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Elemental: Kumquat Graphics Engine

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Elemental: Kumquat Graphics Engine

from JoeUser Forums

Elemental makes use of a brand new 3D engine developed specifically for PC strategy games. Its multithreaded design along with dynamic LOD (level of detail) allows for it to look great on a wide range of hardware.

To see and understand why Elemental can look good on low end hardware and yet benefit further from higher end hardware see for yourself how the dynamic LOD works:

image

Look very very closely here.  This isn’t one 3D object. This is dozens of 3D objects. The engine determines how powerful your hardware is and based on that can choose to display objects based on that.

As more objects come into view, certain “less important” objects start to fade away:

image

Did something change?

Look closely. Did something change?

imageHow about now?

As a result of the object-based system that Kumquat provides, the graphics look identical at a casual glance and yet, the polygon count is dramatically less in the third image.

 

And users with very low end hardware can simply play using the sprite based output (cloth map mode):

image

Because Kumquat is a PC-only graphics engine, it can make a different set of trade offs than the traditional cross-platform engine. Namely, it can assume players have a considerable amount of memory (1 gigabyte is the minimum total system memory to play a Kumquat based game – very little on a PC but twice what a current generation console has).  Thus, a given game object can be made up of many sub-objects (which use more memory) but can be dynamically turned on or off based on 3D hardware instead of having to load up lower-quality 3D models.

437,296 views 179 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 47

The graphics are the thing that makes me least excited about this game, and I'm even afraid it will ruin the whole experience for me. While I can understand disliking a different art style, I certainly hope it wouldn't RUIN a gaming experience   (edit: here's an IGN article where we lay our artistic decisions on the table...if you're interested http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1019369p1.html)
But yeah, that's defaintly the risk we took in going with a direction that didn't rely on a bunch of normal and specular maps to pull off the look. The trade off is an game where you can zoom out on one side of the world and seamlessly zoom into the other. We'll see what people say when Beta 2 comes out and everyone gets their first taste of it in motion.

 

What can I say, graphics is important to me. Sorry but I would never play Elemental using the cloth map no matter how awesome everything else is.

I think it is still possible to make the game look better with small changes. I mean, in every screenshot I have seen there are huge, empty and flat areas of land. Just put something there! A hill, a tree, a stone... something! I guess I want it more realistic, while you have chosen not to be realistic so that low end computers can play... But the way this looks I could play on my old Pentium II at the highest settings! The highest detail level should be higher imo.

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 41
re: LOD DIfferences

The major selling point with the Elemental engine is that LOD is handled in a matter more appropriate for strategy games...it's based on zoom level, not distance from camera. With distance based LOD, you're iterating through all those objects and performing that visibility check that can get really expensive if the scene gets busy. The way our sceneview tree is implemented meens there are really only 7 major checks being done to toggle the visibility of those objects, resulting in a significant speed boost. Of course, if you're zoomed in then we have to cull against screen position, but that ends up being a pretty inexpensive operation, allowing the crazy zoom levels you'll see when Beta 2 ges released.

re: Kumquat as an Engine Name

Our original engine was developed by Mike Duffy who named that engine 'Pear'. Since we weren't selling/marketing it, we kept with the fruit theme.

Thanks boogie for a detailed explanation.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dsk2293, reply 51



Quoting BoogieBac,
reply 47

The graphics are the thing that makes me least excited about this game, and I'm even afraid it will ruin the whole experience for me. While I can understand disliking a different art style, I certainly hope it wouldn't RUIN a gaming experience   (edit: here's an IGN article where we lay our artistic decisions on the table...if you're interested http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1019369p1.html)
But yeah, that's defaintly the risk we took in going with a direction that didn't rely on a bunch of normal and specular maps to pull off the look. The trade off is an game where you can zoom out on one side of the world and seamlessly zoom into the other. We'll see what people say when Beta 2 comes out and everyone gets their first taste of it in motion.


 

What can I say, graphics is important to me. Sorry but I would never play Elemental using the cloth map no matter how awesome everything else is.

I think it is still possible to make the game look better with small changes. I mean, in every screenshot I have seen there are huge, empty and flat areas of land. Just put something there! A hill, a tree, a stone... something! I guess I want it more realistic, while you have chosen not to be realistic so that low end computers can play... But the way this looks I could play on my old Pentium II at the highest settings! The highest detail level should be higher imo.

Damn dude. It's early beta still!

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Denryu, reply 53

Damn dude. It's early beta still!
Even if it wasn't, gameplay first.

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Ya eye candy is always on the bottom of the list for most important you want in a game. 1. Its early beta still, 2. Stardock will keep adding on more stuff for sure (remember the expansions for GalCiv2 they updated the graphics and it made the game run smoother so no worries.) Remember they built the game up first without graphics so if the gameplay is good, then they added on the pretty stuff. Also just before the game ships I bet they will come back and clean up some of the art and graphic assets a bit.

Gameplay is what keeps bring ya back day after day and hopefully for years! I love Deus Ex and it looks horrible!

