Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: BigJerk on November 29, 2016, 03:43:44 pm
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Out of curiosity's sake, I can't help but ask the question where there's not more surface combat in freespace mods. Now I don't know jack about modding or the fs2 open engine; I'm just perfectly happy to mooch off of others' skills and creativity ;) Nonetheless, I've only seen one campaign that even features a planet/moon surface, and that's Blue Planet. I've played all of the original fs1 and 2 campaigns, Silent Threat, Templar, Blue Planet, Diaspora and part of Vassago's Dirge and Inferno (I think it was Inferno, might have been a different campaign), and am starting The Babylon Project and Wing Commander Saga, and out of all of those, only one mission (two if you count the Gef homeworld mission) had an actual planetary/moon surface, and that mission featured no combat. Is it because surface combat is hard to do, or surfaces are hard to create? I would love to see some more of that kind of play. I understand it's a space sim, but I think a mission here and there with some terrain would be kind of interesting. I haven't played WCS or TBP yet, so I don't know if those feature any surface combat (don't spoil it for me!), but I'm attempting to start those. Between poor Kuwaiti internet (currently deployed) and graphical issues with TBP, it's been a challenge, but I'll get it figured out. Anyway, now that I'm done rambling, have a great day, and be sure to fire in short, controlled bursts.
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Can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure it's mainly due to the AI being really bad at collision avoidance :/
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In TBP there is one in Raider Wars and the Fortune Hunters-campaigns (also TBP) have at least one too
The problems with that kind of mission are not few ...
for starters, the "ground" has to be a model of huge dimensions, which has to be made and detailed; on top of that it is a normal object in the mission as far as FRED is concerned (which leads into the mentioned AI issues, the AI simply doesn't mind running into it)
The "terrain" being fixed dimension also has the downside that you can't scale along all dimensions because at some point you are going to see the edges or the model is in the way ...both cut down the space you have to make your missions
Then there are objects "on the ground" like vehicles which need a good deal editing (or scripts) to work as the engine is not per se designed for such restricted objects...
Other minor stuff like gravitiy simulation is at least as an option there but I n3ver worked with it
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There's at least one ground-assault mission in the upcoming 4th act of Blue Planet: War in Heaven (Darius posted a video of it a while ago, although I can't find it anymore), and UndyingNephalim's Star Fox mod (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=87880.0) has shown several videos of surface missions (here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=87880.msg1828344#msg1828344) is a link to the most recent post containing one that I could find).
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I think it's this one
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A big part of it is the work:reward ratio. Making a good looking ground model takes a lot of work - It's up there with building a destroyer if you really want it to look good. Then you have to make the skybox, and all the scripting, and all the FREDding - it's definitely non trivial. You constantly run into restrictions related to polys and optimization, and texture quality (this is a model you can expect a player to be up close to frequently, so pixel density becomes a major issue. So does UV alignment and making sure the seams in your textures aren't too noticeable. There are so many things you have to take account of, it's literally months of work to do well.
And then you use it for a mission or two, and ultimately the player can choose to fly to an altitude of a few kilometers and it all looks obviously fake and crappy all of a sudden.
People are doing it, and have done it. But it tends to be restricted in some way, and it often takes a long time. I don't think it will ever be common.
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The AI has no idea what the **** to do so these missions have to be pretty tightly scripted.
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Didn't realize the AI was so bad with collisions. I knew it was bad here and there, but I didn't realize it would just slam into the ground for the golly gee willickers of it. I imagined graphics was a problem, which was why I was wondering if simple invisible boundaries (like in BP WIH lunar mission) would suffice. Didn't really think about how painful building the ground would be. It's too bad, because I think it would be pretty cool, but I understand the massive pain it would be now.
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I think it's this one
Just watched this. If it actually turns out as good as this looks (I understand it's still in progress, but for where it is, it looks pretty good), I'll be super happy. Man guys, you're all a bunch of jerks, you got me super excited for BP and then I reminded myself that it probably won't come out till 2020. Time to start troubleshooting TBP, I gotta get it working :banghead:
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It's something that's been discussed a bit over the years and there have been a couple of attempts at it but it's so hard to do because the game engine just isn't designed for it. It's like playing a heavily modded First Person Shooter and asking why nobody's ever done a mission where you're in a 100M athletics competition. It's probably doable and well done to anyone who manages it but it's never going to be common.
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Zookeeper at one point created a proof of concept Death Star mission using FotG assets. While cool in concept, it's really difficult to get the artistic parts of it working well enough to be worth it. Plus the previously mentioned AI issues.