some Eyecandy...

[King]

Ummm... Texturing the bridges is a BIG no-no. Sky? Sure.

But if you toss a texture onto the bridge, that means that you're texturing thousands of polygons. Think about it... each SECTION of bridge has how many individual steel beams? It'd take a LOT of processing power to do something like that, and P-flex runs slow enough on the big levels as is.

Having said that, a simple texture on the sky couldn't hurt

Ummm yeah, I hadn't thought of that. It could still work for other materials though, like if we ever got wood...there'd only be six polygons per section for that.

[beaujob]

I don't think it's be too much of a change to just make beams into a single actual physical piece of metal shaped like, interestingly enough, a beam.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the strength and rigidity of the I-beam has been universally recognized.  Also, a big plus of the "I" shape, very little problems with bending in one direction.

So, a graphical representation of stresses could just show red or blue on either side of the beam to indicate bending to one side or the other.  This would look very slick to  have the one beam all kinds of different colors in various patterns based on the different forces acting on it.

As to the difficulty of this, since ChronicLogic know a thing or two about physics, I don't think they'd have much trouble implementing this sort of physics.

[mendel]

Texturing is done by your 3D gfx card, not by the CPU, and should not cost much performance.

[pulsejet5]

it would also be better if the sun moved when you hit the sun+ or sun- instead of it just getting brighter or darker

Water that reflects.
Texture maps on materials (eg rusty steel, a nice spiral effect on the cables). This'll become vital I think if (when?) we get more materials to play with.

There's definately room for improvement on the graphics side (I think the best word for them now is "functional"). Having said that, I'd put this way, way down on my priority list.

[Ravean]

Could always make textures an option so people with the slower systems could turn it off

[baggio]

Quote: from pulsejet5 on 4:21 pm on Oct. 27, 2001
it would also be better if the sun moved when you hit the sun+ or sun- instead of it just getting brighter or darker

I agree,a picture with skies,sun with lens flare,reflective water,maybe some sort of textures on the bridge material,"watersplash" when parts of the bridge hit the water

[beaujob]

The graphics side of Pontifex is definitely very weak.  I don't know of any basic system requirements offered by ChronicLogic, however, the intense physics calcuations dictate a fairly high processor.

If you have a crappy video card, like my TNT 2, or a Voodoo 3, you're not going to be able to do as much physics if you have to do more eyecandy.  This is a cunundrum indeed.

I do think, however, that with some massaging of the graphics code, you could free up some GPU/CPU power for stuff like rippling water and hilly ground and god knows what else...  I'm not certain that textures affect the rendering speed at all.  They certainly won't eat up any processor unless you have like, a S3 VIRGE.

Bottom line, I'm already gonna go buy a new video card for this game, because the physics and video calculations can't both live on an Athlon 800 and a TNT2 Ultra.  So, as far as I'm concerned, it's okay to throw in some nice graphics features to give my hot new GeForce 3 something to play with.

[rrheuts]

take a look at the topic '2 ideas', the rendering thing is a sollution for the people who want eyecandy, and for the people who just wanna play pontifex on their laptops.

about the sun thing: some shadows would be nice, the effect of the moving sun is much clearer to see then. But after a while the shadows would start to annoy I think.

[Simplimus]

Hey guys, a nice looking sky might be some awesome thing but I do definitely not support the idea that this should be grounds for an update or something. Sure, there is room for improvement but the main idea of this game is to enjoy using your brain and constructing bridges. I would still enjoy it as much if I couldn't change the color of every part, even if the ground was grey like in the older version.

For heaven's sake, shut up wanting these stupid improvements, this is not "Look at the wonderful scenery!" but "Build a solid bridge!"

What I would prefer is a missionpack, a collection of the toughest challenges. This is what I see as necesary!

Now, go ahead and build your thing!

[Entroper]

King, if you add a single texture to a polygon, it won't slow down even on a TNT.  GeForce and above could add another texture layer for detail and still not break a sweat.

I think giving the bridge some textures could actually speed up the engine if you don't have a T&L capable graphics card.  If you replaced each 'link' with a cube (instead of drawing all those crossbars), you'd go from 24 cylinders to 6 squares.  Even if the cylinders only have like, 6 faces, it's a tremendous improvement -- the number of polygons would go from 288 (24x6x2) to 12 (6x2).  That cuts the polygon work for links by a factor of 24!  Similarly, replace beams with textured faces, and you get more big savings on polygons, at no extra cost for the textures.

[Andy24]

I tried to edid a screen shot so it would have some eyecandy but the image quality isn't really good enough. would it be possible to take higher quality screenshots. mabey a button or something.

well..but fun with nice graphic also