Structure Facing?

First, control for sake of control is not an argument. That's not a Tycoon. UI for PA should be hard-to-make-right enough to encumber it further with useless aesthetic features like facing of all-sides-symmetrical structures.

Therefore, creating all-sides-exit-factory is actually easier - artists are quite flexible and they have much more harsh limitations, believe me.

Crap, you may just create a small <<magical_device_name_here>> portal at the end of the factory exit, that will pop-up your unit at the right side of factory.

How does that work with square buildings(the norm in SupCom)? in terms of pathing it doesn't matter as well as taking advantage of terrain, as it still takes up the same area and rotating it doesn't change anything.

Mike

Why not just have buildings with more then 1 exit?

Because it may not look as good. And more importantly, because the unit would still be built facing one direction, and the time for it to turn may not be trivial, particularly with large ships.

As mentioned before, the direction of the first waypoint could be the direction built units are facing.
Though this could mean unnecessary trouble when wanting to move the waypoint..
A separate direction control could be implemented which would be more flexible than rotating the building before construction.
Lol, it could even be a rotating building! :lol:

Control is everything in a video game- in fact the entire essence of what video gaming is is to be controllable video- a lack of which can determine how quickly I want to shut your game off. I feel cheated when game makers try to be clever for me by replacing control with things like omni-directional factories and forced spacing between buildings--like I am too stupid to lay out a coherent base and absolutely need my hand held. Even though in Supreme Commander I was more frustrated by the lack of functions such as adjusting my factorys' to an optimum orientation than ever the prospect of accidentally blocking my units due to improper building placement. Also in an environment which physically simulates literally every object, exact building placement can have a much more profound effect on the game, as much as unit placement even, than you wish to give it credit for if you think the only affects are aesthetic.

Where is this magical proof people seem to get a hold of that makes them know the exact intricacy of Planetary Annihilation's user interface implementation that allows them to be assertive on how the implemention of a frankly rather straightworward function would definitely make everything encumbered? You must have personal access into Uber's offices because as far as I can tell no solid information on Planetary Annihilation's eventual user interface exists to the public.

Handwavium bullsh!t is next to insufficient controls in things which can take me out of a game.

Imagine you're secretly building factories in a tiny ravine between two cliffs.

Fact is that if every single structure is cubic in design then it won't have much if any effect as long as units can exit from more than one direction.

If structures tend towards rectangular however it may then make sense to allow some form of control on facing. If you have a narrow valley or a wall which runs at an odd angle then placement of a rectangular structure might be most efficient in a context which allows basically any angle of rotation to tailor things to that environment.

However, given the radical scale of this project it occurs to me that it won't likely ever come down to these kinds of details. Massive planets, massive battles, massive everything, somehow I doubt that space will be an issue.

So... its like its an issue that has some merit, but one which has little concern in this title. The concept photo for the desert biome ought not to give you any ideas either as its obviously a mock up which adds in more detail and clutter than would be normal for the sake of having everything imagined in one frame, when everything imagined will likely never be in the same frame of a finished planet.

Honestly, while there's little downside to such a feature being available, there's little advantage to it either.

At the end of the day, situations like "oh but what if you build a structure in a canyon that's exactly the same width as the canyon, so you have to, like, rotate it..." are very marginal, and even then, there are easier and better solutions than this. Like allowing pathing through or around buildings, which would also mean units could walk down this canyon with the building in place.

Rotating structures is only a big deal if that fraction of a second gained from the structure's facing towards where the unit is going is relevant. This silly problem about the exit facing a wall was unnecessary, and poor design in TA, and should not be possible in PA.

If for some reason we are committed to there being walls and obstacles everywhere that make precisely placing a building require actual attention, then why can't I destroy, reclaim, or terraform them to solve that problem? Why can't I box a big area and say "make this buildable"? Why even have that problem to begin with, from a map design perspective?

Because directly using the game world to create situational advantages is awesome. Doing something like wall off a route with solar collectors makes me feel clever. Preventing structures from being used as part of terrain, and the 'solution' of making all structures square so that rotation isn't required(in theory) on the other hand was boring.

People don't seem to appreciate that structure positioning can pose just as much strategic importance as unit positioning, especially in a simulative environment. They think of structures in terms of 'base building' instead of being immobile units, and bases as 'that thing which gets in the way of smashing units', and that sucks.

Once again, show me proof that Planetary Annihilation will be more "massive", that building facing would be so horribly out of scope. Everything the team at Uber has stated so far has been on engine scalability(and player scalability as well to handle any increased scale), which isn't the same thing as "massive".

I have a question first: If structures are automatically oriented (as in they cannot be manually rotated) then which way do they point?

