Let's Talk: Terrain Height

I've often wondered whether there was anything we could do about the default "straight down" camera angle.

Take a look at this Painted Desert shot:
http://wormhole.tauniverse.com/images/ta/315base.jpg

It's not overly obvious but the camera is coming in at a slight angle. The models and the terrain are not being seen from directly top-down. I think this helped TA use height in a way that was really useful. In PA I rarely have any grasp of terrain heights and angles because I'm looking straight down at it.

I'm not sure how that would mesh with a sphere, but I wonder what it would feel like if the camera was always off-center a bit.... Like currently your camera is always looking directly towards the center of the planet. Suppose instead it was always looking at a spot 15 degrees away from the center of the planet?

I don't know what the math for that would look like.

Or maybe even say that the camera's focal point is always the "top" edge of the sphere, as seen on your screen. So the more you zoom in, the more of an angle you get. Zooming way out will be close to top-down because the focal point of the camera will be the north pole, which is not that far away, visually, from the center of the planet but as you zoom in the camera is angling more and more to always keep that horizon as the focal point, which is getting further and further away from the center of the planet, visually, as you zoom in.

Changing the terrain height would be great but a small scale planet, as you said, wouldn't play well or look that good for a varied terrain height. The problem is the unit's and structures are too big for a varied terrain height on a small planet. A planet of a large size would make sense to have varied terrain height as it would be to scale with the units and structures. 1500 would be a good size for height. Contours could work on PA as long as they were small and didn't distract from the gameplay.

For the air layer:
The height air units travel at is relative to terrain height at a certain point. They can fly over anything.

For terrain height being less-than-obvious when directly under your view:
First thing that comes to mind is slope-dependent decals. That would help a lot. Also the option to change the viewing angle of the camera might help, but shallower viewing angles aren't ideal for an RTS.

For terrain height in general:
They probably need to make changes to the algorithm they use anyway. I think they should also look into a different algorithm altogether, maybe even a custom one, for generating terrain height. Gradient noise isn't a good solution when you want some area to be a plateau and another to be rolling hills. Terrain height should be somewhat dependent on user-defined settings instead of being generic noise. Even minecraft doesn't use generic noise anymore.

As for brushes for major features:
It's my opinion that using intersecting subtractive brushes on the terrain is a better solution for many larger features (of course, compound brushes would look even better). Here's some relevant discussion regarding cliffs that you may or may not have already seen. A subtractive method allows for intersecting cliffs at different elevations, creating mountains with a combination of gradual sides and sheer cliffs, and allows for arbitrary plateau/lake/mountain/ shapes by following the countours of the terrain.

Here's a very basic example I gave, from the aforementioned thread:


EDIT: Also, contour maps are completely possible in PA. Radius is analogous to height.

In the interest of (personal) time I'll just go very briefly with quotes,

The spherical nature of PA has absolutely nothing to do with the problems in PA's terrain generation!

The earth, along with every planet in the solar system we know including ones which have very very extreme terrain by comparison to earth terrain extremes we're used to are all spheres too.

What PA gets absolutely wrong is that terrain HAS TO be tied into radius. Terrain forms by a variety of factors such tectonic movement, vulcanic activity, glacial movement, erosion, or just various other events such as land slides due to high sand and water composition and so on. It should come as no surprise that when we look at the picture above (ignoring the odd terrain formations on the side of the river near us and the trees growing on rocks) we find it more immersive than random planets with bulges in them.

Case to point, if you look at volcanic planets we feel like the heights make sense even though they're only in props because it has "common sense" on it's side to help push the visuals. It's just really easy to look at a volcano looking feature on the map and go ya that looks right.

Same principle applies to other biomes with out height variation. The problem is just in the subconcious questions we ask ourselves when we look at it. How do you have dunes in that bulge there if obviously the area would be protected from the wind? How is that a mountain when it's not an angled slope? Why is that mountain the size of 3 tanks. Why is there a giant crack there when everything else looks untouched and made of dirt?

Have a max height, scale it up with planet radius. Only decently sized planets can actually have giant height variance. You have to be big to have big features.

Simply a case of missing visual features such as more detailed shadows and actual variety in textures. Yes if everything looks like a giant blob of color and there's little to no shadow/lighting on it then it's hard to tell. but in your comparison image that's not really the case is it? The angle actually doesn't affect it much. With crappy lighting and bad textures any angle and shape will have the same issues, the only thing the angle affects is that horizon line. I mentioned this in another thread, I understand the top down view is optimal, but I think it's the most boring and there really isn't any reason why you cant have a slopped view (enabled so long as the height of the planet is above a certain threshold obviously).

There are more problems there then just the height, and the way height works is IMO merely a consequence of how well you do in every other department of planet generation.

Yes. If mechanics related to height mechanic are actually defined properly, such as unit arc of fire and so forth. Right now everything works for the most part in a straight line or somewhat fake arc.

Wait for mods. =P

Woohoo! That'll be fun to play with!

I think this will make competitive matches MUCH more interesting in the future, and look forward to seeing how it affects the meta-game.

Glory to this biological intelligence!

well, actually we have height in the game but has nearly no effect. I wonder if a 2-level-height system, like for example Starcraft has would be better for PA.

PA has already spherical maps. A height system with distinct height levels would help here imo, because its less complicated than a "flowing" system. It would be easily visible if its higher or not, and maybe its not limited to 2 heights, but also more, but mainly it should rely on cliffs. Only some "ramps" should be there where you can let your units go up. I think in the desert biome its basically like this. and although pathfinding is still crap there, it looks okay!

I have been waiting for this since... well, since we had metal spots, I guess. TWEAK ALL THE THINGS!!1!

Also, was this a clever way to imply that we have significantly improved terrain gen now?

This is awesome news! I had serious issues with amount of metal on extra-large planets.
It's looks like in 63475 there was total metal limit set for 1200 meters planet...

It would and I would love to see it on at least something like desert and metal worlds, but it has some issues on a lot of other types for being too "contrived" even for the cartoony look PA goes for.

Thank you very much.

Does the metal density somehow reference the size of the planet??

Currently, it doesn't appear to be so, since most planets have around 150-160 metal, no matter their size.

I like it being distinctly obvious that one planet is better than another - so, for example, a 1000 radius planet would have 400ish metal, while a radius 250 planet would have around 40 or 50.

We could also make a gamemode where each planet under radius 250 has, say, 15 metal spots. That would be interesting.

I'm talking about issue with extra large planet with 2000 radius that is way higher that officially supported. For some reason such planets getting really few metal spots and it's looks like they get same amount as 1200 meters planets.

Also any chance we'll able to preview metal spots location in system editor again?

I think if the CSG worked with Height Range in the system editor that'd be awesome.
Larger CSG would be good too.
Also - cliffs instead of sharp bumps. I mean, sharp inclines up to a point but height range starts looking daft after a point.

Visually showing a tower's increased range if you built it higher up would be a good UI feature.

I can't wait to play with that! O_O

I wonder how metal planet styled games will go now...

This patch. Soon it must come. Stuff will happen if the patch no come.





Is 1.0 the artificial cap or can we go even higher? How high would we have to do to have metal spots everywhere?

There will be mods for unlocking any artificial restrictions. In fact, expect TA Metal planet styled games to be hosted by me shortly after the patch is out.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I LOVE YOU

Seriously...all of that metal was driving me crazy !!

I'd prefer less metal in general, but I've wanted to crank up the metal sliders to insane levels just for poops and giggles.