firstoff, i want to give me deepest thanks to the developers and community around ta/sc/pa - without you, the RTS genre wouldn't be any fun. I myself made many maps over the years (started with duke3d, ta, ta:ki, supcom...), some of you might remember "Battle Isles R2", which was quite popular on gpgnet for supcom. i kinda lost taps to the mapmaking when supcom2 was released. i am wondering, besides the procedural approach on the terrains/bodies; will we have any possibility to shape / map a planet? how is the mindset there? i mean, the possibilities are thrilling to say the least. real bodies - for the first time. imagine a planet with 4 massive fortresses scattered around the equator. sets of cracks and mountains are making a maze up/down to the resource rich poles. imagine a ocean planet with 2 large islands on the poles, and resource rich small islands scattered up to 30 degrees from the equator. this is not a thread asking for tools. in supcom i mapped with 3rd party tools only. this is more about discussing how open the system will be and what the possibilities of the procedural engine are. my specific questions: - can we make custom defined biospheres / ocean areas? (hello world map) - are we able to add custom 3d objects to the game? (fortress, a pilon, a wall..) - are we able to set large 3d objects, will physics work? (can i build a fortress?) - do these 3d objects scale with the planet? (basic question) - is the architecture as open as we could add custom biome themes? (mars style?) i miss fiddling with the fjords - please give me some hope that we will able to produce some fun content. hope i did not miss a megathread about mapping, was looking around but did not see alot discussion about this yet. regards, sveno
lovely thanks, fast and to the point, thats how i like it follow up question: i did no see more the one height level (except for props and ocean areas). is there any height mapping involved (my guess is no)? can we alter the spheres shape, and if yes, will physics accommodate that (also her my guess is no)?
There is actually, it's just not very pronounced right now and it's not easy to spot from the regular camera view. Mike
To be honest I would rather prefer flat sphere than this kind of stuff. I hated those gentle slopes in SupCom. Set a perfect line of turrets or place an army in a seemingly good position, but then half of them shoots the ground because there is a hill that you are unable to see.
i think this is a very realistic problem. different height of grounds is IMHO a very important aspect in RTS games. in makes some places more favorable the others. and this is what, among many other things, TA had over all the other RTS titles in that time. in PA that we shoot into the ground because the planets are smaller then a tanks arc - well lost armies due to that simple fact.
thanks Mike, cant wait to start to dig into these things when they become accessible. we will make beautiful worlds, coolness! a let the posse destroy them, yay!
That's actually an advantage of the sphere map. You should be able to see those height differences more easily because you can modify the angle of the camera relative to the ground faster. Simply rote the planet a little an you should see a hill. Well, mostly if development continues and Uber adds some more height differences. Currently they are really subtle.
wow - cool - thank you. that is the best feedback a mapmaker can get - still in use after how many years? surely fueled me more to start sketching spheres
hehe, I'm bursting with ideas as for planets, you might find I'm a bit of a dweeb for code, but I'm coming along, if I can help I'd be glad.
thinking of it... implementation - what is a "map"? - is it a predefined set of planets, so to speak a galaxy? consisting of planets, moons etc. - is it a single planet and the players may select x of custom to mix with x of stock planets? - is it a "skin", that is generally applied for the different types of stellar bodies? - is it a fixed body in the universe you can flip out to a custom, or can you add additional? might be that this is to early to nail this one...
easy to solve, show the actual firing arc including obstructions when you build turrets and other things that have an interaction radius.
I still see it as unnecessary complexity that doesn't add any significant amount of deph. There should be ether clearly visible slope, that affects unit movement and firing arcs, or clearly visible flat surface that doesn't.
blehhh to flat surfaces, it's definately has strategic scope, in supcom when a unit was utop a hill it's range was greater, it could reach the same unit downhill that could not reach it.
