You shouldnt need more than 50 polys for a house like that Jigga. As for the texture a good 256x256 texture will do , you dont need any bump mapping or normals mapping or shaders for it to look good , unless it's for a next gen game , which then your better off making with another engine.

If you use 1700 polies for interesting details then this should not be a problem at all. Just do a few LOD stages of the model. If you did that then the 1700 poly version will only appear when you come very close to it.

Current games and demos often have up to 500,000 polygons per scene. So you can use some detailled objects today. But better use the polygons wise and don't spend them for things that could have been done with a texture as well.

There are some faulty assumptions in this thread...

First, what is the model for? If it's to be viewed up close, this poly count is extremely low. It could be much larger...depending on how many houses are to be seen at once, and associated level detail. There is no set number of "acceptable" polygons for a house.

In a modern game you want to use as many polygons as you need to get a good look, it could 2000 or 10000. Also, use LOD of course.. that way polycount is almost irrelevant. LOD is a big saver so you can essentially make your first LOD level have as much detail as you want, within reason.

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This is too much,u can reduce the Polycount with a Texture/Normal Map/Shader

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Sure, if your card has no vertex processor and great pixel processor (no such thing). I mean that on modern GPUS there is not much difference rendering a 2000 poly mesh and 5000 poly mesh (unless you are rendering 100s of them at once time). Normal mapping isnt free, and can be more expensive than a few thousand extra polys. Also, you cant add many kinds of details with normal mapping, only bumps, and surfaces, nothis that sticks out etc, which is important for architecture.

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if this house isn't main building in your game 2000+ polys is to much

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No offense but this is mostly nonsensical. What game has one "main building"? Everything is important that is seen close up. 5000 polygons is essentially nothing for a large visible model that is not animated.

Dont make assumptions based on ancient hardware and quake 2 mods.. A6, and the hardware needed to run it, is a lot more advanced than that.

nah... a house with 2000 polys is okay. its freaking 2007 people... heck, even ps2 games feature more polies than your replies... 2000 polys, + normal and specular mapping... thats a fine job...

my game has 45 000 polys visibla yat any time, plus toon shader plus level geometry and actions. i never drop below 35 frames per second, and i have an old system (AMD1.6ghz, 512ram, geforce5200fx)...

heck, polys even render faster than sprites. the skins is what eats up the frames (depends on your system, but mostly, this is correct)...

so you can add a few mored etails if you want...

well going by what the last two replys were i reckon i can add more detail, and if this was used as a lod2 structure and the one with a modeled interior was the lod1 then this is just fine.
@ why do i die, 50 polys for a house model with a 256x256 texture would look terrible, i`d rather have models that look decent.

i think spike is right. i mean, we live in 2007, every normal computer can manage a whole village made up with houses up to 2000 polys. most, it depends on the texture resolution and size. and if the computer has to render a lot of models which are actually the same, he renders them just as one. i don't think that 2000+ should be a problem. a few bumpmaps here, some normalmapping there and everythings just fine.

What's a "normal" computer?

Your using 45000 polys at once with a toon shader and your frame rate at around 35 fps with a AMD1.6ghz, 512ram, geforce5200fx for Monster Mini Mayhem Spike ? LOL . Be serious man , you can make a game like that with no shaders and no more than 5000 polyz on screen at once , whats wrong with you ? a 1.6 ghz amd with 512 mb ram and geforce 5200 fx can play doom 3 at normal settings , I have a very similar comp , with 1.9ghz instead of 1.6 , and run ut2004 at 60 fps with mid detail , u mean to tell me your game actually consumes more recourses that the ones i mentioned above ? Thats what you call poor and sloppy development , why even use a toon shader for something where you cant even remotely tell it's being applied to ? The only reason to use high poly's and shaders is for high details , if your scene is going to be breathtaking , if it's not , then it's not worth it , you have to keep that in mind. Yes you can go up to 10000 polygons for a house , but you can also do it in under 100 , it is very dependant on what your doing , the house's purpose, your target pc , ect... It's so funny that just because everyone hears of all the high poly counts of current games people here think it's ok to just use 4000 polygons for a table or something , because the hardware can handle it , it's a very stupid and recource wastefull thing to do. Before deciding to use 100,000 polys visible at once , take a look at what a game that uses that many polys looks like , and if your game doesnt look as good , then your just being a jackass. Thats the reason gamestudio projects always look so horrid, and play like slow as [censored] , developers here seem to think making a 100 polygon model 3000 polygons will make it look better , and you end up with a clunk of [censored] that has a ton of ugly high polygon models , strange and pointless levels with bad geometry , lighting , and design , and hideous childish textures of up to 1024x1024 in size , oh and some shaders in there as well , for a game that looks horrendous , is pointless , requires a fast pc with a good video card , is an exact clone of another game (which is good , uses small but high quality textures efficiently , low polygon but high quality models , has good gameplay and is fun to play , can be played with mid quality settings on some pretty old computers) , and is a complete pile of [censored]. Jigga, you should be able to make that building with under 50 polygons and a 256x256 texture , or even a 128x128 texture , anything higher would be uncivilized.

tell you what to do why do i die, you make your 50 poly mesh with a 256x256 texture map, i`ll continue with the way i`m going you post a pic of your 50 poly mesh and we`ll see which looks better. 50 poly meshs may be ok in a rts game were you never zoom in to look at the models, but in a fps game you get right up to the models and then your 256 texture will be just one ugly pixelated mess.

why do i die, there is a big difference from what his house looks like and a 50 poly house looks like, a6 can handle quite a few polys, I have a fx5200 in my desktop, and thats what im using to develop this game with, let me tell you something about that game, i run it at 1024x768, the landscape (canyon on) has over 75,000 polys with 3 detail maps that are 1024x1024, all other objects have normal maps applied, and are between 500-3000 polys... the game runs great, not to mention i have pathfinding and decision based ai in it, so really a 50 poly house would be good for.... quake I ? idk , im pretty sure most models in quake I even had more.

EDIT: I forgot to add that the landscapes also have a 1024x1024 shadowmap applied to them, and all the models have one 32bit targa 512x512 basemap and normalmap applied to them, so a house like this should be nothing. As for the comment I know im gonna get about Gameplay better than graphics, well i still have good gameplay,and if older machines need to run it i have lots of fallbacks that I will be implementing.