Author Topic: Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?  (Read 9721 times)

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
I think everyone's missing a key issue with planets: distance.

Consider the Earth model.  It's 900,000m away.  There is no way a ship could fly that far in a reasonable ammount of time.  Therefore, flying from that high up to the surface is a non-issue.

IMO, the only way of doing the transfer from space to airspace effectively is with an actual change of map with some kind of break (probably similar to the in-flight briefing).  Above all, the transfer should only happen when the mission designer wants it to.

This means that planets are still scenery from space, and when you're on the ground you don't have to worry about the whole planet, just the bit of terrain you're in.
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NotDefault

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by NotDefault
I think everyone's missing a key issue with planets: distance.

This means that planets are still scenery from space, and when you're on the ground you don't have to worry about the whole planet, just the bit of terrain you're in.


Soooo, implement a system like Descent 3's outside stuff where you can fly around outside, but there's an artificial "ceiling" imposed on you and rocky mountains around the border of the terrain?

That's a system I'm not wholly opposed to.  It certainly seems the most do-able of anything proposed so far.

Out of curiosity - isn't Falcon 4's source code released?  Just a weird little thought-like-thing that I had.

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Offline CP5670

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
If we really want to implement a terrain system into this, it might be a good idea to simply drop in another engine and make the game kind of based on two engines. As Turboned said, there would not really be any point in the game where the player would have to switch between the terran and space engines due to the sheer vastness of each setting, so the game could simply preload the stuff for one engine into a memory at a time, depending on what the mission requires. It would take a lot of work, but this whole terrain thing is pretty ambitious in the first place. ;)

 

Offline KARMA

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
what about having the different level of details with the distances of the switch between lods like now, but with the engine that switch not all the model but only the parts of the model that are too far?
i mean:
you have your planet, from space, at big distances, you see the low detail model, it is flat and the details are only textures
you approach the surface, you see the high detail lod with landscape modeled, mountains, buildings and so over, but only in a close range of view, outside this range of view you see only the medium level of detail, and for the parts of the model more far, the parts that you can't see o that are very far, again the low level of detail

i don't know if it would be possible to have the engine to switch the from one lod to another to render different parts of the same object...and there will be probably the problm of an enormous pof to be loaded at the begnning

an alternative may be to have the details as single objects and to set the distances of the switch for any single elment of the landscape....true pain in the ass.....and with some probs: you will have too targettable elements

second alternative may be like the first one, but instead of having different pofs for any details, the details will be subobjects of a single pof, but you must be able to set "switching distance" for any single subobjects .. in this way you don't have too things targettable

obviuosly i don't mean to model all the landscape of all the surface of a planet...eh;)
just the areas where the action will be....
imagine you have to approach the surface of a planet form space... not all the trajectoris (its the right word?) will be safe... only certain...you can set waypoints to be reached in order to enter the atmosphere, or you will explode, so you can create a situation wher a player can reach only specific areas of a planet, the areas you will have to model

 

Offline Ace

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Actually the Descent 3 style can already be done, a terrain ground, then an invisible dome, or you just have the terrain so large that the 60km bounding box you can't do past.
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Offline EdrickV

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by Ace
Actually the Descent 3 style can already be done, a terrain ground, then an invisible dome, or you just have the terrain so large that the 60km bounding box you can't do past.


The big problem about doing D3 style terrain (or rather what I call a "bubble world") isn't whether or not it can be done. Because I did it. My bubble world wasn't very big, but it was a 5 minute model and IIRC was about 400 polys. (And I never bothered to do very good texturing or even texture the walls/roof with a sky texture.) The pic I showed here was the bubble world with the atmospheric nebula from the Robotech MOD, which I threw in to see how it'd look. The big problem is polys. The terrain in D3 encompases a huge area with, I believe, 65278 polys. And that's just the terrain itself. Granted, we probably don't need an area quite that big, but keeping the poly count low while avoiding bad looking terrain is not easy. Exactly how high the practical limits for something like that would go, I don't know. I've expanded my bubble world and it's about 1000 polys. Haven't tested it yet 'cause the last time I put it in FRED 2 I got sharded. :) I've done some terrain fixes since then though and will need to test it again. (And with better texturing then the first time around.)
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Offline Alikchi

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


Her... BFGreen rules. Also, Sathanas is highly vulnerable to attacks from anywhere other than the front, where all the firepower is pointed. What a load. Even a small fleet of destroyers can take out a Sathanas with patience. (I know, I tested this.)


After a while the Sathanas might just turn around. Just maybe.
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Offline Stryke 9

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Takes quite a while. Fat ol' spacecow has the RTS jets of a brick.

 

Offline Nico

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

Exactly how high the practical limits for something like that would go, I don't know


you can go up to 5000, but you'll have to cut it in subobjects of 800 polys max
SCREW CANON!

