Good stuff. One of the things to keep in mind is polycount obviously - if you look at our current in-game Y-Wing, it's only about 5200 polygons (about 10000 triangles) - all of the detail comes from the high-res bake geometry (see below - ignore the absence of the turret on top of the game model cockpit, I forgot to turn it on). Like I've said a few times before, I'll sacrifice fidelity for playability, every time.

Thanks for the info

Considering polycount, yeah, I might make it a bit too much. Though I know it sounds that I want to draw the rules for other's work, but does it really matter that much about game playability consideing even moderate systems now work well with 200K++ tris on the screen without any kind of stutter. Doesn't that polygon economy going a bit obsolete? I don't mean making the game model with 128 segment cylinders of course, but overall?

Anyway, I'm now making the model with no open edges, but when and if it is going to be completed I hope, I'll revise it to remove invisible polygons and so on. Considering baking some details into normal map, it seems I'll have to leave it to someone with better game technology knowledge.

Yes, we certainly have more room to play with in terms of GPU horsepower today but when you consider that there may be more than a dozen craft onscreen at the same time (including the Star Destroyer that is coming in at over a million polys alone and the corvette that is coming in at over 150k), it adds up quick. Add to that the texture maps (basecolor, roughness/smoothness, normal, emissive, etc.), and you can see where I’m headed.

Agree... Hmm... Interesting to see SSD with it's 1500K :)

But, by the way, what about LOD system, is it implemented in any way? Again, as I said, I'm a bit far from actual game development, so my vision on methods of how to add this may be a bit... hmm... simple, but I've tried just to delete few elements on the model (another one - Spice Silo actually :) ) and applying simple Prooptimizer modifier n 3dsmax to the rest of it, and it shrunk from about 16K to 4K if I remember correctly. It preserves texture coordinates as well. I tried it as a "5 minutes" way, but it looks more or less OK. Don't know may it fit the game or not, but, again, Unity supports LODs from the box, even though not that easy as Unreal does.

Hmm... But I would make an SSD a very complex model, mean many parts, each one could be invisible or at least lodded, so no way it should require real 1500K.

Luckily the SSD doesn't make an appearance in the original XWing game so it's not a challenge that I'm faced with...yet. :)

For the moment we're just making an effort to build hierarchies so that smaller details are separated and can be turned off at distance it need be. That isn't so say that we won't implement a more robust and flexible solution in the future.

Besides you need to get to Balance of Power before the SSD becomes a concern, player-generated content notwithstanding.

Except for some cutscenes. ;-)

:)

Hey there @Stonky. Is the star destroyer done now, details, lighting and shading? I've seen it on the MOB forum page. It looks beautiful firing at that awesomely detailed corvette. Will we see that in game soon?

Now that I've delivered a version of the corvette, I'm back to the Star Destroyer - it should be in the game shortly, lit and textured. :) That said, it's a key asset for us so i want to make sure that it's done right.

Is there any update as to when this will be released, or a site where we can donate to help the efforts?

The ModDB page has a link to a spreadsheet that shows where they're at with the Y-Wing demo. I haven't seen any info about donations or anything like that, but I imagine they're steering clear of that sort of thing to avoid any potential conflicts with the house of mouse.

I just wanted to say that this looks awesome. This feels like something really extraordinary. I'm checking the updates for ages waiting to be able to play this, if there is a way for me to help you finish or make it better, I'd love it. (I'm not 3D editor nor textures but I spent hours and hours since I was young playing XW, Tie-F, XvT, XvT+, XW Alliance.) If you don't need my help I'll wait for it but not quietly, I'm telling everyone who whould interest about this work, you should be proud, congratulations.

That is very kind of you! Thank you for doing this!!