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

The graphics style is something we very much like. Obviously not everyone will agree but those screenshots are pretty representative of what the final game will look like.

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 57
The graphics style is something we very much like. Obviously not everyone will agree but those screenshots are pretty representative of what the final game will look like.

I like the graphics, what I don't like is the size of the screenshots... Come on Frogboy, don't be mean... :drool:

Give us larger screenshots...

Reply #59 from Elemental Forums Top

Brad first thing I saw on youtube like 5mins ago... Link

Reply #60 from Elemental Forums Top

For the unaware, Brad, Frogboy and Draginol are the same person ;)

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 57
The graphics style is something we very much like. Obviously not everyone will agree but those screenshots are pretty representative of what the final game will look like.

 

But can't you just up the LOD a bit on the highest settings? I can live with the "style", but I'm having a hard time with the undetailed big patches of grass I see in screenshots like this. Why can't it be more like in this combat screenshot, which looks quite good.

And can the engine not handle small hills? Just tiny details like that will make the game more attractive to look at.

Gameplay can be fantastic, but if all I'm fighting for is a land that looks like a football pitch, why care?

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

Is it tommorow yet?

Reply #64 from Elemental Forums Top

Hey I know brad has multiple accounts... (Draginol really is just a Stardock janitor...) :grin:

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Hawawaa, reply 59
Brad first thing I saw on youtube like 5mins ago... Link

Ohhhhh...niiiiiiiice! :thumbsup:

Reply #66 from Elemental Forums Top

Very Awesome Indeed!!! Can't wait. :thumbsup:

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 41
Our original engine was developed by Mike Duffy who named that engine 'Pear'. Since we weren't selling/marketing it, we kept with the fruit theme.

That's kinda odd. I went to school with a guy named "Mike Duffy". If you still have lines of communication with him, please ask him if he ever attended school in Lake or Vollusia County in Florida.

As for the engine discussion. There have been quite a few games in the last few years that have used this affect of blending things out, but, as Boogie explains, they don't do it nearly the same way or as well as the engine in Elemental. Having the "grass" or "trees" fade out or in when playing GTA4 isn't quite the same thing. In principle they are meant to do the same thing, but the Kumquat engine is vastly superior at it.

Reply #68 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dsk2293, reply 61

But can't you just up the LOD a bit on the highest settings? I can live with the "style", but I'm having a hard time with the undetailed big patches of grass I see in screenshots like this. Why can't it be more like in this combat screenshot, which looks quite good.

And can the engine not handle small hills? Just tiny details like that will make the game more attractive to look at.

Gameplay can be fantastic, but if all I'm fighting for is a land that looks like a football pitch, why care?

It would be nice to have more variety in the elevation, some small hills at least. That's an awful lot of perfectly flat ground, and the sharp contrast with the occasional mountain isn't a good thing - who ever saw a mountain with no foothills around it, just flat plains and suddenly boom! there's a massive hunk of rock sticking out of the ground? Some of the forests are a bit too perfectly square as well, look at the one next to the mountain in the previously linked screenshot, it's not exactly an orchard but it doesn't look like natural forest either. Not that graphics are anywhere as near as important to me as gameplay, but the landscapes are a little too regular to really feel alive.

Reply #69 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dsk2293, reply 61

Quoting Frogboy, reply 57The graphics style is something we very much like. Obviously not everyone will agree but those screenshots are pretty representative of what the final game will look like.

 

But can't you just up the LOD a bit on the highest settings? I can live with the "style", but I'm having a hard time with the undetailed big patches of grass I see in screenshots like this. Why can't it be more like in this combat screenshot, which looks quite good.

And can the engine not handle small hills? Just tiny details like that will make the game more attractive to look at.

Gameplay can be fantastic, but if all I'm fighting for is a land that looks like a football pitch, why care?

 

The engine handles small hills already.  It can also handle lush grassy plains.  I'm not sure why you're thinking the game map is flat. One screenshot is not representative of the whole game, especially when zoomed out.

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 69


The engine handles small hills already.  It can also handle lush grassy plains.  I'm not sure why you're thinking the game map is flat. One screenshot is not representative of the whole game, especially when zoomed out.

His issue is that on some areas of the map there's large chunks of what looks to be a whole lot of nothing. That will probably go away some by release, but little doodads even like rocks or flowers make the map look less empty, even if they don't do anything.

Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top

or just grass, not as a texture but as an animated doodad would make the world seems much more alive :)

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe on tiles of great battles there could form mass graves and such to keep flavoring the map after the game starts.

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 71

Quoting Frogboy, reply 69

The engine handles small hills already.  It can also handle lush grassy plains.  I'm not sure why you're thinking the game map is flat. One screenshot is not representative of the whole game, especially when zoomed out.

His issue is that on some areas of the map there's large chunks of what looks to be a whole lot of nothing. That will probably go away some by release, but little doodads even like rocks or flowers make the map look less empty, even if they don't do anything.

 

Shouldn't a wasteland be empty?

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

Froggy, you and the team should be really proud of what you've done.  This is incredible and it oozes atmosphere and personal style. :D