More details on upcoming Asteroids update!

Heh, I actually agree with you. But honestly I will probably be happy with whatever Uber comes up with. I don't think it's impossible, just really hard. Part of it being hard is knowing that when you start considering these edge cases, sure you can come up with an effect that will still look nice with water/other craters etc, but now you are limited, and probably the more generic effect is not as awesome.

Well it would be a step up from now and imho a step up from "asteroids are just like planets: super late gameenders".

This is very close to an internal talk we've had. In terms of matching quality, we won't be able to. Craters will always look inferior due to the tech requirements to make them up to par. Doing those tech requirements takes resources away from asteroids and planet smashing.. it's a balancing act of priorities overall. It'll be up to design, and we'll want to see how they play in PTE as most of you are better at the game than most of us

Well you could use a scaled down planet smash effect for the craters from asteroids and just the old crater system for the actual craters. I *think* that is possible right "out of the box" and that would be what I would prefer.
Simply because "asteroids just destroy the whole planet, in the same way that planets do" really doesn't sound good from a gameplay perspective. From a gameplay perspective "asteroids are a tool to make lots of smaller holes into the surface of planets" sound so much better. And I think the current crater system at least can do that, even though the craters will just be the old craters.

We'll get it in PTE and see how it plays

Just trying it sure is worth way more than a thousand posts of me dreaming up dreamy things

Really? Then tell me why it is so costly to have many destructible objects even in modern games. I assure you that they can work on the code to make it run faster now that the planet isn't destructible

That's fine . Personally, i'm hoping for ability to add crater properties to ammo jsons. Used to be able to do this but it stopped being supported.

Also hope care is taken to not have abundant and accessible instant win mechanics for the sake of awesomeness. Games are always more enjoyable if players are able to respond to each other. But i'm sure you guys will come up with something fun. Thanks for the update!

Just casting my vote:

Planet collides with another planet = total loss of both planets
Asteroid collides with a planet = huge devastation but no loss of planet
Asteroid collides with asteroid = total loss of both asteroids

Does that mean we'll get both versions (crater style and "kill-all" style) of asteroids to give feedback which one we liked more? Because I'd like to see that sort of PTE usage. Ie. in-/validating your internal playtest results, even if it's with placeholder graphics to get a faster turnaround time. Using PTE only as a last round of testing for game breaking bugs before a release goes live seems like a missed opportunity.

Just my 2 cent. Curious to see what comes of the asteroids.

The planets are not destructable. Not like they are in other games. The planets are generated using Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG). That means that the way they are generated is by apply brushes that modify the mesh. So when the game is running as normal, the planets are static. When you smash a planet, there is computation applied to the planet to generate a new mesh, and then when it is done, we are back to where we started.

yay great news so far

Cool! Looking forward to those PTEs.

Additionally, I'd like to put in a vote for nukes to leave a crater under their scorchmark. You'd think they would, wouldn't you?

I am aware of the process, knowing that you don't need to add/subtract csg while in game make stuff easier. Otherwise things like this wouldn't be possible

Question: when you say "fully destroyed one another", do you mean that both planets cease to exist (regardless of relative sizes), or the realllly old smashing behavior of "everything on, above, or orbiting the planet dies but the planet is still there with a new big hole in it"?

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That is probably not generated by CSG at all, but rather generated procedurally. What I am saying is that the construction of the map IS a CSG process. It's also iterative. Which means if you eliminate planet craters, nothing about the initial planet generators will change. It also means the resulting computed geometry won't change -> it's performance characteristics won't change. It won't make it easier to handle large planets because when the game is running, the fact that planets can change using a CSG has no penalty while it is running.

This is actually generated by a mix of CSG and noise, so I still think it is possible to make it run better to allow more surface area. Still, this is not the point of the thread, lets talk about asteroidzzzz

Am I seriously misunderstanding something or not? Did it really take, what, 6 months? - 1 year? to get out asteriods in the form of auto spawning planets which do exactly the same as normal planets with no new gameplay mechanic but the old mecanic we used so long ago. If I wanted that I just make a system with small moons orbiting the sun with no metal en 1 halley requirement.

So far, I am very very dissapointed with this. With so much time I expected at least a new "anti asteroid" cannon (Kickstarted video style), new visual effects for smashing planets, asteroids and terrain deformations (like the metal planet deformation which never officially released >.>) and an implemtation that adds up to the gameplay we have now.

Totally remove craters.. Bad idea. asteroids need them.
Asteroids totally destroying planets.. Bad idea. No body will ever EVER, sacrifice one of their planets again. Due to eco.

I understand that reverting to an older state might be more fun, but damn. threw it on PTE 6 months ago allready. You have a community here dying to test stuff out. USE IT. WE are your costumers. WE can give you the best feedback possible. WE can playtest everything. We can come up with new idea's and figure out what we find most fun.

You are there to take all the disicions of our discussions but I really feel like we've been totally left out and that once the asteroids arive we are very dissapointed except for the Visual Effects. Which I might say are also very very very overdue as with each planet smash we still look at programmer art for about a year now. (you know the big default white particle flash that totally covers up the real art of flying pieces of planet.

So again. Misunderstanding much or am I totally on point?

They have been working on other stuff for quite some time. This is a recent project, so no it did not take 6 months to a year for them to make this.

You statement is a bit like saying "Does it really take 6 months to print out an essay?". The answer to that of course is that no, it takes 6 months to write the essay, only five minutes to print.