Do you try to say that our board did not work?
What are you trying to say?

Gunnar, I did not realize earlier that you were on the Natami team.  I was only trying to avoid one of those situations where we start talking about a specific game project and then digress into "what ifs" and feature requests.

I really don't know that much about quads.  It's always seemed to me that the majority of calculations occur at the vertex level and a four sided plane still has four vertices.  I was just curious if you could provide an example or the mathematical reasoning for your statement that "quads are per pixel, cheaper to draw than triangles." 

It seems to me that they should really be the same.  Where does this savings come from?  I'm not trying to challenge, just trying to understand what you know about this that I do not. 

There are two sides to the coin.
1st you need to do the 3D math on the vertexes.
This math is the same per vertex.
If you have a quad this had 4 corners = vertexes.
This means 4 times the math.

If you draw the same using 2 triangles then they of course still have 4 vertexes.

This means the matrix multiplications to rotate the Vertexes is the same in both cases.

But the matrix multiplication is of course only a very tiny part of
total cost.

More work is the texture mapping, the lighting and the interpolation of the texels to render.

The amount of to be rendered texels is of course the same in both cases as the quad and the two triangles do cover exactly the same area.

So what is the difference?
The difference comes if you look very deep in how the chip works internally and how a memory chip is designed.
We use DDR memory which means each and every memory access that we do has always to be a full burst access.
This means writing is done in multile pixel bursts and reading also.
The texture mapper does use caches internally to buffer the reading.

If you have 2 triangles covering a quad then the quad will always have less "sharp" edges. The sharp edges of the triangle naturally result in rows with very few pixels in them.
There will be rows with 1 or 2 pixels only.

Because how the memory is always addressed and transmitted over the bus and because of row change overhead - processing screen shot rows in which the engine only renders 1 pixel are suboptimal.

By rendering quads the number of such rows is highly reduced therefore you reduce the row interchange overhead.
Or in other words rendering triangles has a lesser cache hit ratio.

This overhead makes a performance difference.
How big this really is depends of course on the use case and on the internal architecture of your HW.

All clear now?

I stuck with the Amiga until mid-2000.  When Tornado3D's author gave up on the Amiga I saw no good reason not to as well.  But I never really got over my old biases against certain companies such as Autodesk and Intel.  I am on my 4th AMD mobo, and only use lesser known 3D programs by smaller companies or individuals.  I learned about ZModeler through Polycount when I was considering modding, before deciding I didn't want to be tied to the restrictions of an engine I couldn't publish a game with.

Currently I use Wings3D, and have played around with Carrara6, Poser4-7, Anim8or and a few others to varying degrees.  I own zBrush, but haven't found the time to properly learn it.  I'm also looking to try doing something with Unity3D Indie and/or Awakening3D (both free), a free sculpting tool called "Sculptris" (http://www.drpetter.se/project_sculpt.html), a sketch based modeler called "ShapeShop" (www.shapeshop3d.com), and another free tool called "Meshmixer" (www.meshmixer.com). 

It isn't common knowledge, but blender started out on the Amiga as an in-house ray-tracing program a company called Not A Number used for video production.  I do not believe it was ever released prior to being ported to Linux.

So you'd need to read from the texture for the first triangle, throw out the pixels at the edges, then move to the adjacent triangle, read from the texture and throw out still more pixels.  I can certainly see where quad rendering would have some advantages there.

I'm trying to do get some development for iPhone (using Unity 3D) started with a long-time associate who was also once an Amiga fanatic himself.  We are working together as "Lansignum Studios", and you can see some of our work here (though even most of this is a few years old).

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Honestly, I don't know if I could still pull off a nice low poly model like that.  Depends on what the project needs I guess.  I'm certainly willing to help out.  As you can tell from our site, we tend to do a lot of giant robots and "East meets West" type stuff.

Hey the car looks very good!
With cars like this the game will surely be much fun.
I'm keen on seeing the next cars.
How many cars would you think make sense for the game?

I wonder if there is a technical trick we could pull for the wheels.
What would really help is a function to a circle, right?
Then we could have round wheels with much less overhead.
Any ideas?
 

@Casey: I like the work on your site. you have a lot of mechs. I also see on your front page you are a fan of explosions :)

Don't let yourself think that you can't do a good low poly model. All you have to do, is not be as good as you usually are. Pretend it's the 1990s and 2K polys is pixar level graphics.

Looking at your car, I realize it is within my abilities in Wings to model something similar.  I'm not sure if I could get the UVs to be as neat, I seem to recall that being why I looked at ZModeler way back then.

With zBrush (and 3D-Coat, a program I really need to upgrade) you create a high poly mesh (sometimes really high poly) and then "re-topologize it to create your final mesh.  I can now see this is a really easy way to do low poly models.  To better understand, see the video and examples at the bottom of this page:

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I am out of town for family reasons, and won't be back to my own computer for a few days yet.  If enough people start working on a game, I'd like to be involved too.  Only one of my previous attempts ever got beyond the discussion though...  I wonder what happened to our dev tools?  (This is the upside of multi-platform tools like Unity and Shiva, you really could do a modern game by yourself with them.) 