 

Offline EdrickV

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


you can go up to 5000, but you'll have to cut it in subobjects of 800 polys max


Is that a max poly limit set by software? (including PCS/Cob2*) Or is that the max people have found to be stable?
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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by Alikchi


After a while the Sathanas might just turn around. Just maybe.



$Name: SJ Sathanas
$Rotation time: 200.0, 200.0, 200.0


And let me tell you, with a destroyer fleet on its ass, it takes a lot less than 200 seconds to take it out.

And even if it does manage to turn around, remember that the destroyers have engines, too -- they can stay behind it.

And if the 'spacecow' tries to mini-jump to turn itself around or jump in behind the destroyers, remember the destroyers can mini-jump too.

It's all about tactics. With good tactics (and enough destroyers), the GTVA can easily wipe the floor with any Shivan hardware :V: has presented us with. Ravana? Boanerges bait. Lucifer? Reactors, 'nuff said. (Take 'em out with beams if it's shielded -- remember beams are shield piercing!) Sathanas? Swarm from behind with destroyers.

Oh yeah, and you don't even need the destroyers if you swarm the juggie with bombers. 70 Sekhmets can do a number on its engines and weapons in quite a hurry, preventing it from jumping out, and finishing it off is rather a piece of cake after that. (You'd be surprised how well the AI works when it's commanding not 4 or 8 but 70 bombers...)

The Shivans should be glad for Command's inability to swarm their juggernaut fleet during the Second Great War (due to a serious resource stretch), or they and their pissy juggernaut fleet would be smoldering space debris drying out in Capella's corona right now.

 

Offline Shrike

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
Quote
Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Let me just say this: Turbolasers r00l. ;)

ISD: 3    Ravana: 1

;7
You go, warsie. :p

Beams have style.
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Offline Nico

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



$Name: SJ Sathanas
$Rotation time: 200.0, 200.0, 200.0


And let me tell you, with a destroyer fleet on its ass, it takes a lot less than 200 seconds to take it out.

And even if it does manage to turn around, remember that the destroyers have engines, too -- they can stay behind it.

And if the 'spacecow' tries to mini-jump to turn itself around or jump in behind the destroyers, remember the destroyers can mini-jump too.

It's all about tactics. With good tactics (and enough destroyers), the GTVA can easily wipe the floor with any Shivan hardware :V: has presented us with. Ravana? Boanerges bait. Lucifer? Reactors, 'nuff said. (Take 'em out with beams if it's shielded -- remember beams are shield piercing!) Sathanas? Swarm from behind with destroyers.

Oh yeah, and you don't even need the destroyers if you swarm the juggie with bombers. 70 Sekhmets can do a number on its engines and weapons in quite a hurry, preventing it from jumping out, and finishing it off is rather a piece of cake after that. (You'd be surprised how well the AI works when it's commanding not 4 or 8 but 70 bombers...)

The Shivans should be glad for Command's inability to swarm their juggernaut fleet during the Second Great War (due to a serious resource stretch), or they and their pissy juggernaut fleet would be smoldering space debris drying out in Capella's corona right now.


thats' the kind of stupid argument I hate, coz it always has the same flaw: you want to say the jugg is crap, so you add a dozen destroyers against it, blablabla. easy. Take the apocalypse, I place 20 sathanas behind, it's fried. That's such a stupid statement. Why do people ALWAYS add more and more ships to a side, and will ALWAYS let the ship they want to destroy alone? If the GTVA puts 5 hecates behind a sathanas,  the shivan will pop out 5 ravana to take them down, and the hecates will be ownt. 70 sekhmet? 70 maras to face them. The shivans have more resources, so at this game, they win, period.
You're talking about tactics? In RTS, your tactic is called tank rush :p (that's why 70 sekhmet will be efficient even with a poor AI, just like 70 wraith in  Starcraft will be more efficient than 4 or 8 )
This reply is not meant to be rude, but I've heard this kind of argumentation way too much...
SCREW CANON!

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


thats' the kind of stupid argument I hate, coz it always has the same flaw: you want to say the jugg is crap, so you add a dozen destroyers against it, blablabla. easy. Take the apocalypse, I place 20 sathanas behind, it's fried. That's such a stupid statement. Why do people ALWAYS add more and more ships to a side, and will ALWAYS let the ship they want to destroy alone? If the GTVA puts 5 hecates behind a sathanas,  the shivan will pop out 5 ravana to take them down, and the hecates will be ownt. 70 sekhmet? 70 maras to face them. The shivans have more resources, so at this game, they win, period.
You're talking about tactics? In RTS, your tactic is called tank rush :p (that's why 70 sekhmet will be efficient even with a poor AI, just like 70 wraith in  Starcraft will be more efficient than 4 or 8 )
This reply is not meant to be rude, but I've heard this kind of argumentation way too much...


But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.

Of course, the GTVA doesn't have much left either...

