Terrain 2.0

Don't be fooled by these games. While it is true that they allowed live updates to the terrain, even in multiplayer, they went different ways to achieve this. For starters, they chose to provide only a limited number of maps which were shipped with the game, and which contains all the elevation data. Only live updates to this data ever needs to be transfered via network. Having a 2048x2048 heightmap isn't so bad if it's shipped with the game, but as I said, that's the baseline. And in PA, you need not only one, but six of these for a simple planet.

As for your ideas, that's the whole point of the system. If you want to create a canyon, you might think about nice looking cliffs and stuff, but what you actually mean is the path at the bottom and the plateaus at the sides. So why would you bother describing these cliffs in the map file, when you can just describe the areas and passages instead?

Yes, you can't really tell any random number generator to construct such a scenario just using noise and basic stencils, best that could do is to create craters in random locations. But you can tell it to create random, halfway evenly distributed points on a planet. And now to connect some of the adjacent points so that paths form, narrow and wide. And now to alternate the height of non-connected, adjacent points to create visible elevation differences. All of this is simple so far. And then feed this list of points and their connections into my generator, which features precisely those paths which the connections defined.

That would be needed either way, I think. Especially if you consider how big maps can already get just from manual CSG placement. You still don't want to wait a minute or two before you even know what type of map you are playing on, so filesize needs to be kept down. That was always the biggest problem with NEW custom maps back then in WC3.

I can remember joining every game that had a map I did not yet have just to download it xD

I know distribution can be done through steam workshop. If a user doesn't have a map it will connect to valves server to download. Ive seen other games do this. Mayne Uber would just have to contact Valve and work a deal out to set that up. Obviously it would need additional coding but I think it's doable.

Don't worry, Uber has infrastructure of their own they can use for such tasks. Besides, PA is not bound to Steam, and Valve wouldn't provide their capacity when the game is not started from within Steam. Steam Workshop is more interesting for such things as client and server mods, while you still have PAMM for non-Steam users.

Dang, I pay much more for 108mbps.

Please note I'm saying 1 MEGABYTE a second, not 1mbps.

If you think 1mb/s doesn't classify as internet then... Haha, you're blind. There are areas in America where you can't even get that, namely areas only covered by satellite. I'd say 1mb/s is average.

@blightedmythos

Average internet speed in America is 10.5mbps which is about 1.31 MB/s.

"1mb/s isn't even considered broadband anymore" pfff..

Triple post I think..

But the US is actually in 11th place, not 27th.

-World average3.9
1 South Korea23.6
2 Japan14.6
3 Hong Kong13.3
4 Switzerland12.7
5 Netherlands12.4
6 Latvia12.0
7 Sweden11.6
8 Czech Republic11.2
9 Finland10.7
10 Ireland10.7
11 United States10.5

Don't be rude and call me blind. boardband was reclassified by the FCC to 25 mbps down (about 3 mb/s give or take) therfore you are incorrect, 1 mb/s is no longer broadband.
source:
http://arstechnica.com/business/201...st-be-25mbps-and-isps-are-failing-to-deliver/

You are right there are areas that can't get that. We have the cable cartels to thank for that. That's the whole point of the reclassification. So cable companies can't advertise their archaic internet as "broadband" anymore. I think the FCC is trying to promote growth in more rural areas by pushing the cable companies a bit. The problem is when small towns or cities try to get their own internet put in by themselves as a utility they get blocked by the states governor and cable lobbiestis. Growth just isn't happening.

A hilarious explanation of whats wrong with the internet in America (you should really watch this):

Source? I've found other sources that say otherwise.

You never replied to my other posts. But according to Ookla Speedtest the US is ranked 27th for average broadband speed. Scroll down a bit to see the list. Source: http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
Pretty sad IMO considering the internet was invented here to begin with.

That's only for people who use speedtest.net as far as i can tell, therefore skewed data.

Anyway I didn't reply because I don't get on all the time anymore. ;P

I disagree. If it's skewed in anyway it's skewed for every country therefore it's still very accurate and useful. It's also not from wikipedia like your information AND it's updated in real time. Also, if you have ever had a statistics class you'll know that you often take a sample from a population and if that sample size is large enough the margin for error is very small, less then 1%. The Study used for your number's is likely form a sample as well as its pretty impossible to get a population pole. In any case the point still remains that America is way behind and slipping further. Not sure why you are trying to argue aginist that.

Americans invented the Internet...?

A lot of people over the entire world invented the internet

Pretty sure it was Europe?

Oh who cares if it's from wikipedia, don't you run that whole bullshit on me about how it's a terrible source, it even cites it's sources. Anyway, you don't understand the fact that all the information is skewed, because the HUGE majority of people don't use that website! This is random people of a normally higher class of Internet. If you had actually READ the bit on wikipedia you'd know all that information came from a report from Akamal Technologies, a company that hosts a huge amount of websites for big companies (Google, Apple, and Facebook as some examples.) Clearly more common people visit those websites than the speedtest website, yes?

You want the source without wikipedia? Fine!

http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q314-exec-summary.pdf

By the way I suggest you download the figures.zip and observe figure_23.jpg as the US by now is actually in 12th place.

Edit: Link for state of the Internet figures. http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/

Edit 2: Please excuse my slight dickishness.. I'm just not feeling too well at the moment, hope I didn't come off as too rude- I hate to do so. :S

"The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.[2] This work, combined with efforts in the United Kingdom and France, led to the primary precursor network, the ARPANET, in the United States. The interconnection of regional academic networks in the 1980s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet.[3] From the early 1990s, the network experienced sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to it."

Also just as a little fun time @blightedmythos see all those numbers in brackets? Those are citations on the actually website, wikipedia.

on FA live updates to the terrain height works with any map, even custom.

Live updates aren't difficult, they work in most game engines (or can be made to work) with little effort, it's as easy as reloading the height map texture, recompute normals, and there you go, the terrain has a new look and all future structures and navigation attempts will use the new map. The problem is the efficiency. You can quite easily add a few dozen craters (prefabbed brushes) per second to the height map as the game continues, but for constructing an entire custom map from scratch, you need far more data which only procedural approaches can generate in sufficient detail, acceptable bandwidth consumption and time.

Speedtest has over 7 billion tests ran so far. That's a pretty impressive sample size imo. Its updated in real time. I'd take that over the older figures you listed. I wouldn't be suprised to find your sample size is smaller as well. I don't know why you are so hung up on its location. it doesn't matter if it has a huge pool to draw from for its sample size.

If the USA is "skewed" as you say, so would all the other countries. I don't understand why this concept is hard to understand. skewed data normally refers a skew in a direction. Either to the left or the right. I think you are misusing the term here. Data is not being skewed in anyway. The skewed data is caused by lots of outliers. You are probably thinking of unreliable data. How you can argue that with over 7 billion tests ran is beyond me. How do you honestly think the data is "skewed"? Give me some facts here.

Also, Akamai tests internet usage for their statistics not max capacity like Ookla tests for. You don't always use 100% of your Internet capacity when you stream netflix for example. So it's a flawed test. Therefor the internet index report (Ookla) is better because it tests max capacity.

Lastly the FCC ran a huge report of their own and found the US to have an average speed of 21.2 mbps. That's much higher then your 10.5 mbps from Akamai results. Both are from 2014. most likely apples to oranges because Akamai doesn't go off of capacity bUT average speed.

Yes the internet was invented as a private network for the US government and then expanded globally. It was infact invented by the United states. Obviously for it to go global it would need to collaborate with other countries.