How is this computer game possible?

[zanzibar]

http://produkkt.abraxas-medien.de/kkrieger


It's less than 100k, but the graphics are... well just look at it. I'm stumped.

[Karyuu]

Graphics are stored on the server, perhaps?

*takes a look*

*edit*

- We do .not. have some kind of magical data compression machine that is able to squeeze
  hundreds of megabytes of mesh/texture and sound data into 96k. We merely store the
  individual steps employed by the artists to produce their textures and meshes, in a very
  compact way. This allows us to get .much. higher data density than is achievable with
  normal data compression techniques, at some expense in artistic freedom and loading times.

What does that mean? :x

[zanzibar]

No, it doesn't download anything... it's just... magic...

[LigH]

I remember a graphic demo called "Omniscent", which played a "walkthrough" of the whole first level of "Descent" with textures, and even MIDI music ... in 4 KB! (yes, not more than 4096 bytes)

How did they do it? => Described the textures as formula, being calculated during the startup.
__

Here: Sanction PC demo crew

This demo requires MS-DOS (or a good emulator, like DOSBox), it will probably not run well directly under Windows XP.

[zanzibar]

Is this something that Planeshift might at all benefit from?

[LigH]

Probably not much. Guessing mathematical formulae to pre-render textures while loading is anything but trivial. And it may only reduce the download size, but not the in-game playing speed.

[zanzibar]

Meh, you're right.  Besides... a 1 gig download just means bragging rights for the devs.

[LigH]

More detailed textures have their own advantages ...

But a smart decision about the textures format, especially chosing a common format, was not yet the top priority of the development team - there are so many different formats at the moment, and I even found several graphics which were made poorly, not using the features of specific formats correctly - e.g. different kinds of transparency definitions, wrong alpha channel distributions (see the "distant-tree" image borders), even different colorkey values for similar icons sometimes (compare the crystal icons with others).

Somewhere I read that the developers planned to introduce a common texture format. But I could not remember its name, it was too uncommon, probably quite proprietary. I hope it is related to some GPU internal texture-compression techniques (like S3TC).

[ThomPhoenix]

It think the game uses vectors. So instead of having an image of the surface of a tree, you simply describe the surface of the tree and the game renders it. It's cool and uses little space, but is very hard to do.

[LigH]

Trees as vectors - Which game?

PlaneShift - definitely not! You can see all textures in several ZIP archives, and planes when the transparencies are rendered wrong.

.kkrieger - uhm, where are there trees in the screenshots? (Can't play it, don't have a current GPU)

[zanzibar]

Trees as vectors - Which game?

PlaneShift - definitely not! You can see all textures in several ZIP archives, and planes when the transparencies are rendered wrong.

.kkrieger - uhm, where are there trees in the screenshots? (Can't play it, don't have a current GPU)

Kkrieger works on one of my computers but not the other.  There aren't trees, but there is a robotic minotaur...

[Peacer]

hmm some of the textures are only 1px, like the shots of some of the guns. It loads the texture multiply times so that it will be like a 50x50x50 box in the game, not every pixel in this box is the 1px texture but is nothing to not shoot a box towards the animal but a random hmm ball maybe.

Also some of the recources it uses could be in the systems directory already

[Cyl]

hmm some of the textures are only 1px, like the shots of some of the guns. It loads the texture multiply times so that it will be like a 50x50x50 box in the game, not every pixel in this box is the 1px texture but is nothing to not shoot a box towards the animal but a random hmm ball maybe.

Also some of the recources it uses could be in the systems directory already

Well, the textures as they are stored do not have pixels at all, they are stored as formulas which then are calculated into bitmaps during the load phase (because it simply works a lot faster)

[Syilph]

Everything in that game is generated by the executable file and "exploded" into your memory (phisical and virtual). It is somehow comparable with the fractal generator programs, you use a math formula to describe the environement and based on that formula you'll get a bunch of pixels on your screen. So, yes, ThomPhoenix is right, the game engine uses vectors. He only used the wrong example (the tree thing) but it was just an example.

[LigH]

Of course - a famous example for computed structures (like trees) is the so called "L System": Each branch is recursively expanded, and a Fibonacci like length development makes them look naturally grown.

Another famous fractal-like structure, often referred to as "plasma" is the concept of "Subdivision and Displacement" (calculate the middle between two points as their average and alter it by a random amount). But the "Perlin noise" concept is more flexible, it is based on frequency generators.

Two of the first games that used a few calculated texture animations were "Shadow Warrior" and "Blood" (successors of "Duke Nukem 3D", based on the "Build" 3D engine).