You're absolutely correct that this entire argument depends on the GTVA having more of fighters, bombers, destroyers, etc. I never said anything to the contrary. Actually that's why I said that the Shivans should count themselves lucky that the GTVA was so badly stretched in the Second Great War. If, say, there were no NTF, the GTVA would be much better prepared to deal with the Shivans. Considering the size of the NTF and the number of GTVA casualties they caused, I'd say the Shivans would have had a much harder time doing what they did.

As for their Ravanas etc, it takes a lot less firepower to take them down. Maybe 8 bombers and 4 fighters (or 8 fighters if the pilots are AI and not flying super-interceptors that do 200 cruising :D). So I guess it's just a matter of engaging every Shivan warship smaller than a supercap with bombers and fighters, and leaving the Shivan supercaps to bigger ships.

 

Offline Kellan

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

But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.


A lot of the Sathanas Fleet jumped out once they had influenced the Capella star.

 

Offline Nico

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


But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.


If you think of it, you rather go my way with this statement :D if the shivans don't seem to care about sacrifying the equivallent of dunno how many times the GTVA fleet, I guess they have some serious backup waiting ;)
For the Ravan thing, it's back to the same loop: the ravana is better than an hecate. Of course it won't last long against a few bombers, but statistically speaking, if you consider that shivan and terran shiops have the same hangar capacities, the shivan fighters and bombers would be more numerous than the terran ones, coz they have more hangars ( moloch ). I have absolutly no doubt the shivans hgave limitless resources. the 80 sathanas are a perfect exemple. it took 30 years for the GTVA to build one colossus... and lmosing the colossus was a catastrophe for the GTVA. Ther shivan sacrified about 40 sathanas in one action! I know I repeat myself, but I think this is THE determinent proof that shivans have much more than the GTVA could even dream of, and whatever tactic they could use against the shivans, the bugs, if they really wanted ( or cared ) could wipe us out within a week.
"looking at the topic" whoa, we went seriously OT :p
SCREW CANON!

 

Offline LtNarol

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Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
i dont recall there being many shivan vessels in Capella aside from the sathani...

 
Remeber the "Terrain Debate"?
The topic is now "OT".;7

FOR REAL THOUGH, besides the interesting thoughts of u guys, what about the terrains. Now that the code is in our hands, and even DaveB, do you think it would be possible to implement these new features into the Freespace Engine. BTW i think should be either changed to the Freespace Forever engine which Kaazan is working on now that he actually has the code a week after he was gonna start on his project; or to "Freespace Prime", a supurb revamp of the FS2 Engine and enhanced to support all the features of todays games.

hint hint..............Open GL:jaw:

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


If you think of it, you rather go my way with this statement :D if the shivans don't seem to care about sacrifying the equivallent of dunno how many times the GTVA fleet, I guess they have some serious backup waiting ;)
For the Ravan thing, it's back to the same loop: the ravana is better than an hecate. Of course it won't last long against a few bombers, but statistically speaking, if you consider that shivan and terran shiops have the same hangar capacities, the shivan fighters and bombers would be more numerous than the terran ones, coz they have more hangars ( moloch ). I have absolutly no doubt the shivans hgave limitless resources. the 80 sathanas are a perfect exemple. it took 30 years for the GTVA to build one colossus... and lmosing the colossus was a catastrophe for the GTVA. Ther shivan sacrified about 40 sathanas in one action! I know I repeat myself, but I think this is THE determinent proof that shivans have much more than the GTVA could even dream of, and whatever tactic they could use against the shivans, the bugs, if they really wanted ( or cared ) could wipe us out within a week.
"looking at the topic" whoa, we went seriously OT :p


20 years, not 30.

The other possibility is that the Shivans destroyed Capella and sacrified 40 Sathani in order for the other 40 to jump some long distance (to another galaxy?), or perhaps to another universe. Remember how they jumped out just before Capella blew. The farthest they could have intrasystem jumped to would have been well within the blast radius of the supernova, so they were obviously using Capella for the sake of jumping some long distance.

On the subject of the supernova, there was one thing about it that was quite unrealistic. It would have taken at least 10 minutes for the shockwave to reach the player. Probably upwards 30 because of distance. Remember that the shockwave travels at a speed well below that of light. Yet the movie portrays the shockwave as having taken a matter of a few seconds to reach the player. The estimate of 10 minutes is relatively conservative, because that's what I think the difference would be between seeing the shockwave and getting hit by it.

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



On the subject of the supernova, there was one thing about it that was quite unrealistic. It would have taken at least 10 minutes for the shockwave to reach the player. Probably upwards 30 because of distance. Remember that the shockwave travels at a speed well below that of light. Yet the movie portrays the shockwave as having taken a matter of a few seconds to reach the player. The estimate of 10 minutes is relatively conservative, because that's what I think the difference would be between seeing the shockwave and getting hit by it.


then again we dont know the actual distance from capella star to alpha 1. u also gotta remember, its in terms of "freespace". its possible that the blast coulda been hella fast, but not light speed.