My experience is that most game projects are started by coders and the artists come on board later.  I've never had any luck as an artist convincing a coder that they should work on my dream game.  There's a reason you hear of "programmer art", but never hear of "artist code"... 

It really depends on someone who can code a 3D engine and wants to do the game coming forward.  Are there any early 2000s racing games in open source that could be ported perhaps?  Natami should have an original game or two early in its life, but I have to put hobby projects behind ones that might make a little money and I have this nagging feeling that there are probably more people looking to buy iPhone games than are looking for new Amiga games. 

Edit: I just watched the video. 3D-Coat seems very powerful in compartison to ZModeler. But I think it is faster to create a low poly model and add details to it, than make a high-poly model and bring it down. Also learing a more powerful 3D program to do this would probably set me back a few years. I don't want to do this as my job.

Here's a robot I made, to show that unlicke the RR yelow car I just made, I can actually create good textures:

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I've been a bit distracted today watching episodes of SM:TV live I taped years ago.

That robot is cool...  Like something a high-tech company would have to show you around their facility.
 
I hate losing long posts to the ether!

My son (who is 2.5 years now) and an experts in matchbox cars, asks if another cars in blue would be possible to get...

Seems we have some dedicated game testers already :)

Hey, I'll tell you this... IF someone were to make a Porsche 928 specific racing game... it would sell A LOT of Natami boxes.

The Porsche 928 was a V8 powered masterpiece of engineering. An incredible vehicle.

It has a huge online fan-base, and there are many clubs & preservation sites for the 928, worldwide.

The 928, in many ways, is like the Amiga of Exotic Cars. It was CLEARLY better & more modern than anything else that was out, yet, die-hard Porsche enthusiasts maintained that if it wasn't rear-engined, air-cooled, and didn't look like a 911, then it was "just a toy for rich dentists & their wives". Sounds a lot like IBM PC & Microsoft users, right? "Oh, the Amiga's just a toy to play games on..." Ironically, we have the xbox nowadays to do that... lol.

Decked out in complete wall to dash... to !ceiling! leather, the space-capsule-like 928 was a perfect mesh of luxury & performance, and to this day, still looks like a "modern" car. ...& still eats up twin turbo 911s & Ferraris on the highway!

The 928 is a GT (Grand Touring) car, meaning that, unlike a "Sports Car" it is designed for driving at top speeds for EXTENDED amounts of time, and actually is spacious inside, with plenty of room for women & luggage. lol.

Unfortunately, the 928 was killed off by Porsche in 1994-1995. Right around the demise of our Lovely Amiga.

HOWEVER... 928 fans are exactly as hardcore as Amiga fans are... If a very detailed 928 specific racing game came out, there are MANY people who would buy the system, just for that game.

I own two 928S cars, and know them inside & out, mechanically, and otherwise. 155 MPH feels like 55 MPH... total control, a perfect extension of the driver. I have full access to shop manuals, and can point you to ANY info that you need to know about these fine automobiles.

If you've never seen a 928 before, start here:
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Then watch this:
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&, of course, a 1984-1986.5 Black on Black leather, 5-speed 928S is THE badassed 928! (there were some changes for 1987... engine, nose & tail, for the most part.). Overall, though, the whole product run is pretty spectacular, and looks great.

While the 928 is always listed in vintage books as a Supercar & and an Exotic, Porsche's modern revisionism has left this beautiful car a footnote, and an orphan.

Then again, nowadays Porsche makes Family Vans. lol.

You would make MANY 928 owners VERY happy if you were to put out a really technically detailed Porsche 928-specific game. I could easily see it being sold in the "928 Specialists" & "928 International" catalogs.

928s have been very inexpensive for the last 10 years, and are quite affordable to 'car hackers' who want awesome engineering, and appreciate amazing workmanship. I will personally vouch that these cars are extremely durable, and can be used as daily-drivers. I've driven from NYC to LA & back, and to many states on the Eastern Seaboard... and the 928 has never let me down. Truly a fantastic vehicle. Very well-laid-out, mechanically, as well. If you have the shop manuals, working on this car is just like hacking computers.

So, that's my 928 pitch. If it doesn't end up being a game, perhaps, at least it will get more hackers in real 928s, to maintain them, and help to keep them in good shape!

Best of luck! Your 3D modeling is killer!

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208 triangles, but I need to throw a few more around the back window.

I don't need to explain this car, I don't think. but I think the '70 camaro, the '80 Camaro and Firebird are the three most beautiful cars america has ever produced. Go find a '70 or '71 camaro in red, with wire wheels and knock off hubs. Jaw dropping.

With regard to computers... I feel the same about Amigas, even though I've been a senior UNIX sys admin, security admin, & software engineer for large heterogeneous datacenters & supercomputing facilities. If something that is in your life is great, then, being 'obsessed' is a good thing. I don't have my room littered with 20 year old Amiga programming manuals for nothing... when the Natami is ready, I want to be ready too... the Natami, to me, represents the BEST thing happening in computers, and holds Enormous Potential for the future of systems design.

The DEVEK White Car Link:
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