maximum number of playable races

from Sins Forums

I'm sure i know the answer to this but humour me ;),  i have a friend who is interested in porting over a mod he's making to the sins engine but whats the maximum number of playable races you can add into sins, is it 10? i know the maximum number of players at one time is 10,(this being hardcdoed)  but didnt know if this is the same for factions as you can sometimes on some games have more factions to choose from than you can actaully fight with at one time.

i know the full race mod has got 6 factions all ready to go just needing editing but didnt know if anyone knew of just how many factions you can add, or has been added at one time. Cheers.

15,490 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Having 10 different races will kill the engine if they are all very different but its possible. Make 5 races to start then make copies of those using mostly the same ships with some variations in research and such. To many different models and different textures will hit the 2 gig ram limit so share lots of assets and your good to go.

You could probably have 50 racrs but you can only pick 10 to play with.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

ah right, thanks didnt realise it would be a major issuse on the ram limit though, its the sci fi at war mod for EAW and thres in the region of 10 different faction all having different models and textures, your talking 200+ different models just for ships let alone strcutures so its going to be a bit of an isssue isnt it reaistically. 

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, EaW doesn't have the trouble of having to load every model all the time like Sins.

 

:fox:

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I thought the ram limit was going away even though the cpu core limit was staying

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Sins is using less RAM with the patch. That's all.

 

:fox:

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Destraex, reply 4
I thought the ram limit was going away even though the cpu core limit was staying
End of Destraex's quote

The RAM limit is still there its just that Sins does a better job at managing its RAM usage. Adding too many races will goof this up.

Quoting gilly6666, reply 2
ah right, thanks didnt realise it would be a major issuse on the ram limit though, its the sci fi at war mod for EAW and thres in the region of 10 different faction all having different models and textures, your talking 200+ different models just for ships let alone strcutures so its going to be a bit of an isssue isnt it reaistically. 
End of gilly6666's quote

The difference is as Kitkun says. Sins loads everything. The upside is no need for loading screens aside from the first one. Downside is that its very memory intensive.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

A question--if  a ship hull is shared as a universal between races can the components (ship bridges and engine pods, etc. be utilized differntly on each model?

Say all ships of a class have "Hull-A" but each race has a different model for the bridge and engines and the like.  Will that work?

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Yes,

You just have one model and several entity files connected to it.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting SIN-Imperium, reply 7
Say all ships of a class have "Hull-A" but each race has a different model for the bridge and engines and the like.  Will that work?
End of SIN-Imperium's quote

No, that becomes a new entire model (see starbase meshes). You can tell a model to use differnt textures see (pirate meshes)

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Hmm...so in laymen's terms, the components must be grouped as a model for each ship and can't be called seperately from anywhere else?

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Yes. When a model gets an update like a starbase with new weapons it loads an entire new single mesh.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

You can have different ship meshes. That is not so much of a ram issue. The main thing you have to worry about sharing are the Textures. The textures are the single biggest user of ram in sins.

You can have several different meshes that share the same texture. So you can design for example 4 different ships, but plan on UV mapping them on just one texture sheet. That is just one way to get around the limits. Just like the Starbases, and Structures that upgrade. The all use multiple meshes to represent each upgrade, but all share the same texture.

Or you can think "smaller" and use smaller textures for your ships.

SoA 2 has 5 different factions. Each with 5 different sets of models, and textures. Why it runs without hitting the 2 gig limit (most of the time) is because we used lower resolution textures on the ship models, and we streamlined the particle system so there isnt a different particle for each, and every weapon.