb system and 512mb graphics. Works fine. Plan to buy a new rig for Elemental, but wait for it to come out and then ask lots of questions before I decide what to spend my $ on.
Well my problem was I had 4 gigs of ram plus another gig of video ram. Add to that the 4 gig I have in my garage that I hadn't bother putting in yet thanks to 32 bit capping me at 3 gigs after video.
The upgraded OS is a rather large boost to my rig.
If you have Windows, it's 2GB. The OS reserves the other 2GB unless you do special registry hacks.
i imagine high end users will still use the cloth and sprite option. lol thats awesome
Cloth Map pffft
Thats like having cake with no frosting. While I will place the bulk of the importance on the engine. Pretty matters.
Well I guess it depends upon your definition of "remove" and "sub-objects". But I know the engines used by the games such as Morrowind, Oblivion, GTA IV, Mercenaries 2, Sim City 4 and Crysis all simplify the geometry of distant objects and outright remove/hide smaller objects depending upon distance and settings.
I think you are mistaken. This engine/deliciously underated fruit does things very differently. I'm pretty sure that bethesda, for instance, has a comparatively primative fog of war and has a radius of what will and won't load into the game. This engine does something different, though, I will have to see it for myself to know exactly what it is doing, I assume these changes are apllied automatically as performance demands become greater or is adjustable in the options section.
Also, those engines only scale within a very specific range of computer performance (either you can run them or you can't) and this one scales to all computers still able to function, an exageration to be sure, and allows for new technology to increase the visual performance for years to come.
That is unique.
So since we can make our own tiles, does the engine automatically choose what objects are important or do we set priorities for the objects?
Is it really that hard to understand the difference between the drawing distance and dynamic removal of objects based on priorities? No, it doesn't depend on the definitions of 'remove' and 'sub-objects'.
I have the same question : will we be able, in the tile editor, to choose which objects are important or not ? Or the graphic engine automatically calculates what is important or not ?
Obviously you are a not a programmer; Yes the definition of "remove" and "sub-objects" is important. Are objects being removed from memory, from video memory, simply being turned invisible or something else entirely? Are the objects just multiple models or are they something else.
Oblivion for example displayed objects based on the user's setting: only show elements in group X once camera is within range, only show elements in group Y once camera is in range, only show elements in group Z once camera is in range. Sim City 4 as well did this: cars and pedestrians (IE: objects that add more detail) only began being displayed once the camera was within a certain range.
At any rate you completely failed to offer a single constructive point to a conversation that had nothing to do with you. Keep your mouth closed next time (or more accurately, keep your fingers motionless).
I'm familiar with how the other mentioned engines work (in regards to how they scale quality / detail) to a certain degree - and you're right. It just seems that Elemental's engine is simply taking away the settings (from games such as GTA IV) and is instead setting everything relating to draw-distances internally within the actual engine. The engine could be taking a survey of video memory and scaling the settings based on that alone. This is why I was asking what the difference was - not to be rude or because I was unfamiliar with how game engines work, but because I was curious.
It should be noted that running a 32-bit app that is flagged as Large Address Aware but running on 64-bit Windows it can access up to 4GB of memory. Each 32-bit process gets a flat 4GB memory map. On a 32-bit OS, some of those addresses have to be reserved for kernel and hardware, but on a 64-bit they don't. So LAA apps can get 4GB of memory all to themselves on 64-bit systems.
If Stardock chooses to build Elemental LAA, and hopefully they will, then memory will be less of a concern, even without a native 64-bit version. 4GB is quite a lot for a game.
Hey this sounds and looks wonderful!
As a technical idiot and computer illiterate, I did not understand much of the subsequent conversation, although I tried to follow it closely. Can anyone explain to me what "32 bit" and "64 bit" *versions* of the game (which may or may not be released later) actually mean? How would that change anything, and what do I need to understand? If I am running Windows 7 on my laptop (my only computer), does that mean I have a "64 bit" machine, and that I will need to run a "64 bit version" of the game, or does it mean if I run a 64 bit "version" of the game that things will somehow be "better" (how?)? Will the graphics card of my laptop play the largest, or only a small role in determining the goodies I get to see on Kumquat?
Thank you for answering
onomastikon, as I understand 32bit & 64bit, the BASE OS is installed either 32bit for legacy & total memory pool of 4gb or 64bit with limited legacy support and total ram installed in system up to 128GB currently again depending upon the particular os(from what I remember the xp64bit is about 16gb limit, the vista 64bit I think to be 32gb and win7 64bit upto 128gb), but 32bit LAA programs given 4gb data space +1gb program space & 64bit programs allowed to use all available (not reserved for OS, IO & other applications, which in a 12gb machine means about 8-10gb of data for the program, and the more data the larger the world OR more detailed the world.
harpo
re: LOD DIfferences
The major selling point with the Elemental engine is that LOD is handled in a matter more appropriate for strategy games...it's based on zoom level, not distance from camera. With distance based LOD, you're iterating through all those objects and performing that visibility check that can get really expensive if the scene gets busy. The way our sceneview tree is implemented meens there are really only 7 major checks being done to toggle the visibility of those objects, resulting in a significant speed boost. Of course, if you're zoomed in then we have to cull against screen position, but that ends up being a pretty inexpensive operation, allowing the crazy zoom levels you'll see when Beta 2 ges released.
re: Kumquat as an Engine Name
Our original engine was developed by Mike Duffy who named that engine 'Pear'. Since we weren't selling/marketing it, we kept with the fruit theme.
What's wrong with having the engine with the name of a fruit? If we were talking about naming the engine after female personal hygiene products, then maybe. But fruits?
*waits for the Banana engine*
Ok, so I can understand the coolness technically with this graphics engine, but I must say the end result looks very bland. Theres just no detail! The cel-shading doesn't do it for me either, i get the feeling it is one of those things you add to cover up for the lack of details and hope that no one will notice. I'm afraid cel-shading will be "sooooo 2009" and we will all hate it eventually (I already do).
The graphics are the thing that makes me least excited about this game, and I'm even afraid it will ruin the whole experience for me.
Hopefully things can be made better over time with modding.
If you've never had a kumquat, now is a good time to try. My "rebel" kid and I love them.
I can't wait for this game to be done.
I immedietly came to think about WarCraft IIIs engine as it removed animations if your hardware wasn't up to par (which mine wasn't )
What's the specs needed for max performance in 1920x1080 ?
But yeah, that's defaintly the risk we took in going with a direction that didn't rely on a bunch of normal and specular maps to pull off the look. The trade off is an game where you can zoom out on one side of the world and seamlessly zoom into the other. We'll see what people say when Beta 2 comes out and everyone gets their first taste of it in motion.
Hah! Good call Zubaz, the great thing is with a good system one can do both! The cloth map for planning strategic moves. Then the zooming in to watch the carpenters building a new addition to the town or watching that BPA (bloody party of adventurers) stirring up trouble which brings in the more RPG elements.
With a new upgrade for my rig coming soon (bday present to self. All I will be keeping is hard drives and case) will be getting to enjoy the max LOD.
Hell yeah, especially since I can't Sins to work on my pc. Have no idea why, either, because it worked just fine in the past...
You cannot please everyone.
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