The following is the URL to an untextured model:

http://www.FreelanceGames.com/StarCry/DISx/Ship1.jpg

Basically, I wondering if I should have the weapons systems built into the model or as separate objects. If there built into the objects it will be faster to render the objects; but I limit the ability to add or remove individual weapons to the starships?

Since my current game has very few ship it probably wouldn't be a problem for the weapons to be separate objects; but I really wan't to be able reuse the graphics in the future as well. What do you think?

Also, are there any changes you would recommend to the model?

Thanks

That model looks very nice. Who did that for you?

I would keep the weapons as part of the ship model but with some kind of hooks for accessing them during the game if you want to treat them special. You could toggle them on or off during the game as needed and your rendering code could just detect that and not render them. (We call them "accessories" in our sports games.)

That model looks very nice. Who do that for you?

I would keep the weapons as part of the ship model but with some kind of hooks for accessing them during the game if you want to treat them special. You could toggle them on or off during the game as needed and your rendering code could just detect that and not render them. (We call them "accessories" in our sports games.)

Can you explain further? If there all part of the same mesh wouldn't I be forced to render them everytime?

I'd keep the turrets as separate meshes attached to the ship with scene-graph parenting. That way, you can skip drawing them when the ships are far away (LOD node), draw different turrets (switch node) signifying damage and/or upgrades, and instance the same mesh multiple times. Also, the turrets will be able to rotate and animate independently of the ship.

This is probably what Jim means when he suggests keeping the guns part of the model that you can get to. The model in this sense being an hierarchical structure.

I'd keep the turrets as separate meshes attached to the ship with scene-graph parenting. That way, you can skip drawing them when the ships are far away (LOD node), draw different turrets (switch node) signifying damage and/or upgrades, and instance the same mesh multiple times. Also, the turrets will be able to rotate and animate independently of the ship.


Thanks Wayward,

Would you also have the guns on the wings as separate objects; or leave them as base hull design?

Would you also have the guns on the wings as separate objects; or leave them as base hull design?
That's depends entirely on what you want the guns to do.

Personally, I'd prefer to detach the wing-guns and create a single, rich, living class of wing-gun with animation (recoil, tracking), and behaviour (shooting lasers), that is instanced many times.

The turrets and wing-guns can themselves be hierarchies, with separate barrels to animate the recoil, and invisible nodes that describe where the weapons fire is emitted from.

A word of caution though: the scene-graph approach can lead to lots of objects. In a few commercial space sims I've witnessed in development, number of objects can become a bottleneck.

Yeah, some kind of structure whether it's hierarchical or otherwise-based. Of course, it depends on what your inner rendering loop looks like.. or if you are using some 3rd party library to do it for you.