If you want to see an example of how an in-game model UV can look like tile'd up beyond recognition you can visit my old CG society website: http://mackster.cgsociety.org Basically in terms of performance the choice of tiling in that way is not good because where every UV/vertice is "cut" you'll end up with an doubled up…
Like said, depends on what game you're working on, and vert's and draw calls still counts. For example, try comparing an online Unity 3D game with a next gen game (PC/Xbox360/Ps3), you'll will end up with an staggering frame rate using lots of polygons/vertices and large textures. Computer games of today is not all about…
It's actually one of my favorite topics when it comes to 3D modeling for computer games, and as you can see - others as well. The answer to your question is very simple: do as you wish and suits you best. I personally would not go with the "extra polys just because I can", but instead you could think like this: - What…