[WIP] Custom Planet Type: Cliffs

Heh, kinda sucks we only had 3 players though. Not much actual combat along the cliffs either, since yellow moved down into the valley with me.
And orbital is still extremely cheesy; sorry about that long and silly ending

My only question is "Why didn't/isn't Uber doing this?" It makes it more like a ummm what's that word? Oh, planet. Not just sphere with water.

It is a demonstration of what they can do. It is possible they experiment with this and with better pathing aren't afraid to port it to public. It is possible if not, they might consider this and think otherwise now.

Hey, never know.

That, and to do something like this well would probably require quite a bit of work, as well as changes to the planet creation system. It could just be that these things aren't high priority right now. It could also be the case that Uber is still in the planning stage with regards to a terrain feature overhaul. There are quite a few decisions to be made regarding terrain such as better biome controls, possible changes to the height map algorithm, cliffs (including a height map algorithm that takes cliff placement into consideration), more controls for biome features, possibly projecting ground decals onto certain brush faces... the list goes on.

It's hard to say what the current situation is, but I'm hopeful

Woah that looks awesome! And judging by those pictures it doesn't look like map-mobility is too much of an issue..

Here's ze gameplay video!



And an imgur album

If only i knew i couldn't smash that big planet, i wouldn't have spent 20 minutes to build 8 halleys in total xD

With my fps drops i couldn't react to the planet smash in time, too bad for me.

Looks pretty awesome. Especially those ruins!

I think it should go back to using the earth template though, lava is just so dark and makes it all look slightly boring because there's no lava there to light things up.

Actually, it's darker because of the lighting settings I chose. They're actually darker than lava too, which for some reason has a bit of a blue-ish tint, even though the lava planet atmosphere diffracts red light the most.
I decided to go with a thin brown atmosphere, so I decided to have darker, brown-ish ambient light.

Also, those temples are in the game files, currently unused assets for the jungle biome. When I was looking through the files, I came across them and realized they'd be awesome of they were upscaled a bit, so that you could send armies through or build within their walls. There are a few other brushes like this in the files, including a mountain biome Stonehenge and desert ruins.

OK, well in that case I don't like the lighting settings, it makes everything muddy and dull.

Eh, even moons right now feature blue-ish ambient light, despite lacking an atmosphere entirely. While it's fitting for earth and tropical planets, I think it's overused.
What changes would you suggest? Brighter daytime light? Brighter shadow/ night lighting? Different colours for one or the other?

Quick question. Is your test planet only available in the system editor, or can you insert it into the systems generated randomly when clicking the "new" button in the game lobby?

Currently, it won't come up when clicking the 'new' button, nor will they be included in randomly generated systems. I haven't really looked into that yet, since I don't use randomly generated systems often.
They will only be available in custom systems (using the system editor).

What about using additive brushes?

Did this mod change the coloring or the shading? just looking at the screenshots and it appears to be really dark, even the video from brianburkiss something is up with the lighting or something?

How do the large cracks in planets work then? Cause I've seen them plenty of times filled with water, and it seems (to my inexperienced with modding self) that those must be subtractive brushes working both above and below the water level.

Here's the limitation: The brush cannot be placed below the water level. The brush's geometry can extend into the water, sure, but the origin point of the brush (the exact position it's placed at) must be above the water level.

In order to have decent subtractive seaside cliffs, I would need to be able to place brushes below the water level.

As for additive brushes, I don't think it's currently possible to get good results from them.

see my response to quitch; the lighting settings I'm using right now differ from those of the other planet types. Lighting is pretty customizable, changing those settings is trivial.

Fair enough eh.