recommendation of count of polygons / tris for mobile game

Hi guys

We create characters for a multiplayer action adventure game. Since we are just a small team doing the whole thing in our freetime, the game is expected to be out in a few years. Now in terms of the future, how many polygons or tris should or can we use for individuals characters. The characters each consist of the base model and also have an armor and a weapon. What is appropriate if it works smoothly for both the mobile phone and tablets?

Best wishes,

Danny

 

This can't be determined unless the entire game is also taken into account. 20-30k polygons might be alright on mobile if not much of anything else is happening, limited FX, limited animations, limited vegetation, limited post effects, limited transparency, optimized textures and other considerations. While 5k triangles should run with multiple characters in scene with optimized everything else in the game.

Best advice - use your best judgement, visit polycount.org often, and since you are working towards a undefined future release over estimate what you think should be your target. As long as the animation and rig do not change - lowering a character mesh from 20k polygons down to 15-10k polygons is a relatively simple 1 day job.

 

Too hard to tell. Mobile hardware varies A LOT.

Personally, I’ve never been bound by poly count. I easily hit the fillrate limit though.

 

Does anyone have experience with such limits in the mobile game area, if 8 or more players are in multiplayer game? If the polygon limit is not the deciding factor, what do I have to pay attention to?

 

What type of multiplayer game, are you making? (More info needed)

Is it a fighting/shooting game among 8+ players?

Or is it a game, where the 8+ players, have to battle numerous numbers
of cpu controlled enemies?

 

This will be an action adventure multiplayer game. One part is PVE. It can bring together up to 4 people and fight against enemies and bosses. In the PVP section 8 people in different modes should fight with each other or against each other. It will also appear some CPU controlled enemies. Here is an example scene with one of my characters: http://www.kiwira.de/XTransfer_friends/IMG_9292.MOV You can see the environment. Such kind will be in this game.

 

Does any of you have experience with such a type of game and the optimization of performance for the mobile area? How many polygons would you typically use?

 

Get a device and test things. Aiming only for the very high end devices is very different than aiming for "mobile" in general.

From that video, having shadows, tons of transparent particles (that fog thing), and post process, seems to me like it will be the main source of performance problems. Raw polycount doesn't mean much without context.

 

We all have experience or we wouldn't be trying to help. I've created/animated around 6-8 creatures/characters for mobile games, ranging from 2500 tris to 32k polygons. I've never had to reduce polygons for optimization purposes. The highest polygon model was in a game that had lower specs in other areas, lower resolution textures, limited lights, limited other creatures on screen at the same time, limited particle effects.
Each game is different and all elements of the game have to be factored into the equation. EVERYTHING else that can take up resources in the game.
Polycount for models is gpu processed (@AcidArrow please correct if I'm wrong here) so all process that get pushed to gpu compete during the render frame and order of execution with a models polygon count. You will have to research what else renders on gpu that could potentially cause optimization issues along with polygon count, textures, shaders, skinned meshes, particles, lights, shadows? And test it on devices (usually lowest spec device) that your game will deploy on.

^ This ^