Procedural Terrain Height

The big issue as has been mentioned is that gradual terrain changes, ie. gentle hills, bumpy deserts etc. are very hard for the player to recognize.

Using features (mountain probs, etc.) is much better for a top-down rts as such are very easily to identify visually and give a very clear and easy understanding of what is higher/above/below etc. then other stuff.

What PA currently is missing are features where units can drive on top of them and slopes that bots could climb while other stuff can't. The only thing we have at the moment is impassable terrain that can either be shot over (crevices) or blocks fire (mountains).

I feel like if we can use props like the little rocks you see on moon biomes to show when there is a major gradient change in the terrain, showing tat the terrain is not flat it would be much easier to notice from a top down perspective.

Playing on a 100 height range planet is very noticeable - your units hit the ground ALL the time.

Its fun for naval warfair, but with tanks it must be rather annoying without an indicator of a slope.....just like in supcom.

We definitely need mountains and heigher plains.

The maps are very flat atm :S its quite boring.

Sure it will be coming, at least i hope so. Not to mention being able to drive down in canyons and stuff as well.

To enable the player to quickly and clearly identify terrain variation the Spring engine has a map overlay which colorizes the terrain into a topographic map. Gradations in terrain height become very obvious with this overlay, even when zoomed out. Alternatively, topographic height lines might be used as a different kind of overlay which changes the player's view less dramatically, and a player might leave them on all the time if desired.

I don't think visual clarity for significant height differences is a real issue; hills and such would be visible on the map, much like in TA. Toggled overlays could give players excellent information about terrain if the visual appearance of the terrain is insufficient.

It seems the real issue people are considering is the extreme curvature of the planet with respect to unit size, movement speed, and attack range. Because planets are so small and units are so large, small terrain features are pointless, and large terrain features look enormous compared to the planet and have tremendous impact on vision and projectiles. Shrinking units or increasing planet size would go a long way towards making smaller terrain features (relative to planet size) more varied and tactically interesting. Shooting around a sphere with a hill in the way is quite different from a flat map with a hill in the way. But an almost perfectly smooth, flat sphere is also rather dull, even with some premade features scattered across the surface.

I agree units need to be intelligent enough to not waste their time pumping bullets into the ground. That was a major glitch with SupCom. However all that means is that units should check if there are obstacles in the way before firing, not that there shouldn't be obstacles. If a direct-fire weapon cannot draw a direct-fire line to the target, then it should not shoot until it has a shot. If it has attack orders, it should maneuver to find a shot, not just stand still and fire away into the ground. This is an AI issue, not an issue with terrain itself.

Pictures in this thread: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/map-elevation-and-path-visualisation.38758/

Please, not another scale thread. The issue of scale and planet/unit size is independent of having elevated terrain or doing it through map features. Besides that changing the scale only forces a bigger minimum map size and you can do that with the current scale if necessary.

Nevertheless, I disagree that having another overlay that needs to be perused to be a good idea for this game. There is allready enough stuff happening at once to keep track off without having to switch to alternate map modes to see wheter or not some terrain is higher then other parts of the map and what is buildable.

It kinda works with spring as its map are fixed and after some time you know the terrain and passability of it by heart. With the random planet generation in PA you'd have to almost exclusively play in such an overlay as each map is different and knowing the terrain is one of the most important things to plan any successfull strategy. And in that case we can just throw all other graphics out because such an overlay is rather ugly (even though its very functional).

Finally, besides it looking more natural, there is nothing (when only gameplay is concerned) that terrain features can't do that different terrain height through the map itself can't achieve. And if you look at a TA map its mostly flat terrain with some prop like elevations that are easily distinguishable.

I think it can be done without an overlay. It just requires a good texture which is able to convey height changes and slope. For example hills could look a bit rocky. Shadows will also help.

The problem is, shadows aren't fixed due the rotation of the planet. If the sun is straight above the hill you don't get any shadows at all.

Additionally how do you texture a gentle evelation? Also how to you convey the information that one hill next to another is higher? That from the perspective of a tank its going up instead of down when seen from a top-down perspective? And all of that procedurally generated?

Yes, good texturing for procedurally generated terrain is hard.

i think they are very related tbh. smaller scale units makes meaningful elevation variation much more feasible.

There are a lots of stuff that would be hard to do with just prop like elevations. Huge valleys, huge plateaus, rolling hills. If units slow down when moving uphill and/or elevation affects weapon ranges there are a lot of ways to use the terrain to your advantage. I am used to this in NOTA on the spring engine where it have a very big gameplay effect.
I think those gameplay elements can fit into PA because they really scale well in relation to big armies and trying to use the terrain to your advantage with big numbers of units.
I don't know if it translates well into multiplanetery warfare though but then a lot of the current gameplay doesn't seem to translate well into multiplanetary warfare.

I also think it can be done without an overlay. Even if it means you have to 'unrealistically' texture them, such as having slightly different textures on curved or sloped surfaces. For example, those surfaces might be made slightly darker to make them more visible, or mark them with decals. For example, a sand dune might be covered in a different decal or noise pattern to distinguish it from a wide, flat desert area. The overlay, however, makes gradual terrain elevation absolutely clear, but requires the player take the additional step to use it.

It is simply not the case that you can use CSG's to make anything that a procedurally generated heightmap could make. CSG features are fixed, and also cannot produce the same kind of universal and continuous variation that a procedurally generated heightmap can.

As for units shooting the ground, we are already relying on unit AI to have a certain basic level of movement and combat intelligence to stop itself from getting stuck and from otherwise completely wasting its time. Adding an additional requirement to the unit AI that it consider terrain elevation before shooting seems perfectly reasonable; do not shoot at an enemy if there is a hill in the way (unless you have a ballistic trajectory that is a viable firing solution).

I dont think its a good idea to:
- make a visual overlay, because there will be too many information to look at on time
- make many different textures, because (even now) sometimes it is hard to tell whats going on, on the current terrain.

Personaly i was suprised how "hilly" the tarrain already is with high highrange-setting when i zoom in. but when zoomed out there has been no way for me to see where the ground is high or where its low.

The solution must be a compromise between slight high variations like the highrange slider does atm and terrainfeatures where units can move and you be able to build on.

A Starcraft implementation might be the easiest to do.

Which is to say that you have terrain at set heights, with ramps that allow units to access those plateaus. At that point you have static decals that can be used, rather than needing to generate a variety of gradients.

At any rate I really just want to be able to play with height advantages/disadvantages, and line of sight (e.g. you hide units on a ridge line, which puts them out of LOS for any units below them).

Also, I apologize for the necro.