I think you could only get away with no rotation if all structure footprints were circular instead of square.

Hmm, just wanna point something out.

In the latest desert biome video theres clearly two tex'es next to each other thats in different directions.

I know this is just a concept image, but it might be a pointer that structure facing will be ingame? :roll: *Hold thumbs*

So, well. It sounds like you do already know how to implement UI for Planetary annihilation four layers, multi-planetary base handling, dozens control groups, hundreds of event notifications per minute, half-dozen units scattered around whole solar system and so on and so on. Enlighten us, please.

Remember that UI IS a main argument against space battles. Space battles are awesome too! I love space RTS, but I do agree that merging space and non-space RTS in same game with usable and consistent UI is a task beyond reasonable resources of Uber.

Of course, placing structures in not that hard to implement, but:
1. It leads to more work on pathfinding and AI. You can't make assumptions about structures anymore.

2. It leads to performance loss - you can't rely on simple AABB (axis-aligned bounding box) for handling 99.99% of collisions and AI visibility tests. You now need OOBB (object-oriented bounding box). Not big deal, but in numbers of 1000+ units per battle per user that's THE big deal.

3. You need additional mouse controls for rotation and shortcuts for standard facing, so you may choose your facing fast if you just need that structure here, now! Shortcuts (that are really short, not some weirdness like "ctrl+alt+, ctrl+x m") and mouse controls are very limited (do you remember control groups? So, how exactly you are going to handle more control groups than traditional 10 and how to filter them between planets, if required?), so you don't want to waste them for some fancy stuff.

4. That's NOT goddamn city simulator. In FA you are not placing buildings one-by-one, you are placing them in long rows, as you need them NOW and fast. The whole build templates thing (omg, even position is relatively fixed!!111oneone) was implemented just to simplify building a lot of things as fast as possible.

In FA you do care about your units movements, not about nice base construction. Most of players' bases are quite messy after a while.

Facing just for facing is dumb. It's just more complexity for nothing.

Onmi-directional buildings + subway passes for friendly units beneath them + auto-spacing to keep your base passable and I could build 20 factories with two clicks from strategic zoom without caring too about result (I care only about one result - 20 factories more or less in that area NOW). No useless distraction to precisely position my factories so someone else may build nice base forming a flower.

That's the goal, not Space Tycoon.

So, well, why not dig holes and make hills? Isn't that awesome too?! /sarcasm

Why? You don't need to. Square is just fine.

In SupCom most units could pass around, through or above tightly placed buildings. In SupCom you couldn't really make a wall of factories for example as most units would be able to go in-between them. This made building placement less important as you couldn't use them as walls.
The size, the spacing between building blocks and hitbox and the fact that most weapons arced meant that you couldn't really use other buildings as cover for other units. This made it hard for you to abuse other buildings as shields for turrets so that they could shot through your own building while the enemy had to destroy the building first.

Building placement can be very important and allow players to use buildings as shields for weaker buildings or turrets that can shoot through the friendly units. It can also be important to make some buildings function as walls.
It can also be important to prevent the enemy from entering your factories and blocking them.
Anyway you could also prevent those types of "exploits" by forcing buildings to have a lot of space between them like SupCom.

The only thing I have left to say is that building facing will only slow down gameplay if the UI is done poorly, and in my view making all buildings either radially-symmetrical or non-colliding would be a cop out.

Now, if all the factories were built on giant turntables...that might be cool. :mrgreen:

Spot on.
I wouldn't be surprised if PA winds up with a much more up-close small-scale 'feel' to it than FA, even games that are on a larger scale, due to the way the map is subdivided.

If it's possible to rotate buildings when placing them. Then you could use limited firing arcs as a way to balance some of the super long range artillery.

One of the things people really didn't like about T3 artillery was how it made setting up secondary bases far to difficult, because any pile of mass extractors and other small buildings would die under a hailstorm of bullets.

But if you said "any long range artillery only has a firing arc of 30 degrees (or whatever) and can't be rotated after building" Then you could build plenty of artillery, aiming it at your enemy's main base and a few other places you want to cover. But if you opponent went far enough off to the side they could build in peace for a while, until you build more artillery.

T3 arty in SupCom was called a "game ender" for a reason. When it comes to T3 arty there is no more "setting up secondary bases". Everything should be set already or burned down to the ground.

T3 artillery weren't game-enders, but if you were silly enough to spend that much mass on a few, everything should have already burned to the ground.

[EDIT:] Deleted a spurious letter e.

I really don't see why a factory with more then 1 exit is a problem.

TA had them, SC1 and 2 had them.

So why not PA? Function over form after all.

Two exits may not be enough, especially if they're not orthogonal to each other.