Author: John Merlino
Date: 13:51:08 05/11/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 11, 2002 at 10:36:13, Roy Eassa wrote: >On May 10, 2002 at 18:30:01, John Merlino wrote: > >>On May 10, 2002 at 10:18:23, Roy Eassa wrote: >> >>>On May 10, 2002 at 01:08:05, Tina Long wrote: >>> >>>>John sent me 2 screenshots showing fullscreen (approx 930pixels square) 2D Sets. >>>>They look excellent. >>>>I withdraw all my concerns about the size of the boards & pieces, & look forward >>>>to the release of CM9k. >>>> >>>>Thanks John, >>>>Tina Long >>> >>>Are they smoothly resizable? >> >>Totally. On-the-fly. >> >>There are many different levels of complexity regarding our boards and piece >>sets, obviously. Some have very low poly counts, such as simple "faceted" sets >>for users who have low-end cards. Even at full-screen 1280x1024, on an old >>NVidia RIVA TNT 2 card (which is pre GeForce and probably close to five years >>old) these sets are getting about 30 FPS (with one engine running -- 40 with no >>engines). And the most complex boards/sets are getting about 15 FPS (with one >>engine running -- 20 without). That is also with no reflections on the board, as >>that card does not support stencil buffering (I'll bet THAT term has never >>showed up on this board before!) >> >>On our top-of-the-line Radeon 8500 cards, however, get about 50 FPS on the most >>complext boards (with one engine running and board reflections). >> >>And, of course, using the "flat" sets (designed for users who like 2D setups) >>are usually even faster, because the models for the pieces are generally less >>complex. At 800x600 full-screen, the less complex boards/pieces get well over >>100 FPS with no engines running. >> >>It really is beautiful. Honestly, I wish that E3 wasn't coming up and we could >>put some screenshots on the website. <sigh> Soon.... >> >>jm > > >So, bottom line, you were able to get smoothly resizable 2D (flat) >boards/pieces. That's great!! > >The fact that you did it without using TrueType characters for the pieces is >interesting too, but to my small brain what you did seems much more difficult -- >I guess it's because the result looks nicer? MUCH nicer and much more flexible. Fonts are TRULY flat, whereas these "flat" piece sets still "look" 3D, in that they have a little bit of depth, to make it actually seem like you are looking at a real board. Also, there was no way we could make realistic looking 3D sets with fonts, so we wrote the 3D engine and just created some flat piece sets. So, really, since 3D was going to be done anyway, there was no need to bother with the font solution as well. jm
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.