Turbine Games Q&A/Landscape/Q-09

Original Link (now dead) - http://www.turbinegames.com/qa/view_questions.html?id=625

Will any Dereth towns grow, or become cities?

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Asked:	2000.11.01
Name:	Placid of Leafcull
Question Title:	Will any Dereth towns grow, or become cities?
Category:	Landscape
Question:	I've heard plenty about EQ's big cities, and remember well the cobbled streets of Britanian cities. Are there any plans to have the major commerce centres of Dereth evolve, and if so would they fall under, soon, later, much later or fat blood chance category? How about the current array of buildings? Any updates coming there? Thx and Hi from Australia Placid of Leafull

Answered:	2000.11.17
Name:	Stormwaltz
Answer:	Buildings are very time-intensive to model. We have only two artists experienced at modeling buildings in AC's engine, and it usually takes 1-4 weeks to do one. The Ithaenc Cathedral took Mike Sheidow four weeks to complete. Even using existing buildings, however, cities are unlikely to grow for two practical reasons. First, building instantiations have the highest polygon count of all objects in the game. Having too many in one area gulps down framerate as greedily as a room full of Fire Elementals. The Ithaenc Cathedral is a good example - we had to remove all monsters from its landblock to get acceptable framerate. Second, there's really no reason to add more buildings. We can have one for each vendor, but we only have so many types of vendor. Adding more buildings were serve no constructive purpose.