[fightermedic]

 
are we ever going to see more than 512 astroids in a field?
or, even better, more than one astroid field per mission?

another thing that would really have me freak out would be if local nebulae (just like the ones behind the knossos) would be possible, you know, just have them ristricted to a certain area like astroid fields
wouldn't that be just cool? flying into (and out again) of a nebula?

one can dream i guess...
any opinions?

[Kolgena]

soft particles

(No, legit. Some long-lived soft particles would do the job at approximating distinct clouds of nebula)

[CommanderDJ]

I once asked for the whole local nebula idea, and I wasn't anywhere near the first. AFAIK, it's not possible at this point, and may well not be for a while - though Kolgena makes an interesting point. Soft particles solve everything!

As for the asteroid thing, as soon as asteroid fields get a code rewrite, the limit at least shouldn't be a problem. The question is when and if that will happen.

[mjn.mixael]

Oh man... The nebula looks awful right now... Here's hoping a better method reveals itself... Than the ugly scaling and rotating 2d planes.

[fightermedic]

the whole soft particle thing is all greek to me, i leave that discussion for people smarter than me
 
but changing the asteroid maximum to somthing like 5000 should only be a matter of changing one number in the code, yes?
now, who do i need to bribe to get that arrangend? 

[Sushi]

the whole soft particle thing is all greek to me, i leave that discussion for people smarter than me
 
but changing the asteroid maximum to somthing like 5000 should only be a matter of changing one number in the code, yes?
now, who do i need to bribe to get that arrangend? 

At least two numbers, actually. You'd also need to increase the total number of allowed objects.

[The E]

And then you need a rather powerful PC that is able to handle all the collision detection required, and a rendering code rewrite that can handle that many objects without much of a slowdown....

Bottom line, these limits are there for a reason, that reason being "making the game playable".

[Sushi]

And then you need a rather powerful PC that is able to handle all the collision detection required, and a rendering code rewrite that can handle that many objects without much of a slowdown....

Bottom line, these limits are there for a reason, that reason being "making the game playable".

To be fair, increasing the limits doesn't really slow anything down. You only get that problem when people actually make missions that fill up the expanded limits.

That said, a 5000 asteroid mission would probably be pretty unplayable. You're much better off faking it like BtRL did, using a bunch of "real" asteroids plus a lot of "fake" asteroids in the distance via skybox.

EDIT: Like this:

[JCDNWarrior]

Fredding a few asteroid belt based missions myself I've had some trouble with the limit of asteroids as well. There's a few methods to improve it such as aforementioned skybox but i'm not particularly happy with for instance asteroid ship-like objects that have no collision and thus also can't be blown up. I would love to see the limit improved, and the implementation of soft particles to make local nebulae's like in Freelancer would be very welcoming as well.

I'm hoping there will be some development on this very soon.

*Edit: Darius was kind enough to supply me, thanks again!

[Nuke]

what about non-persistant objects. if the player is flying in an asteroid field. along side your standard set of asterids say have several smaller asteroids automatically spawned in your vicinity and then disappear as they go out of range, sorta like nebula poofs. there might only be 3 or 4 different models but it provides fill that makes the asteroid field feel denser than it actually is. if the models are small then i figure limiting their collision detecion to radius checks only would improve performance and wouldn't look too bad. likewise i wonder if localized nebulas can be done simply by replacing asteroid models with poofs. real issue with this kinda thing is the transitional effects.

using soft particles would slow down the game a lot especially if you drew an entire asteroid fields worth of them. so what if you only draw poofs on the surface of the field, eliminate anything more than a couple layers deep to increase speed. perhaps using fewer, larger distance poofs at range. i do kinda like the way btrl did their asteroids, with the rotating skybox elements. but heres the part i tell you that the cables are too thick and that asteroid fields are so dispursed that real asteroids appear to be faint blips off in the distance from each other.

[fightermedic]

And then you need a rather powerful PC that is able to handle all the collision detection required, and a rendering code rewrite that can handle that many objects without much of a slowdown....

