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Here are a few questions that i am sure have been answered before in the forum but I have had trouble finding them even with search. Anyhow if you can answer any of them I'd would really appreciate it.

Question 1: How large can you make a skybox/skysphere without parts disapearing and/or performance loss.

Question 2: What is the average size of a skybox/skysphere that is most commonly used.

Question 3: How meany and how complex can you make a matrix without signifigant performance loss?

Question 4: Can you populate a matrix with smaller matrixes? For examble a 10x10 square matrix and in each square contains a 5x5 matrix? If it can be done would this kill performance?

Question 5: While you can change the R/G/B of a texture to make colored lightmaps can you change the hue/saturation/intensity of the R/G/B color?

Question 6: While i know that the DPI of a jpg is realy only used for printing I'm sort of sure that if you take a 100x100 jpg at 100 dpi and the same 100x100 jpg but at 300 dpi and scale bouth up to twice there size the 300 dpi jpg will not look as blockly as the 100 dpi. Can anyone confirm this and if true can it be used to make high res skymaps / scaleable objects with out the textures been blockly.

Question 7: Has anyone made a small DBP program that when run pops up a windows api box that you can test your system for screen size/sound/3d capabilitys and then lets you select from a drop down box the screen res and color dept you want and sound and primary grafics card and then save to an .ini file? You know a setup program that can be used to test and setup the game before hand? I'ed make one but i haven't got'en around to looking at the how to make windows and buttons and dropdown boxes yet.

Well thats all i can think about so far, if you can help with any of the questions above i would realy appreciate it thanks.

-Jayson

1. I assume your problem is the clipping range. Try the Set Camera Range command. About the performance loss, with a huge skybox/sphere a performance hit is inevitable. The best you can do is, instead of using the cube or sphere primitives supplied by DB, you can make a simple model of a box or a sphere with fewer polys using a 3rd party modelling program. External objects are faster than DB primitives for some reason.

2. Depends on the size of your game world.

3. DBC or DBPro? I can't judge pro because I don't have it, but it hits DBC pretty badly. Best thing to do in DBC is use a model instead of a matrix, and use some maths for calculating ground height when you need it.

4. Matrix level of detail style? Nope, never seen that in DBC, but Pro is gonna get updated soon with some upgraded matrix commands and stuff, so leave that question for DBP users. But it's never gonna happen in DBC.

5. Some people (such as kenmo in the LLRGT forum) are working on that. It is possible, if you know how to convert between RGB and HSL properly (there are examples on the web, but the RGB to HSL conversion isn't correct).

6. DPI is only for printing. DPI won't affect the clarity of an image in the computer, but it's physical resolution does. Meaning, a 300 dpi image will still look blocky in the computer if the physical resolution is only 64*64, but even if you save it as a 72 dpi image, but the physical resolution is 512*512, it will look pretty good.

7. Check the BlueGUI by RobK in the Program announcements board (I think). It should help you with the Windows interface stuff (buttons, drop-down list box, windows, etc.).

Whew. Hope that helped somehow.

Thanks for the reply, I'm using pro btw(should have mentioned that heh)

Q1: It's not that i have a problem with the cliping range its just i was wondering what the max size is, hmm it would be nice to have some stats on this stuff. Sigh i guess i'll have to go back to the old stand by and experament with different size skyboxes and spheres.

Q2: Same as above

Q3: Hmm so did 5.4 update fix matrixes? or is that in No.6? i think i'll wait and see what the updates to matrixes are going to be but in the mean time back to the old virtual lab :/

Q4: Same as above.

Q5: Dang i was hoping DBP had some kind of H/S/I build in hmm it wasen't that importent i'll get back to that later on.

Q6: Now that i think on it i think your right when you change the dpi on an image all your doing is increasing the size of the image but keeping the size of print...i.e. a 100x100 image at 200dpi will be 2x bigger than an 100x100 image at 100dpi. Nevermind

Q7: I'll check that out heh i was hoping someone already made one so i woulden't have to sigh heh its a simple program in any cast just a bunch of checks and file creation/writing.

Thanks for the help sometimes it can make you think differently when you see the answers other people have to your questions.

-EvilJayson

on Q5.

I just uploaded an RGB to/from HSL function library to the code snippets area

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=34500&b=6

It's only DBPro at the moment havn't had time to try & convert it to DBC yet (It's been a big enough headache as it is ).

DeepBlue