Planetary Annihilation LiveStream: March 22nd, 2013

Some more questions:
What seemed like unit collision detection was that it or was it dynamic added cost?

What cost does a unit add like a cone or more something like (1/x with x being the distance from the unit)

Are you adding this cost onto the first cost map or onto the cummulative one?

If onto the first cost map, is it there additive or max_of(unit1, unit2, ...)
and then do you subtract it after moving?

Or is it even a own cost map for each unit, then you add it to the cummulative map?
I see issues there.

Good question!

The flow field is not the final solution. It is the larger influence into the unit's steering pipeline, which deals with integrating all influences into a final 'desired' speed/direction.

The unit's steering pipeline also looks at local neighboring units, the formation it's in, if it's flocking or separating, and any other local influence we care about. Then the unit's abilities change how it can turn and move toward the final desired speed/direction.

In this way the highly volatile influences are solved per unit, while the larger, mostly unchanging influences are solved in the flow field per goal.

Perhaps trying to explain the underlying algorithms would have been baffling to non-specialists, but the way the cost and flow fields were explained was perfectly comprehensible to me. And, I think, to anyone who's ever... uh... walked somewhere. I suspect most people asking questions just weren't paying attention.

Please continue with the tech stuff. Getting this kind of behind-the-scenes info is exactly what's makes Kickstarter projects cool.

I just wanted to say that the level of detail in the stream was fantastic, I loved seeing the underlying tech that will drive the game.

Super excited. Can't wait!

I'd like to add my opinion that the tech examples were great. It is very unique for some devs to actually show this stuff, and it was not only refreshing, but inspiring. We all know you guys are hard at work, so when a few people mention some crap that shows that they have no idea what you are talking about, just keep laughing at them like you do because it allows those of us who do understand to laugh along with you.

Thanks for the great Live streams, and I hope to see some more cool tech stuff in future editions! Don't let the few simpletons ruin it for those of us who understand!

The planets, even in its it current state, honestly looked better then I expected.

I was especially blown away by the craters. :mrgreen:

Having orbital bombardement take out chunks of the planets and then units walking through newly created terrain: Awesome.

I'm curious though, you had craters filled with water since they were under the sea level during generation. How will it work when a new crater gets created that is connected to water? Will it fill up, lowering the other water level? Is there a limited amount of water that then gets distributed?


As for the technical part, I loved it. I have some understanding of gravity anomalies and mapping of that to a 2d plane so I think I understood it pretty well. Imo sci-fi interested people should all have seen pictures of 4d spacetime broken down to a 3d picture, ie. the popular pictures to describe a black hole (like this) for example. And imo its some similar concept of an abstracted value mapped to a 2d plane to make it easier to visualise.

I hope you won't get too discouraged for future streams about that. You shouldn't take comments on streams as an indicator as how people will react to something. Commentators on streams are always silly.

Also Elitron, I loved the enthusiasm you've showed when describing it.

As always, excellent stream. Please, don't let stupid questions discourage you guys from showing off the tech demos.

One demand: "Swirly Terrain" slider on the planet editor. Make it happen.

How will spacecraft movement work? Does that actually require a flowfield?

Will spacecraft be in orbit, and will units get to select different orbits?

Yeah I really enjoyed the technical explanation behind the flow fields. It really reminded me of the old "all pairs shortest path" problem when you start adding a cost to enter a specific node, except now all the nodes are in a giant grid.

Also this could be useful to know for modders. Lets say you wanted to add napalm or persistent fire. You could make a fire object that damages nearby units, and paints a large blob of low movement cost around it. So most units will avoid the fire if they can.

And I'd hate to say it, but during my timezone at least, everyone is at work. So really you were talking to the kind of people who don't have anywhere important to be on a Friday morning.

