The number of pixels per triangle falls, so the per-vertex processing cost grows, relatively speaking. NURBS, voxels and other candidate techniques for future rendering all have disadvantages that have prevented them from replacing polygon meshes so far.

We presume most games companies will already have a lot of knowledge in this area, so we cast our net widely for any obscure and under-exploited algorithm that might hold the key to the future.

RTS games have been a staple of PC gaming ever since Command & Conquer. These can typically support up to eight players in an online game, however network bandwidth and computer processing power limit them.

TBS games are much less demanding of both bandwidth and processing power, but the turn-based structure is limited by human patience - in a four-player game, you are only playing for one quarter of the time, however long or short the turn.

We believe these limits can be overcome, and not necessarily by throwing more resources at RTS games.

If this research bore fruit, we would then broaden the topic to looking at how game rules systems influence the way players interact, and the communities that form around the game.