Bottom line, these limits are there for a reason, that reason being "making the game playable".

To be fair, increasing the limits doesn't really slow anything down. You only get that problem when people actually make missions that fill up the expanded limits.

exactly, i say, give the fredder the choice at least my pc can handle large amount of objects quite well, and it's 4 years old
ever made a 10000m³ asteroid field and filled it with 512 asteroids? thats like nothing at all!
so no massive battle in a asteroid field possible right now

a very cool solution would be to have asteroids respawn, once destroyed, or once they moved too far away from the original placement area
if you place one or two beam free captial ships with guards in an field, the asteroids will be gone in no time

wow a lot of people interested in this matter 

that btrl screen looks awesome btw

[Goober5000]

The asteroid count was already bumped from 256 to 512 fairly recently.  That is the practical limit until the collision code is improved.  (And it wouldn't hurt to improve the asteroid code either.)  It can't be bumped higher without incurring severe slowdowns; I've tested it.

Incidentally, there is absolutely no need for a 10km by 10km by 10km cube filled with asteroids.  That is indicative of poor FREDding, the same as if you added a dozen capital ships with beam-free-all.  Just find out how much volume the battle will take up, and create an asteroid field that's only a little bit larger than that.

[Luis Dias]

You could make the asteroids work the collision by just doing radius checks right now. It is quite probable that the slight lack of precision in the resulting collisions would not be that annoying, at least in contrast with the huge benefits...

[JCDNWarrior]

The asteroid count was already bumped from 256 to 512 fairly recently.  That is the practical limit until the collision code is improved.  (And it wouldn't hurt to improve the asteroid code either.)  It can't be bumped higher without incurring severe slowdowns; I've tested it.

It's good to hear such a clear response on the subject, thanks Goober.  Some experimentation helped on my end but I look forward to be able to work with a (slightly) larger limit for large vistas or approaching asteroid fields from 10k away.

I also like Nuke's suggestion of non-persistant objects. Motion debris can to mind for some reason as well, also like Freelancer.

[Trivial Psychic]

I have suggested a method for variable density nebulae.  There exists portions of the code that dictate the rendered distance between nebula poofs, as well as others that control how far away from the player that ships should become obscured by the fog.  The later of these can be adjusted in objecttypes.tbl (I believe) on a per-ship basis, but there is currently no way to change this on a per-mission basis, let alone mid-mission.  I would imagine however, that it would not be impossible to make said changes... though adding a FRED interface to make it part of the background editor might take a bit of work.  It would need to use a global multiplier so one only needs to change a single number to proportionally increase or decrease the visibility distance for all classes... possibly in-mission if sexps are used.

[The E]

You could make the asteroids work the collision by just doing radius checks right now. It is quite probable that the slight lack of precision in the resulting collisions would not be that annoying, at least in contrast with the huge benefits...

Luis, that would be a valid suggestion if the code didn't do that already.

[Luis Dias]

I blame it on nuke, he fooled me!

[fightermedic]

The asteroid count was already bumped from 256 to 512 fairly recently.  That is the practical limit until the collision code is improved.  (And it wouldn't hurt to improve the asteroid code either.)  It can't be bumped higher without incurring severe slowdowns; I've tested it.

Incidentally, there is absolutely no need for a 10km by 10km by 10km cube filled with asteroids.  That is indicative of poor FREDding, the same as if you added a dozen capital ships with beam-free-all.  Just find out how much volume the battle will take up, and create an asteroid field that's only a little bit larger than that.

i beg to differ sir, because adding 12 beam-free-all ships in an almost 10km³ field  was exactly what i did, and it worked out quite well
apart from the fact that after a short time almost all the asteroids are gone, either flown away or destroyed, and that doesen't look like massive battle in dense asteroid field anymore

[The E]

That sounds like a true BoE mission.

[Luis Dias]

12 beam ships inside an asteroid field?

And people complained about Delenda Est!