Author Topic: Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?  (Read 9720 times)

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Remember how everyone thought it would be cool if FS2 randomly or even premade terrain surfaces in FS? do u think now this could become a realty? and if so, how hard would it be to code this?

 

Offline LtNarol

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
not hard if we got our hands on the code for Rogue Squadron as well, but since we dont, it can be rather painful as there would be a lot of new movement parameters to set.  When is something a colision and when is it just an object traveling on another, how do you keep tanks and other ground units oriented the right way, poly limits will have to go through the roof.

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
not hard if we got our hands on the code for Rogue Squadron as well, but since we dont, it can be rather painful as there would be a lot of new movement parameters to set.  When is something a colision and when is it just an object traveling on another, how do you keep tanks and other ground units oriented the right way, poly limits will have to go through the roof.


well what about just terrain period? for now keep it simple. i can understand the polys and the texturing etc, which can be randomly generaded given some fine tuning to the code. but i am just saying like a recreation of a canyon or an area. obviously the land mass is going to run into infinity (freespace-infinity), so the tags i know would be, if u colide with terrain, u crash or DIE. thats somewhat common sense, but like also we already know the ships got anti grav drives so this means it might not happen.

god bless freespace physics.

 

Offline LtNarol

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
i meant ground based units, it would require some clever coding to make it so that ground unit can travel along the surface of terrain without constantly "crashing into it" and still have fighters be able to crash and die.  Also, the ground units will have to stay to the terrain, more coding.

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by LtNarol
i meant ground based units, it would require some clever coding to make it so that ground unit can travel along the surface of terrain without constantly "crashing into it" and still have fighters be able to crash and die.  Also, the ground units will have to stay to the terrain, more coding.


well yes i understand this. well basically, heres what u do, u program the fs code to:

create a code entity where its similar to normal fs ships. IE movable "marines", or tanks. now, there would be a tag, assuming that the code is implemented into the core, that would allow certain "ships" or certain "players" entities in the game to not crash and burn or collide. see i would say, "ships" can colide, "gound units" dont collide.

 

Offline Carl

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
FS fighters wouldn't crash and die if they hit the ground. they don't blow up when you hit other things such as ships and asteroids. (and at much higher speeds than it would have while falling, i might add)
"Gunnery control, fry that ****er!" - nuclear1

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by Carl
FS fighters wouldn't crash and die if they hit the ground. they don't blow up when you hit other things such as ships and asteroids. (and at much higher speeds than it would have while falling, i might add)


exactly, more relife-planet-gravity physics implemented with the freespace physics.

 

Offline Nico

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
anyway, if you just want a land model, you can alraedy have this just make a large pof with a lot of mass and density. I've done it before, it works well. The only pb is that you'll need a lot of polys or it'll look ugly, and then, this means low end computers will suffer. Implementing landscapes requires that you improve the general performances of the engine first. I have pics of those landscapes somewhere, if someone wants, i'll post them.
SCREW CANON!

 

Offline phreak

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Post them.
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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by venom2506
anyway, if you just want a land model, you can alraedy have this just make a large pof with a lot of mass and density. I've done it before, it works well. The only pb is that you'll need a lot of polys or it'll look ugly, and then, this means low end computers will suffer. Implementing landscapes requires that you improve the general performances of the engine first. I have pics of those landscapes somewhere, if someone wants, i'll post them.


And unless your POF is a model of the entire planet's terrain (which would be huge, even without arbitrary poly limits), you'd be able to fly around and see the other side of it.

What do you do about that?

 

Offline Nico

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by _argv[-1]


And unless your POF is a model of the entire planet's terrain (which would be huge, even without arbitrary poly limits), you'd be able to fly around and see the other side of it.

What do you do about that?

there's a 60 km limit for the battelfield. if the model is larger, there's no way you can reach the edge.

that's a small, quite accidented one. no smooth mapping


This one is much larger, smoothed. you can't reach the end, you'll dir before ( easier on the  resources, too ). sorry if the pic is a bit darkOh, about the size:

real size earth :p
SCREW CANON!

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by venom2506
there's a 60 km limit for the battelfield. if the model is larger, there's no way you can reach the edge.


What happens if you try?

Quote

that's a small, quite accidented one. no smooth mapping


Looks nice to me. Like fighting in a cave, like inside a big asteroid or something. Cool...

