Petition to bring the water back!

I completely agree, I found the old water really easy to understand and much prettier. It was one of those little touches that brings the game world to life.

Water rises and falls. However, naval can't even navigate shallow water. So the water they can't navigate looks EVEN bigger than before.

You see 2 different heights. Well, NEITHER is right. It is actually LOWER than the lowest height, that naval can navigate. I didn't like that. Water can look "wavey", but they need to bind the edges of water to not wave. I mainly just support the ripple-effect and white-foam effect.

If it is all or none sort of situation, then fine, be that way, hold one half hostage to try to get the other half, but my vote is NO, leave water the same. If it isn't all or none, I just say ripples and white-foam is fine.

it's because you can't compare it to what you don't have.

people who have never seen the 3D FX in PA will continue to claim that 2D FX looks the best.

(as far as I know PA is the first game to implement 3D FX)
(tread carefully few people notice what's going on with visual effects in games. So far it's only been animated flat images just facing the camera)


some more flat FX (keep in mind there are many of these 2D images positioned in 3D space):







the nuke/commander explosion in supcom, though very 3d looking, is still just a collection of 2D images placed in 3D space always facing the camera :

(to be fair the cybran explosion did feature an actual sphere, but said sphere was was just a sphere. it wasn't there to make the explosion look more real but more unreal, alien, weird.)

you might be tempted to say "but you can totally TELL in FA"

well....

does this one even need circles?





what's the disadvantage of 2D FX, you ask? well the fact that it faces the camera. And as it is a 2D image, the "facing" poses some problems.

The image pans on a point at it's centre. So long as you're "in front" within a horizontal plane of said event the image rotates as you change angle to it and as you place yourself above, if you tilt the camera (or spin like you can in RTS, it becomes evident just what the FX is)


there are more than numerous opportunities for this to happen in any modern game.

This website features a good list and explanation of these effects:
http://simonschreibt.de/gat/homeworld-2-engines/

back to the matter at hand. as of yet no RTS has moving water (though many FPSes and sandboxes do).


I'm sad that you're going this route but have you considered going all in and having the ships mapped to the water surface (how cool that would look and) what awesome rich gameplay it would unlock as more of a terrain influence + simulated projectile would find it's way into the game as I stated in the OP?

Would be clever to tie it to whether or not the world has moons or not. No moon, no tide.

I would LOOOVE that.

but I'm sure that's where the developers step in like:

because that means they have to figure out a way to start and stop the animation.

remember : planets can pick new orbits when they were being hailied and the haileys are destroyed or stopped. also you should be able to move planets to new orbits again sometime soon.

I'd love it if the water actually caused the boats to bob up and down, because then cooler stuff could happen with waves that doesn't seem possible currently.

this was my long time dream and hope.

If you look at the links I posted in the OP I advocated for this back in 2012 the game wasn't even testable yet.

Water can be animated without the hilly-ness. The ripples are possible. They just shouldn't make shore, where normally land when intert, look like water-area. Even if hilly, the water should cease to do that at the edges so the edges don't bob. Even if the water was ripple AND hilly, it would be 3d simulated and be cool, as long as it doesn't change shore edge.

There are links in the OP?

I was thinking actually if the moon disappears for whatever reason, the tide animation starts slowly leveling out until the water is at the median height between min-max, rather than an abrupt stop.

it looks like s hit dude. I explained why 2D effects can't top volume.

it isn't cutting it for me. it's plain as day when you see the planet as a whole that the ocean is knife-cutting the sharpest edge there aver was against space. it looks ugly. and zoomed in too. the illusion only ever lasts moments. it's long gone for me. I know it's a flat surface I can't un-see it.

and when we did have waves it didn't change shore edge (if you mean pathable zones).

and if you mean beach waves crashing in and out, that s hit was the shiznit!

obviously. I never indicated to the contrary.


I was talking about the tech level stuff. I don't think the fade part is the complicated part.

I think identifying correctly whether you have a moon or not and having it within the engine's capacity to stop the animation would be complex.

but the more I think about it the more I think it's rather doable.

yes two. well hidden, admittedly.
here's the one I mentioned https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...e-what-would-we-want.39666/page-2#post-596504

*shrugs*

New animation, sure, but it doesn't need much more then that.

Especially with the ocean floor and water colours being the most boring thing ever.


It can look like it moves, but for gameplay sake it must be static, or naval factorys will be a absolute pain.

It's possible that naval units (including the factory) could have a "weight" value, where the higher the weight the less the waves moved them. Maybe set it to 100 to have something sit there like a rock. Or something.

That's soooooo bloody arbitrary.

Nothing should move unless commanded to do so, no exceptions.

And PA's explosions are bloody fantastic. :3

Did you mean like ships washing ashore or something? I was thinking more of a vertical motion, like a buoy bobbing up and down but staying anchored to the sea floor.

(Although come to think of it, floaty crap and wreckage after a battle might be a neat detail if it did float around and wash ashore eventually...)

Well even then, most of the ships are far far to big to be affected by our small planets water.

Only the scouts and engineers would, and that would be weird.

The one I really miss from the TA days, the floating missile launcher that actually bobbed and swayed when it fired on its pontoons. Didn't look like the land version glued to a frozen lake.

Minor note, PA's water has never moved. The moving shore line was just adding a ripple in the opacity.

Do you find real beaches confusing? I think you're really overstating things and sacrificing a ton of awesome for a gram of WYSIWYG.