[FekLeyrTarg]

Hello people,
it's time that I once again bring up an idea for a feature.

Over the course of the SCP's history, there have been a few attempts in writing missions in planetary atmospheres or even over planetary surfaces.
For the former, skyboxes were usually used like in WCSaga. For the latter, a huge textured planar-ish mesh was usually used with quite some impressive results, like in Blue Planet Act III.

While working on XWVM, we figured out that most games featuring planetary surfaces (IE aircraft simulators) use some sort of procedure to create these. X-Wing also creates the Death Star's surface that way. Same with Wing Commander III and IV as well as Elite II (Frontier) and Elite III (First Encounters).

Which brings me to the point:
What do you think about having procedural planetary surfaces as part of Freespace Open? Is something like this even feasible for the SCP?

[The E]

It may be possible to do with scripting. The basic idea there would be to have a set of terrain tiles that is spawned as the player moves through the mission space.

[FekLeyrTarg]

Would it need pre-built meshes to choose from or could the procedure generate the meshes itself? In X-Wing for instance, there's no mesh of the surface itself. The procedure generates some sort of infinite planes for the surface and the trench, then places the pre-built buildings and turrets on top of it.

[General Battuta]

I think the biggest problem is the AI having no damn idea what to do if it gets close.

[Nightmare]

I think the biggest problem is the AI having no damn idea what to do if it gets close.

Sure, but that effects all ground-missions, what hasn't stopped FREDers from making good ones.

Overall this sounds like a job for ship-create SEXP, unless I misunderstand the whole concept.

[wookieejedi]

As mentioned you could do it more effectively with scripting. Ie moving the ground tiles to where the player is (along with having a matching skybox model). I think moving the tiles would be more efficient then creating new ones everywhere.

[m!m]

Apart from the AI issues, this is definitely doable with a script at the moment but only with a limited tile set.

If you start to generate the geometry on the fly (e.g. on the GPU via tesselation) then you would need additional, specialized shaders for rendering this geometry and it would also cause issues with collision detection since the engine has no idea what kind of transformations the GPU will do.

[Nightmare]

As mentioned you could do it more effectively with scripting. Ie moving the ground tiles to where the player is (along with having a matching skybox model). I think moving the tiles would be more efficient then creating new ones everywhere.

Could probably done with SEXPs too.

[wookieejedi]

That is very true. In my experience though something like this would be much easier to script, though if the person who wanted to make liked sexps better then it is definitively possible that way, too. 

[Colonol Dekker]

Who doesn't like a good sexp.

[Zarax]

Wasn't there some "planet" code buried in the game? IIRC calling something "planet" would damage ships flying too close for example.

[Nightmare]

Wasn't there some "planet" code buried in the game? IIRC calling something "planet" would damage ships flying too close for example.

Yep. Just a few days ago I learned that the player ship self-destructs if something named Planet warps in.

[Bryan See]

Wasn't there some "planet" code buried in the game? IIRC calling something "planet" would damage ships flying too close for example.

Found the file which is said to have a "planet," other than briefing icons. It is collideshipship.cpp.

Code: [Select]

#define PLANET_DAMAGE_SCALE 4.0f
#define PLANET_DAMAGE_RANGE 3 // If within this factor of radius, apply damage.

fix Last_planet_damage_time = 0;

EDIT: I've forgot to add the code in the fred.rc file. This code appears to have something to do with planets.

Code: [Select]

    ID_VIEW_FIGHTERS        "Show/Hide Fighter objects"
    ID_VIEW_CAPITALSHIPS    "Show/Hide Capital Ship objects"
ID_VIEW_PLANETS "Show/Hide Planet objects"

[Zarax]

Wasn't there some "planet" code buried in the game? IIRC calling something "planet" would damage ships flying too close for example.

Found the file which is said to have a "planet," other than briefing icons. It is collideshipship.cpp.

Code: [Select]

#define PLANET_DAMAGE_SCALE 4.0f
#define PLANET_DAMAGE_RANGE 3 // If within this factor of radius, apply damage.

fix Last_planet_damage_time = 0;


I... hoped there was a little more than that. That said, if there was the SCP would have used it already...

[Nightmare]

Given the scale of FS with fighters travelling around with a few hundred m/s at best, having 3D planets thousands of km wide doesn't make that much sense.

[Bryan See]

Wasn't there some "planet" code buried in the game? IIRC calling something "planet" would damage ships flying too close for example.

Found the file which is said to have a "planet," other than briefing icons. It is collideshipship.cpp.

Code: [Select]

#define PLANET_DAMAGE_SCALE 4.0f
#define PLANET_DAMAGE_RANGE 3 // If within this factor of radius, apply damage.

fix Last_planet_damage_time = 0;


I... hoped there was a little more than that. That said, if there was the SCP would have used it already...

Yet to have the functionality. Would it be better if the planet objects be divided as dwarf planets and proper planets, as classified by the IAU back in 2006? For example, Pluto has a diameter of 2,377 km, while Ceres has a diameter of  946 km.

The only limitation is the mission bounds of 700 km. As I found out, removing the hard-coded mission bounds would increase the burden of the renderer, as The E pointed out. But I have yet to test his claims.

[Zarax]

How hard would it be to externalize this set of functions?
I have a couple ideas on how this could be turned into a weapon...

[The E]

Here's an important tip for SCP topics. Ignore anything Bryan See says, he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Yes, there is a mostly dummied out "feature" that creates an exclusion zone around an object named "planet", but that's as far as that thing ever went.

The mission space limitations, unlike what Bryan said, don't have anything to do with the renderer; the bigger issue is that we are unable to guarantee that physics still work that far out.

Plus, given the speeds FSO is built around, you'll never want to have a mission that would use that much space anyway.

[Nightmare]

Plus, given the speeds FSO is built around, you'll never want to have a mission that would use that much space anyway.

Not entirely true. While I don't think that there're things several thousand km across in a mission (though I'd like to see that ), building missions with multiple stages is easier if you can have the next stage just 100 km away especially if the setting is quite big.

[Bryan See]

The mission space limitations, unlike what Bryan said, don't have anything to do with the renderer; the bigger issue is that we are unable to guarantee that physics still work that far out.

Perhaps this could make use of a physics engine, one that works with space combat simulators.