So we could put in trees in to the maps. However, this counts towards our mesh limit on terrain (which last I heard is about 200 meshes). Trees will not work in the current "plant" system you see now. They have to be placed as a static mesh. I did clear this info up finally with a Tech Artist last week.

So it is a matter of convincing Team Daddies (CCP Stiffneck) of sacrificing other meshs for some trees and to make them.

It would require a duplicate of the game mode it is changing, then that game mode would have to be the one that randomly loads. We can not dynamically swap them in a single game mode layer.

200 total static meshes on the terrain. We can go over that but not by much. That is our safe count.

One trick around this is "combining" a group of meshes around each other into a new single mesh. However, that doesn't alter the mesh material count. The different materials are still in use and that has a limit as well. It's all a really fine balancing act in the long run.

Yes. Materials are textures.

So we are now delving a little further into territory I am not 100% up to speed on. Mainly because of differences between versions of the Unreal Engine. For example if I recall later versions of UDK support converting all the materials in a multi mesh merging into a single material. Prior to that particular version though, the materials for each mesh merged into a single mesh are still counted as an individual material for each one. So if we combined 15 meshes into one, we would end up with a single mesh using 15 instances / draws / calls of the material, even though it is the same material. So the mesh that Unreal has made actually puts in the mesh 15 separate material id's calling for the same material.

Also, if we were to just build say one mesh in max ready made with 100's of trees or even 25, and spread them out how we like, we still have to worry about the LOD. If we spread it across the whole map, then the trees would never use a low LOD. It would always be loaded at full LOD because the player is always close enough to the "single" mesh.

We would love to do them as well, believe me. But as you can see, we have to balance a lot of stuff. So many things have to go into consideration for every aspect of a game. It's a really interesting balancing act. This is why we have to set technical budget limits. If we just did what ever we wanted we would have all sorts of problems.

Can you make trees like you do grass and shrubs now and put them in "an invisible box" to prevent us passing through them? Would it be any different (from the Unreal Engine on PS3 technology limitations perspective) than making 3D models of trees? With meshes, textures and all "what comes with that"?