My past two weeks

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Sorian, October 2, 2014.

  1. Sorian

    Sorian Official PA

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    Now that Planetary Annihilation has released our team composition for PA has changed. We now have 3 teams of people each working on the game with a different focus. The team I am on has been focusing on the System Editor, spectator UI, and Steam achievements and trading cards.

    I was the one in our team tasked with adding new features to the System Editor. The first pass of that effort is already live; the ability to view metal spots during the planet creation process. Phase two of that effort is close to finished. Not only will you be able to view the landing zones in the system editor, you will be able to make modifications to them.

    editor.jpg

    There are 3 new input boxes being added to the UI. By adjusting the number of armies, you can see where the landing zones will appear on the planet if that number of armies were to play a live game utilizing this planet. Adjusting the max number of zones will have the game attempt to place that number of landing zones on the planet. And finally, max landing zone size will attempt to make lading zones that are the size specified.

    Obviously, if you try to cram too many landing zones or landing zones that are too large onto a planet, the game will re-size or reduce the number of landing zones so that everyone can have at least one start spot.

    This is just a small taste if the features we have planned for the system editor. Seriously, out team has months of worked planned out in our backlog.
  2. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    reptarking likes this.
  3. Tripax

    Tripax Member

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    royal sweetness can't wait to see that in stable
  4. elodea

    elodea Post Master General

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    Very awesome!

    Just a question though,

    Does this mean number of landing zones per player is being randomised. For example if i put max 5 landing zones, each player may receive between 1 and 5 landing zones, with that number being different from player to player?
  5. Remy561

    Remy561 Post Master General

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    Nice work!!
    leighzer likes this.
  6. Aliessil

    Aliessil Active Member

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    Interesting, I see the slider's gone for the Seed variable. Not overly surprised - I don't think the seed ever changed by less than 300 when I used that! ;-)

    What's the difference between Terrain Preview and Full Preview? I'm guessing Full = Terrain + metal + start points?
  7. Sorian

    Sorian Official PA

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    Every player gets the same number of landing zones, just like now.

    Terrain preview is just the terrain. The terrain preview is faster to generate because we don't have to load nav or physics. Once you have a planet you like you can start doing full previews (which include metal and start spots). The first full preview will take a bit while nav a physics are loaded, but from that point on changes to metal and start spots are instantaneous, unless you change the planet again.
  8. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    Very much appreciate the updates on this :) Having more granular control over metal distribution and start conditions will be a real boon for competitions. I'll be sure to check out these features once the start spawn built hits and hopefully add a few new maps to the Promethean map pool.
  9. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    Interesting work. I hear @varrak is working on like nothing but server during his workday. I am wondering if that is correct or if we get to hear from the other two divisions of development?
  10. GoodOak

    GoodOak Active Member

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    What are the other two teams working on?
    gunshin likes this.
  11. judicatorofgenocide

    judicatorofgenocide Active Member

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    Love information coming out about pa now, hopes rising. Keep this up, maybe give flexible time frames, and hr will likely gain great support. My personal question. Uber ladder before 2015?
    ViolentMind likes this.
  12. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    Shields and black holes.
  13. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    What about experimentals!?!? /injoke/
  14. mot9001

    mot9001 Well-Known Member

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    This makes me very happy!
  15. GoodOak

    GoodOak Active Member

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    I half expect the answer to be that both teams are working on the unit cannon.
  16. wienerdog4life

    wienerdog4life Active Member

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    Awesome! I would love more updates like this. It's nice to see what you guys are hard at work on. This is the kind of thing that gives me hope and keeps me wanting to come back.
  17. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Nah I'm certain one group is working on server, I KNOW varrak's working on reducing ram usage so that may be another group working on optimization.
  18. tigerwarrior

    tigerwarrior Active Member

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    All this work and yet people still think you guys are gonna ruin us with HR =| Tsk tsk community.
  19. mjshorty

    mjshorty Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Sorian, appreciate this kind of communication, hopefully the other devs will hop on this kind of communication train =)
  20. reptarking

    reptarking Post Master General

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    Sorian probably single handedly saved the forums from one giant troll fest over backlash
  21. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    I'm just wonder why is nav and physics actually take that much of RAM?
    According to my tests it's about 45-50%

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