Can the PA engine support different terrain depths?

Correction TA was the first game to have 'simulated projectiles' coupled with 3D terrain, meaning the terrain actually had an effect on the battle (e.g. units on high ground could shoot further, which added a great deal of importance and strategy to where you moved things!).

PA also features simulated projectiles, however due to the planets being spherical the 'obvious' thing doesn't always occur (e.g. the range calculation may get *less* with height due to how the spherical map interacts with the invisible 'hit sphere' for the units weapon).

well I knew that this information was wrong (I saw a image of C&C [1995] w/ the terrain thing), so thi is why I put "TA[1997] Fan-Based Source"

Hehe, pseudo 3D, all maps were actually just 2D images with pseudo 3D height maps put on them.

It's like completely hacky, but it worked!

Dude, there were terrain things even in Dune 2, and that's first Rts ever.

Guys are totally missing the point. I don't want huge planets, there is not enough action, medium is best. Want planets that are actually interesting with terrain that can change the tides of war and can be taken advantage of. This Is a next gen rts Come on flat maps is disappointing esp when devs said this would be in game!

A year ago, Neutrino said that map would be stored as a big 3d file instead of just the seed and parameters.
How is the map saved now?

I'm hoping we get some bloody canyons on earth planets at the very least... but right now any kind of forward progress on PA is looking very dodgy.

Neutrino also said terrain would affect game play..grain of salt

Considering the planets take quite a bit of memory I assume this still is the case.

Yeap, that's what I was hoping for too.
I mean, the flow field pathing is an RTS holy grail.

I really wanted to see what the technical wizards at Uber could pull off.
I mean, without a crappy publisher weighing them down, PA should be a technical marvel.
A dream scenario.


I'm still hoping to see maps like these, with multiple elevations, choke points and raised elevation to take advantage of the physics engine.

faced with 32 players it uses 8 cores for the server already. It's not yet perfect (duh single threaded sim), but it is the best thing I've ever seen already.

There is one glorious thing the PA engine supports : LAND BRIDGES

This thing gives me huge chills.

Modders get to work and make sum epic planets with bridges canyons hills mountains etc!!