to modular or not to modular.......

jordank95

Currently working on a game with some friends, and I've built some structures to use modular pieces. Mainly some small little houses, and a bigger main house all using modular 4x4 and 2x4 pieces. Now I need to build a church, and I'm debating whether I should do this modular or not. Whats the advantage of building this church modular if the pieces that I make will only ever be used in making the church and nowhere else? Draw calls? 

Alex_J

I'd go as far as you can with reusable stuff first, then look at it all together and see where the most bang for you buck would be with unique assets. Maybe you spent all that time making a unique church, but later on plans change and you actually need a unique hospital, and churches would be less important.

Basically, block in everything you can before you start thinking about unique details.

jordank95

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

I'd go as far as you can with reusable stuff first, then look at it all together and see where the most bang for you buck would be with unique assets. Maybe you spent all that time making a unique church, but later on plans change and you actually need a unique hospital, and churches would be less important.

Basically, block in everything you can before you start thinking about unique details.

thanks for the reply. Though we already know the rest of the buildings. Basically, this church is the last major structure to be made. There is also a castle at some point, but I cant imagine any of the church modular pieces being used for the castle as well.

Alex_J

Probably adding in a few extra materials for unique buildings won't make a noticeable difference. If you can reuse something and it doesn't look like you are reusing stuff -- sure why not? If you need something unique to get the look you want, it's more a question of time to produce the thing than performance. 

You can check out the latest AAA games to see what is possible at the highest tiers. Assuming a small indie team, it's probably safe to say you won't be operating as efficiently on any fronts, but that doesn't mean your game has to look like minecraft either. I'd just build what you want (observing basic efficiency practices), and then dial back at the end to get the FPS you need. 

I don't know what it's called in Unreal, but Unity has a tool called Profiler which the programmer can use to see where the performance bottlenecks are. If you're drawing a lot of GPU, that might mean you need to trim your assets. There's a lot going on that can hamper performance.