MusicallyInspired, on 18 July 2020 - 05:55 AM, said:
I love Polymer. Don't understand the hate it gets. I understand the frustrations of performance, but some people are just deadset against the whole idea and this makes no sense to me.
Try making a mod with it!
You've got the "32 Pixel Cult" who suffer from Polygon Aversion Disorder (P.A.D.). Anything that isn't in strict classic style will have them swooping in with snarky comments while up voting each other.
My reason for hating on Polymer is entirely practical. Just a few points:
1. Shaders: Trying to get crap to look correct with specular and gloss highlights is a frigging nightmare. Nothing works. Loads of people have deffed in 200% gloss and specular levels to get stuff to look like it should do. Getting models to look right is a bizzaro-go-round of tweaking levels, getting unexpected results, and then repeating till you go insane or vote Tory . God knows what is going on under the hood there.
2. Lighting: Polymer is doing the job of Doom 3, but with the hardware requirements of Star Citizen. We had ONE spot light in HHR and it completely busted the lighting budget. That's ridiculous. The main problem is that without lights, you can't have normal and specular maps. Without the lights, the effects don't show up. If you put enough lights in your Polymer level to enable the texture maps, the level wont run. So you have all the detail on weapons flicking in and out of existence as you travel between where you can place lights. It's a mess.
3. MD3 Models: Problems with exported normals on MD3 models in Polymer. Don't start me on this shit.
Although I love me some next gen gaming art, I looked back on my time on HHR and decided that in future I'd much rather 1. Make my own projects on my own time and with tools of my choice. 2. Ugly-cry over the amount of platforming in Doom Eternal. 3. Drink too much and shout at the dog about how Duke4.net has become a sump of hoovery.
Mark: He was doing quite well and remaking Polymer - until he suddenly and with no explanation decided to do something else - without informing any of his team mates. Said team mates discovered he'd switched projects by reading about it on Duke4.