Ferre's Greek/Macedonian units

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Ferres, the guy who made the Roman units used in the XGM mod, has finished and released his Greek and Macedonian units, which just look incredible.

You can look them up in the "Modding Legions 1.5" thread here on TWcenter, in the Workshop subforum. Several screenshots of the units there as well. (he's working on Seleucids, Ptolemaics, and Carthaginians as well).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...46617&page=154

Is XGM planning to use the Greek and Macedonian units like they did the Roman units?

[Sextus Molestus]

Any screenshots I could look at prior to downloading? I mean, I love the Roman units, but, you know, just want to see them before I actually download them.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Yeah, they're in the thread I linked to as I said earlier, but you have to look back a few pages. RedFox, as for optimization, these are definitely more CPU intensive, but the reality is there simply isn't a way to have super awesome looking visuals on bad rigs.

So, those with rigs that can't run them will have to stick with the blockier, lower polygon and lower texture res stuff, but there's no way around that, unfortunately.

Here, I'll post a couple of the images here.







And here are a couple of the Seleucid units he is working on: very colorful

[RedFox]

Yes, you never buy a pig in a bag... You always need to take a look at what you buy, before you close the deal.

As for ferres's amazing new Macedonian units, I'm not very sure about the performance. His Roman pack had very badly optimized models. Even though they look really awesome, people with old rigs rather have the dull, the ugly and 'the good framerate'... But yeah, it would be nice if he included a set of screenshots of the units in action.

[Publius Quirinus]

Nice.. I like the Greek peltasts' "rippled" shirts in particular. Hope this makes it into XGM.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Nice.. I like the Greek peltasts' "rippled" shirts in particular. Hope this makes it into XGM.

If they do not, they are quite easy to put into any mod for RTW manually.

The way he released them for download is so that they can be easily inserted into any RTW mod, either as new units or replacing the models and textures of existing units in the mod.

There is a way around that. The way he modelled the Roman units made me shiver. I've had a very long history with 3ds Max and those models really looked nice, but wasted polygons like there's no tomorrow. I'm talking about a few hundred polygons per model, which makes a huge deal if you zoom up close. Considering he only had 2 lods too, that's a huge performance drop. The models could be easily optimized without much effort, while they would look exactly the same.

Have you told him about this? He is redoing the Roman units with the new thick shield design and some other tweaks, if you tell him about where you think there are wasted polygons that are easily fixed, he might be able to include that in his revamp.

Either way, the computer I play RTW on is anything but a powerhouse, it's a 700 dollar laptop with some crappy ATI 3470, but it still runs about 5000-6000 men with ferre's models/textures on high settings with a good framerate.

No offense, but to those who are trying to run this on their Commodore 64 or something, ferre's models just aren't for you. Something lower polygon is necessary.

And turning off unit shaders makes everything UBER blocky anyway, so you could just do that even for ferre's models if that's all your computer can handle.

[RedFox]

There is a way around that. The way he modelled the Roman units made me shiver. I've had a very long history with 3ds Max and those models really looked nice, but wasted polygons like there's no tomorrow. I'm talking about a few hundred polygons per model, which makes a huge deal if you zoom up close. Considering he only had 2 lods too, that's a huge performance drop. The models could be easily optimized without much effort, while they would look exactly the same.

[RedFox]

*sigh* You're not getting the point. I run RTW on high, ATI 3650, but that doesn't make a difference, since vertices are calculated by the CPU; there's a huge performance drop on those units if you have everything set to ultra high and you zoom in. If he didn't optimize the units before, then I don't think he will bother with it now.

It doesn't make playing impossible, just requires setting graphics a bit lower, but I'm just saying that it could be better and I don't want this to turn into another unnecessary flame-war. The units look really awesome.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

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[Spartan198]

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[Dog Fart]

I like the Macedonian infantry. All of those face masks and armour. I love'em

[RedFox]

I'm not going to do someone else's work for them. I have my own things to do. His release sets basically include only 1 lod for each model. And because you so politely asked for, here's what's wrong with that: His Macedonian Pikeman model has 2046 tris and 1384 verts. (vanilla in comparison has 700t/400v, with each lod loosing about 100t each level) Your CPU will be calculating these all the time if you have it set on Ultra High. Add AA to the mix and you have an interactive slide-show. (You won't get this with vanilla units thanks to the lods.)

His units do look very good and he does work hard on his units and I really respect his work, but it's unoptimized. I'm not going to take his units and remove all the unnecessary polygons, especially from places that aren't even ever seen, or reduce the polycount of the helmets which really don't need 416 polygons, they can do the same job with 100.

This is all really great if you have Intel Itanium 7 or something, but if you still have that old 2,6ghz P4, it's not great at all. There's a reason developers include lods - for people with less than capable rigs to handle the models and to reduce the overall strain the models produce in a scene. Considering that RTW has thousands of troops on the battlefield only amplifies the effects.

If he had lower lods, this could all be overlooked, but he doesn't. I know its time consuming to make lods, but it's a part of the routine and shouldn't be overlooked.

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[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

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[Sextus Molestus]

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[Finch]

Redfox has a point

[Spartan198]

I like the Spartans.

[krasni]

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[Maraxus]

LOL, the models may not be clean but they are gorgeous, Kudos to Ferres for raising the bar again (of pure visual awesomeness.)

[Scutarii]

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[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

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