#0 - June 3, 2009, 11:34 p.m.
Q u o t e:
Every independent thing that we show in the game has to be put into a special package that we call a "draw call," which is then delivered to the 3D card to be rendered on screen. It’s not too different from preparing xmas gifts in that everything you want your relatives to receive must be packaged up in some way and then driven across the country in order to arrive there on time. Your CPU does this packaging and delivery and it takes a lot of bandwidth, so it ends up being one of the most crucial expenses to manage. Now, the truly horrible thing is that from a draw call cost perspective, each individual splattering of blood on the floor is every bit as expensive as a character or a dead body: they both cost one draw call. Beyond that, the differences tend to be somewhat trivial.
So, that's a lot of words just to say that blood splats can be every bit as expensive as, and in some ways, more expensive than dead bodies. It's counter intuitive, but this is the way it actually works.