I think the question about the camera movement occured, because in the editor it was a bit hard to figure out the what's going on in terms of terrain features directly in the middle of the view, because you can only view it directly from the top. I guess ingame we will have camera movement options that let us rotate and move around the planet but also around certain units (cinematic-hugeass-battle-mode). A free cam mode that attaches to objects (suns, planets, units, points on planets) would certainly be good to have. It needs to attach to somewhere otherwise you'd have to rush after the planet while it's rotating around the sun while also spinning around it's own axis to keep the same unit in view^^

I'm uber excited for the modding anouncement. Especially since those small blocky mass-units are very mod friendly as they are not so time consuming to model, compared to gazillion poly character models in fps. And Robots are easier to animate as well
Easier to go nuts if you can do one in just an afternoon instead of 1 in a month.

I hope we can mod in factions, so we can have more visual styles on units. Would be great if the game/HUD would make that possible without requiring dodgy workarounds.

I don't get the swirl fetish though, it would look kinda arkward if everything had huge swirls like in the kickstarter video - and it makes building/planning/moving annoying. Little swirls are ok, but don't overdo it please.

I loved that stream so much! <3 dev tech talk! I think that is exactly what the streams should be about at this point in the game development.

Thanks for the link! I am trying out (on a beginner level) swarming behaviour, and that dude wrote one heck of a nice book.

As a programmer, I love these tech demonstrations. I understand that it can be frustrating for the majority (i.e. people that aren't developers).

Perhaps these development videos would be better suited to a different format? Rather than a live stream, put together a demonstration and explanation of the tech and allow us to watch the recorded video.

Maybe even show off the tech in a video (simple screen record) and accompany it with a blog explaining the process.

I feel like what you're doing is really going in between two crowds:
Too technical for the gamer
Not enough details for the developer

I would rather you separate those two goals and provide hyper-technical implementation explanation, perhaps even including some pseudo-code or code snippets.

Then for the gamer, show us ART. Gamers love ART. Delta Commander was amazing. The Mystery Box is probably the best looking unit ever made.

That was a great look behind the scenes! Please continue to show them, maybe have someone filter questions out of the feed and present them for you to answer. That way you're not bombarded with stupid questions. Love the updates can't wait for beta!!!

Yeah.. by the very nature of a 'live' stream, you've gotta expect people to give surface level reactions, not deeply thought out questions.

I think it's pretty clear from the forum response that just about everyone understood at some level what you guys were talking about, so I can only count this livestream a complete success.

A Question on Art;

You said that the Pre-Vis video was perhaps a little "exaggerated" compared to what you've currently got going on the Planet Generator. Later you put a side-by-side comparison up showing the difference between the two saying that you're striving for the Pre-Vis to be your aim point. Though I'm fully aware of the rough textures I'm more interested in the landmasses themselves...

Will you be bringing the "swirls" towards a more exaggerated state than in the Current Generator? It really was such an awesome style and it's a shame if it gets toned down for realisms sake.

I'll understand if actual gameplay is negatively impacted via these areas being unless to build on, or fight over. But stylistically they were such an impactful technique it's a shame if they have to hit the cutting room floor.

Great tech demos.

I like flowfields, it sounds like they're going to take a LOT of pain away from the usual "blob of units" stuff.

Is it weird that i associate Flowfields with gravity? I mean, if we have a flat plane, then the goal would become a really deep sinkhole where the units get pulled to, and obstacles are really big hills that the units flow around while falling into the sinkhole.
(of course this is a really simplified version of what you do in 3D).


Anyway, great tech demo. Can't wait to play around with the Planet Editor

A very interesting glimpse at the technical side of the game. I'd really like to see a lot more of that and in much more detail.

About the day/night system: Earth 2150 has such a system and units switch on their headlights at night. (Screenshot)
It adds a lot to the atmosphere and I hope such a feature will make it into the final version of PA.

Love the tech demos, can't wait to find bugs in the Alpha

Really liked those craters taking a huge "bite" out of the planet surface, that's just amazing.

When you talked about the size of the planets, reminding us that you were showing us a "small planet", I think what would have been helpful is highlighting a rectangle on the surface and saying "That's about the same area as The Pass or Metal Heck", because it gives us a frame of reference.

This is the best LiveStream I have ever seen about PA!