Cornflakes_91 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2017 8:43 am
my last point is about dynamic changes to the model, not predefined ones.
but its about minor changes on the surface, not significant changes through the volume or even topology changes (cutting stuff off).
like impact/deflection marks on the hull.
where, say, a laser cut across the hull theres a small glowy indent along the path.
and the question is how expensive would "small" changes be when you dont have to think about topology changes which you can still include in the collision mesh on large ships.
so that when a particularily large ship hit by a particularily large cannon maybe has a large enough gouge in its hull that you can fly into that gouge with a particularily small fighter.
pre-edit: This is not just to you, so apologies if I'm explaining things you already know. Not meaning to sound patronizing
This varies entirely depending on how much deformation you want. Due to the way polygons are likely to exist after the remeshing/optimization process, you might be able to get away with deforming corners. Otherwise you're going to have to re-mesh the whole thing, and then re-optimize. If you just want a couple dents, that shouldn't be too much more difficult than adding a few extra vertices and denting them in slightly. This could look weird in many instances, though, so it would have to be controlled - you'd need to know the thickness of the surface so you weren't accidentally denting something through to the other side. (And if you were, and you wanted that to be a hole, then you have even more math you're going to be dealing with.) However, that's on the simple side of things, because we're only dealing with a handful of points. If, however, you want a long, glowing gash across a ship... well, then, that will be probably hundreds (if not thousands) of new vertices, and a great many calculations to the point that you're basically doing another geometry subtraction algorithm like with the chunk idea - minus the added floating chunk, of course. That's still a significant amount, though, and if we want to extend that to hundreds of lasers from dozens of ships, we can expect significant slowdown (if not a sudden crawl).
As to the gouge, that's essentially the same chunk extraction method, minus the floating chunk, same as the laser gash. If you want to fly into that gouge, you have even more calculations incoming. If you want that gouge to look like the inside of the ship (decks, rooms, etc) instead of a flat-sided hole, then you can expect so many calculations that it almost certainly wouldn't be feasible for anything other than a pre-rendered movie.
Now, something you didn't mention: Slicing ships completely in half. This is almost certainly feasible, because
slicing meshes across a solid plane is actually incredibly easy. All you have to do is find the lines that intersect a plane, add vertices, detach, and cap the ends. That's it. The textures on the end might look a bit odd, but it's probably the simplest destruction method you could possibly do.
And seeing as you'd only see it on destroyed ships, it probably wouldn't take too much processing time either.
post-edit:
N810 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:00 am
Perhaps just some primitive particle effects and some smoke,
and maybe like a texture patch to show the burnt/damaged hull ?
I'm hoping Josh at least does this.
I'm sure he'll do particle effects. Smoke? Maybe. Texture patches? Hopefully he'll at least do that, it's always nice to see
some effect of the damage you're dealing visually.
But all of the things you mentioned are very simple and not very taxing, so completely on the table.