Some questions and suggestions. Of course Uber is constrained by time and money and technical limitations, but im wondering has the team discussed some of the following: Firstly any weather? rain, snow, wind(for wind generators), dust storms. Of course would look nice but would impact visibility of the planet and may be performance intensive to be realistic looking and dynamic. On a related note on Ice Planets – could there be active ice volcanos ie geysers? Some volcano effects have been hinted at in the interviews, some sulpher patches created from volcanos plumes might be nice to add to the lava worlds. Phase Locked Planets, I think there was one in TA which was half black, half white albeit in flatland. Will rotation speed/phase locking be adjustable for planets/moons? Rock planets, will we have more novel features like with gas giant moons in our system, some of our moons have ice on them also, would be nice if some ice could appear on random rockies. Any Liquid on metal planets ala TA ? Mercury/hydrocarbon Pools etc? What are the mechanics of excavating terrain when bolide impacts occur - particularly on the edges of oceans,lava lakes and Mesas or cracks. Will Metal Planets be hard to dent or annihilate – what is annihilation? Will there be limits to depth you can smash a hole into a planetary body? Would a displacement model work better then making the terrain disappear? Can any lessons be learned from the physics in "From Dust"? Just some thoughts!
As long as I know From Dust don't have any real physics at all, it's just fake which looks great. You actually can check simple WebGL demo here: http://codeflow.org/webgl/craftscape/
lessons CAN be learned from From Dust as that game did suceed in sending a message, one that said : "*POW* hey sorry for that fist in your face but look! this is possible!" and PA, whilst not exactly aiming for such an extensive aproach will offer a lot of physics when asteroids smash into planets or planets into planets and such, not the same type as From Dust though. as for the rest of your ideas, yes they are details, but attention to details = immersion. the best part of FA to me was always how stunning the maps were.
Man its nice to see all that photographic evidence of the electric universe. Those are not volcanos, rather, plasma plumes created from electricity and magnetics from the connection to its planet. Imagine how much electricity must have flowed through that moon with the electrically sculpted crater that takes up over 30% of its surface. There is absolutely no way that was created via 'impact', the forces would have shattered the whole moon.
There is water/lava flowing and land settling which would be physics yes. If there are tricks to avoid per particle modelling that is par for the course in programming.
If you check webgl demo I linked you'll see that's working mostly exactly like From Dust. It's not real physics, it's not even fake physics, it's just very basic heightmap algorithms plus really good visualization. I just want to say that game actually don't need powerful physics engine to get some nice gameplay features.
really hoping for "from dust" style water movement. Devs haven't talked about water yet, i'm sure it's lower on their to do list than orbital, interplanetary, and adding/balancing units
I'm not talking about advanced fluid dynamics. I'm talking about the super rough flow simulation like in "from dust" "it's not real physics, it's not even fake physics, it's just very basic heightmap algorithms plus really good visualization."
I guess the reason people keep coming back to this topic is that naval and water planets were a stretch goal that was achieved early on. And the game includes terrain deformation from asteroids. So clearly the issue of what happens when additional lower-than-sea-level craters appear connected to the shoreline? Simply having the sealevel be a constant table that's just ... there instantly is a pretty lame cop-out. All I'm hoping for is that, if a new chunk is taken out beside an ocean/lake, that the new basin fills over time with a bit of water flow animation implying that there is water flowing from one location to another. This is NOT a full water sim, just a ruff visual approximation to keep things believable
Don't waste my time. And do your ******* research. http://www.holoscience.com/wp/synopsis/ may help the ignorant. Takes actual reading though. You could dig through their picture of the day and find the descriptions of why/how the events on those objects happened the way they did and how it progresses today. It is pretty sad to see how many so called space junkies have no clue about this. Guess grade 10 science was good enough eh? Mimas - http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050712holes.htm Io - http://www.holoscience.com/wp/io-and-the-electric-universe/
Has there been any sort of movement on this topic since this thread kind of stopped getting comments over the past several months? I'm still wanting at least some basic weather effects to be implemented I think they would and could add a lot to the aesthetics to the game and gameplay. Rain and snow would be pretty sweet, even if its just a visual representation of things that doesn't really mean much, tornadoes or dust clouds on desert planets would be pretty spectacular I reckon..... I can just imagine how damn awesome ash clouds would look on a lava planet, that would so kool to see. If Uber haven't discussed this yet or really just simply too early in development or not possible with their budget, could any weather systems be added as some sort of mod? is that even possible?
Uber hasn't said anything. I'm guessing this won't be in the launch. In thinking about it, sure it would be cool looking. But it (arguably) wouldn't contribute to gameplay, just be a hinderance making it harder to see what's going on. Dunno. Sounds cool. Not sure how it'd be in actual implementation.
why im wondering if it can be possible to add in as a mod, to umm, test the water so to speak? I'm not a modder or i'd give it a go myself lol.. Think the problem would be the clouds... Think i commented on a similar thread before and the clouds issue came up.... still think it would be pretty kool to have though, of course, only as an option, so you can turn it off if it gets too annoying or something
That's not an easy quick mod to just test the water. Most heavy mods are waiting to the game launch though
now that the Mods folder has been released to dynamically add mod support now without overwrite.. is this a possibility or is it still just too early yet?
If not fluid dynamics, and heavy weather stuff, it'd be great to see at least some light clouds in the atmosphere of earth and tropical biomes.
let them 1st make the Planets like in some of the biome pics and concept arts then we can talk about weather but some better water texture or animation would be nice.