Quote

Oh, about the size:

real size earth :p


Dear lord, it's huge!!! But you don't actually model all of the planet's terrain, just wrap a texture on a spheroid... Sigh. If only 3D engines could model the terrain of an entire planet in view at one time, *drool*

 

Offline Inquisitor

Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Well, you can do like flight sims do, make it low level of detail and handle the detail with good textures. Unless you plan on getting out of the ship, should be ok.

As for implementing a terrain engine, I can point to some sample code, but that could be complicated to integrate ;)
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Offline Zeronet

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Yeah but the planet is the scale, which is something in itself in a way.
Got Ether?

 

Offline Nico

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by _argv[-1]


--What happens if you try?

you'll die by a collision with yourself lol ( no, it's not a joke )



--Looks nice to me. Like fighting in a cave, like inside a big asteroid or something. Cool...

that's the idea, in fact :) there's two models there, first, I tried with only one, it runed smoothly ( I put a huge asteroid field max settings) moving at full speed, it made a very cool looking asteroid shower :)


--Dear lord, it's huge!!! But you don't actually model all of the planet's terrain, just wrap a texture on a spheroid... Sigh. If only 3D engines could model the terrain of an entire planet in view at one time, *drool*

I dunno if 3D engines could handle that, but your computer sure wouldn't ;)

The only thing, imho, that needs to be done for realistic landscape simulation in FS2, is "in air" physics ( nothing fancy, just that if you lower your throttle at 0, you fall to the ground, and the possibility, in Fred2, to switch the background to a blue gradient rather than a starfield. Hmm, no, not blue, RGB values, so you can simulate any planet you want.
SCREW CANON!

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by venom2506

. Hmm, no, not blue, RGB values, so you can simulate any planet you want.


If Star Trek can paint a sky orange, yellow, green, pink, or red and call it another planet - so can we!  (-:

Good looking stuff, Venom.  Cool Earth model - does it rotate once every 24 hours perchance?  (-:

  --TurboNed
"It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars! I don't see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?" - [size=-2]Avery Brooks from an IBM commercial[/size]

 

Offline Nico

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by TurboNed

Good looking stuff, Venom.  Cool Earth model - does it rotate once every 24 hours perchance?  (-:


lol, I thought about it, and figured: who would be crazy enough to wait in the mission just to notice the rotation?
SCREW CANON!

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
:nervous:

I might just be that stubborn :D

 

Offline Kazan

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
ok... we need to do several things:

better asteroid fields, and make capships automatically defend themselves against asteroids [they have guns, they can shoot their own way through asteroid fields with primary non-beam weapons [or fighter particle beams]]

celestial objects - like planets, stars, black holes, etc which would have gravity wells and certain physics alterations as you get near them... ie a planet would have a set of distances MaxAtmosphere and StartAtmosphere - the distances at which the Atmosphere becomes it's "thickest" and the distance at which it begins - if you go past MaxAtmosphere the game momentarily pauses and switches from Space-flight mode to Terrain-Skimming mode, or with Stars if you get so close you burn up, or black holes you get pulled in [all celestial objects will have a $gravity coefficient.. earth being g=9.81m/(s*s) would be 1, something that's 19.62m/(s*s) would be 2, etc

Terrain-Skimming mode for skimming planets, some format for expressing permanant terrain features would have to be created.. i leave implementation to the terrain-experts
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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by Kazan
better asteroid fields, and make capships automatically defend themselves against asteroids [they have guns, they can shoot their own way through asteroid fields with primary non-beam weapons [or fighter particle beams]]


They already do that. The only reason they can't get through an asteroid field on their own is that their weapons suck. Their flak guns do hardly any damage and have short range; their anti-fighter beams can only fire on one asteroid at a time per gun (and they do pretty lousy damage too -- it takes much more hull damage to blow up an asteroid than it does to blow up a fighter); they can't fire their big beams at asteroids; and their lasers are weak and slow. If you improve their weapons (by making flak guns do some appreciable damage, and by making laser pulses fly fast and hit hard), they will plow through asteroid fields with no problem.

To produce capships capable of defending themselves, the laser turrets should fire at least as fast as the Kayser and do at least twice as much damage. Flak guns should do 4 times the damage. Anti-fighter beams are fine, since they're just not designed for shooting at rocks anyways, and they're quite effective against fighters, so don't bother with them. Big beams they only fire at big ships, so don't bother with them, either. Once these modifications are made, sit back and enjoy the show!