Can the PA engine support different terrain depths?

I'm absolutely smitten with the biome concept art that you guys released a while back. To me these sorts of interesting terrain features would make a massive difference to the gameplay and would alleviate the criticism I've seen a lot that most maps are pretty boring to play on. I used to love playing on all the interesting and quirky maps in TA & Supcom that forced you to use units you might not normally use, strategies you might not normally use, etc.

I am curious though, is this something the PA engine can support today? I wasn't around for the beta but I saw someone mention once (I think it was on reddit) that in an earlier beta there were bridges and other structures that were removed due to pathfinding issues? With some of the new pathing work that's been going on, dare we dream to hope that we might one day see these sorts of interesting biomes, worlds, etc. make their way in to the game?

The Engine can support some really bumpy terrain. You can accomplish it right now in the editor with a little modding, however they aren't playable in game.

The more difficult part would be getting units to not sit there and shoot the hill, but to move over the hill and shoot the unit. Not to mention the difficulty of view. From a top down view, it's difficult to see the hills.

I have some screenshots somewhere...

Here it is.

Yeah, even SupCom had some serious issues with unit shooting hills. Which was probably one of the reasons why maps were just flat for the most part.

Yeah they would need to come up with a way to see and interact with units hidden behind terrain. I've seen other games address this by making the terrain semi-transparent and tracing the unit outline.

There is/was a cliff biome mod https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-custom-planet-type-cliffs.60787/

The issue isn't really seeing units behind terrain since we have a top down view. The issue is more seeing where terrain changes. Because if I can't see where the top of a hill is, then I can't move my units accordingly.

Those concept arts are pretty much my ultimate dream and was actually the reason why I bought the game, I got a responce with screenshots showing canyons in what was the current build last year during the alpha and I was assured that PA was going to have maybe not exactly how those concept pictures were, but very close, not the fairly weak terrain we have now. So I'm hoping they'll re-look at this and try and re do what they had in alpha, just better. (yes I'm going to mention it again fella's, UBER PLEASE FIX THE LAVA!! pallete and add some sort of lighting to it at the very least!!! PLS PLS PLS PLS PLS..

When you have a look at metal planets you can see the engine does indeed support this.
You can path units through the trenches, towers will shoot down at them from above etc..

While that is cool, and so are the pics Brian put up as well, what I'm talking about is I guess more along the lines of custom designed planets with specific features...

Like, when you look at Supreme Commander or TA maps a lot of them feature symmetry and custom elements you can see were specifically designed by people, rather than a terrain algorithm:

eg:



These maps have a certain rhythm which defines gameplay. PA worlds by contrast don't ever set the rhythm and pace, they just feel like placeholder backgrounds on top of which "anything goes"

Yearh, you´re right, that Concept Art is gorgoeus.
In my eyes the biggest problem might be how buildings would be placed in those cases and how balancing would be altered!
As an example, take a look at the first one; artillary and Air would become ways more powerful, while in the second one Doxes and BOOMs might become total OP.
But the real problem lies in builing placement---how to place an orbital launcher in one of them? We´d need powerfull terraforming or big explosions to get the place---burning all trees down like on "normal" maps wouldn´t be the masterplan anymore!
Anyways, adding biomes is a main feature that could be enhanced in future updates after every stretchedGoal is implemented!

The metalplanets are actually looking really similar, as well as the EarthStylePlanets! In my eyes the current metal planets are even better-looking than the concept! (BTW: why don´t we have a "thump up"-smiley/ something similar if Uber wanna stick to heads-only?)

Yeah, this came to mind as well. If the engine can support pathing units through trenches on metal planets, how much of a leap is it to some of the things that we see in the concept art?

I guess the terrain we currently have is the way it is because of the long-standing pathfinding problems we had in the past. With the new system I am pretty sure we could have terrain like in the concept art.
Lets hope it will get more priority in the future by the dev team.

I agree with you about the metal planet. The current metal planets in the game are AWESOME. And I think what makes them so much more unique and enjoyable is they were actually designed by people, and they have unique features and elements that change the gameplay.

By contrast, all the other biomes are just auto-generated blah.

Custom planets are an ENTIRELY different beast.

That probably won't be coming anytime soon, and when it does, based on what Uber has said, it'll probably be a mod.

Also, PA planets are far from "anything goes." Metal and Lava planets are easy examples. And desert biomes/planets are also a really good example of terrain making a HUGE difference on gameplay if you play it right.

Most people don't bother to play the terrain.

Yeeee... no, not really. Particaially yes, but the problem is NOT the procedual generation.Even the current sliders do give you some good options to adjust them. The problem is: There just isn´t enough to select from for the algorithm! If you are including very well done dev- or even user-created stuff and mixing it up to a good potion it doesn´t matter if the mixing is just auto-generated!

Hmm, in comparision to your old stuff the current state really doesn´t look that nice...

...but as those just seem to be sliders it has to be possible to reintegrate them!

You can change the max values in the system editor js file.


EDIT:
In sim_utils is the code that previously capped the values, now we can play on these:


pathfinding seems to be doing somewhat okay:

What monster did you just give birth to?!

What the hell?!
Are games with those system maps actually launchable?!

,
They used to, not sure if limit is forced server side by now, but now that we have the server... Well.. It's a non issue either way.