Comments on: MailBag Thursday: Economic Exclamations

By: Lizard

Lizard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:46:23 +0000

That actually looks like a good idea, but what if we want the whole cliff to fall then?

By: robolee

robolee — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:23 +0000

I meant per frame that the terrain changes, which is still almost every frame anyway. the problem is that you don’t know how much could technically be unstable, so how much do you limit the check region to?

What you could do is have two terrain maps, one for original terrain & bunkers and the second being a grid based terrain map thing for any new additional terrain (rubble and scrap). when the round starts check each tile of the grid against the first terrain map, if it contains terrain and non terrain flag the tile, on those tiles run a scan that plots a small one/two pixel line across the terrain edge, this will basically be an invincible line that settling terrain piles up on. when an object settles check in the tiles on the grid that it’s in that the pixels connect to the edge of the terrain. when a piece of terrain is removed, update the terrain edge.
http://filesmelt.com/downloader/terrain_check_idea.png

By: Kzerog

Kzerog — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:54:04 +0000

Omg datacomment! :O
I’d also like to know how much of the metagame/campaing has been completed and most importantly: Where’s mah new build!?

By: CrazyMLC

CrazyMLC — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:24:26 +0000

Goddamnit I love this.

RELEASE THIS SOON!

By: Boba_Fett

Boba_Fett — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:21:17 +0000

How much of the Metagame is done? Is it actually in development, or is it all just plans?

By: The Man

The Man — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:35:02 +0000

First!

Wait What!?!?!

By: Data

Data — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:24:34 +0000

Not totally unfeasible.. I’ve poked the problem several times. The trick is to combine an efficient scanning of recently changed terrain areas for chunks that are now not structurally supported enough, and turn them into movable objects on the fly, letting them settle, and then they will be copied back to the terrain. It would just take a lot of time to implement, test, and optimize, and is pretty low on the priority scale right now.

By: Footkerchief

Footkerchief — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:52:27 +0000

robolee: “terrain crumbling would not work as all the terrain pixels would have to be active and have checks to see if they are stable, that’s like over a million checks per frame.”

Nope. You need 0 checks in each frame when the terrain doesn’t change. When the terrain DOES change, you’ll generally be able to restrict the checks to small areas of the map.

It’s still totally unfeasible though.

By: enessi1

enessi1 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:31:01 +0000

@Faram45 i believe he said hes working on trying to speed that up w/ lua idk

anyway data your amazing and we all thank you for releasing newer and newer builds so we can become more in love with it and allowing us to get used to the scripting and yadda yadda yadda
so thanks bunches as i asume everyone believes

By: robolee

robolee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:09:05 +0000

terrain crumbling would not work as all the terrain pixels would have to be active and have checks to see if they are stable, that’s like over a million checks per frame. My guess is that currently the terrain is treated as one object, and when something hits a pixel of it with enough force it, that pixel then gets removed from the terrain which is substantially less cpu intensive. so basically what you are asking is pretty much impossible, and also what about tunnels and stuff? If you wanted it to just affect bunkers then there would be a hell of a lot less calculations but still way to many to run at any decent speed.

It sounds like current skirmish is being replaced with the current campaign style missions and the campaign will be totally different, am I right?

Q2 sounds interesting, sounds like you’re saying there’d be a way of extracting artifacts without damaging them as the current diggers would… but then you say fossils must be scanned “but not dug out or destroyed”. I hope that there is some new digging mechanic such as them not affecting actors or something like that.