1 Topic by Gharl Incognito (edited by Gharl Incognito 2013-01-23 12:59:13)

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Topic: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

So having seen some of the results of terraforming walls on Gamma islands I find myself wondering how much gravity Nia has?

As it stands the land-walls that can be made are really absurd.  Physics aside(clearly) they are total lag monsters.  If the game is hoping for growth with the Steam Greenlight then making it as accessible as possible should be a priority. 

Reduce the possible height of a terraformed tile in proportion to the tiles around it.  Making a landwall should be possible, making a Nia based Osgiliath should be possible, making a bit of dirt 100 feet high with no supports should not be possible.

These land walls also negate the need for good old fashioned concrete(or Nia-crete).

Terraforming is awesome but it's overpowered right now.

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

I'm actually shocked that this is brought up...but I think your right.

Not just kind of right either....

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

its alchemy anyways  -you can make rock out out thin air, or make it disappear into nirvana again.

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

Where players and accounts can't cut it, Devs can.

Amirite? lol

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

Syndic wrote:

Where players and accounts can't cut it, Devs can.

Amirite? lol

I'm not sure what that means.

Honestly the most pressing concern is the massive lag spikes.  They seriously screw with anyone who doesn't have a beast of a computer.  Many many older players use laptops now: mine can run World of Tanks, Mechwarrior Online, Hawken, Civ5, CS:GO and Deux Ex without issue... but combine the rendering with internet latency for those mega-walls and it stutters down to slide show level(granted I'm playing from Australia but my internet is still pretty turbo speed).

The physics thing bugs me because it looks silly and amaturish.  I'd love to build a Gamma terminal with Niacrete walls but it seems the done thing is making a mini-Mordor instead.  I can understand walls being used to block missiles but if you make a low land wall and then put Niacrete walls along thee top you could seal it off from plasma bomb attack anyway couldn't you?

P.S.: Syndics stil here! Can I still engage in purile flame wars using clips from old Australian Comedy shows even thought we're kind of on the same team now?

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

All the devs need to do to make it more real is fix the stretching texture and make the texture look like some sort of rock(afaik its already textured like that when the steepness reaches certain degree) that can be in that shape and not collapse.

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

Burial wrote:

All the devs need to do to make it more real is fix the stretching texture and make the texture look like some sort of rock(afaik its already textured like that when the steepness reaches certain degree) that can be in that shape and not collapse.

that sounds easy... the engine supports normal mapping and stuff, the terrain texture is normal-based gradient shader mask for a few layer of noisemaps with UV Projection.

the problem there is the way the terrain is generated:

you take a picture with 2048x2048 pixel, turn every pixel in to a vertice an connect them with triangles. use the brightness of each picture for Z elevation.
thats all it does. if one pixel is very bright next to a dark one, you get a sharp spike that the best normal mapping cannot hide.

this method is easy and fast to calculate, but has more disadvantages then advantages imho:
- because of the uniform grid in XY plane, you got to much triangles in spots where they are redundant, and not enough where they necessary.
- texture mapping will run into issues with streched triangles and well, each "sqare" will tilt only in one diagonal direction.
- afaik, in combination with the way the LoS calculation works, there previous point will generate wrong terrain hit.

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Re: Terraforming and Physics: How big is Nia?

Still... the lag(not latency) fest that it causes... the rendering on my poor laptop.

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