Planetary Annihilation LiveStream: March 22nd, 2013

First: I think this was the best livestream of you i watched till now.(Well it was only the third or fourth)

Second: To the topic of pathfinding: I can imagine that it would be easy to add bypasses (like teleporters or trainstations [not that this should be in the game just hypothetical]). Would something like a wait till train arrives be a possibility with this system like:

Code:

111
101
111

if units sits at 0 it wont go in any direction?

Third:
i realized that the avoidance tendencys were very high for the pathfinding, was that due to the high cost value of the green areas? I was wondering if it sometimes wasnt better to go straight rather then 20 miles around.

Fourth:
Will cost only translate to speed or as asked in the chat (avoiding of artillery fire) also to other things. And if, (see above for third) will they allways go around or pass straight through eventually?

Don't let some of the questions in the stream discourage you, I followed pretty much everything that was being said, you were all being very clear. Good stream, great update.

Sorry for my question last page but i was a bit confused by that.

awesome livestream, looking forward to seen everything in action! Even these early textured planets look really cool, once the final rendering and such is working this game is going to be beautiful

People have a hard time understanding how games are created. I have no idea myself of the technical details but I could clearly understand what you guys were talking about(and I'm interested to see more)

Most guys/gals were making wrong assumptions cause nobody ever does this. Nobody shows these steps in the development process.

I am very grateful that you did this and I am more than happy to see the game going in a revolutionary direction. Total Annihilation was the first game that I ever played on a PC and ever since then I was a big fan.

I want to destroy planets but I want to do it properly so take your time and I'm sure I'm speaking for the most of us, we can wait considering what the game promises. :mrgreen:

this is going to be best rts

Maybe it can be solved by giving every surface a non-zero base cost. Then you calculate the most efficient path.

Example: Unit is at location P and goes to X.

With zero cost terrain the unit will take a large detour.

P0000000000
33333333330
000X0000000

With a non-zero base cost terrain the unit will take distance/time into account.

P1111111111
33333333331
111X1111111

Yup, if your cost field looks like that, the path finder will build a flow field that takes you to the right.

Thank you for doing this stream!
It might have been more technically in my opinion, but since you obviously have a very mixed audience with very different knowledge levels it might cause too much confusion. Hope marvorsrants.com gets a new entry soon, since it usually contains some more sophisticated information.

Yes I painted very high cost values to highlight how we can dynamically influence movement behavior.

Imagine I was painting really steep hills or really murky swamps onto the planet, so that going 20 miles around is actually cheaper.

If we paint a low cost into the field the units will correctly choose to move through it as you suggest. Especially if they are already close to it.. because yes, it's more expensive to move 20 miles around.

I guess the reactions would have been less frustrating if there have been more game developers went into tech details like this.

I loved the depth. I got what you were talking about and wasn't really confused. I think most of the people that did get it weren't chatting but were listening and watching. So please don't get discouraged. No matter how clearly everything is explained you will have some people who won't get it or who aren't paying attention. It just so happens those people tend to be the loudest.

I did have a question about the flow fields. I understood how static buildings dynamically added cost, but what happens with moving units?

The scenario I was thinking about was if you had two armies that were going in an x pattern and they crossed paths at exactly the same time. How would they decide who stopped and who moved etc?

If there was enough look ahead I suppose each could slight avert there coarse but this problem would be come exasperated if the stream of units was long enough from both sides.

Well imo there should not be Zero cost terrain. Why? Becuase if you have huge planes of it the resulting cummulative map wont be good for navigation. look at my example here
Though i may be wrong with my assumptions.

@elitron: Thank you for answering my questions

Awesome stream and awesome tech. Thanks for sharing this.

Very nice to see tech advance used for gameplay improvement and not only for graphical stuff

I found this very interesting. Also, slightly interesting seeing peoples reactions to this level of detail.

My first response was, "Some on found a useful implementation of potential fields?!? My coursework might actually be useful!!"

Some technical questions, is it just gradient descent on the final field? What methods are used to avoid local minima?

Not entirely related to flow fields, here is a nice introduction to programming flocking and crowd movements, with working nice examples you can play with :

http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-6- ... us-agents/

(should interest the guy asking how 2 different flocks would interact

There is also a nice intro to neural networks (for AI).

I just realized (while watching the replay of the stream) how much stuff you miss when you try to watch the stream and chat too.
Some of my former questions where allready answered -.-"

Really liked the tech demos, both of them

I do not really know how many people watch the stream, who do not post/lurk on these forums, but I would guess almost everyone from the forums is up for this level of tech

When I watched I felt how you were struggling to explain everything, without going into even more detail. But I think I now do understand the idea's behind flowfields a lot better. I may even be able to use it sometime. (the underlying structures, not actual flowfields XD)