Planetary Annihilation LiveStream: March 22nd, 2013

Those flow fields bare a striking resemblance to the vector fields I'm working with now.

Does the algorithm calculate directional derivatives and use them to create a curve whose tangent is the direction of max change of the flow field on the surface of the sphere?

It might be frustrating if units path into danger in an effort to pick the least costly route. I wonder if there would be an option to force the pathing through costly areas to avoid danger.

The flow field seems more interesting than teh game itself.

I do believe the Backers Forum would be thrilled to see all of the high-res screenshots of the planet generator, aka, the freakish planets- Actually, could you by any means make it possible to play around with the creator? There's many options you could put into the ingine, but if the backers could play around with it, the discussion would be much more productive than "if they do this" and more "I tried such and such, wish there was that and this"

It was a great update! loved it!

This was a great stream guys, thanks.

I love the power of the planet generator. It will really allow games to be unique every time. One thing that I am wondering on though is how base position balancing will be handled. It may be hard determine locations for bases (commander starts) on a randomly generated world. However this is something that will definitely make the game unique. Think on your feet and play good no matter where you start.

The part about flow fields was pretty clear to me as well (I think). I think the comparison the gravity only reversed seems right to me. The flow field seems to be determined by the path that flows most directly to its target whilst trying to stick to the lowest "ground" where cost raises the "ground". Behind this all of course is Math that really determines the the actual path. What I think may help to understand it better is that cost can be applied at a very little scale as well big scale (if I am correct). So a wreckage gives cost to a very small and specific area while a forest may generate a more global cost field. But the flow path will be determined by using the same mathematical principles.

Dying to see the Alpha.

I have a question about flow fields in 3D space.

While most of the vehicles and bots are moving across a relatively flat plain, How does it work with airplanes. Are the planes going to be able to move up or down to different altitudes, or will we be stuck with the typical rts approach of having aircraft flying on the same level? Are flow fields a good fit for air combat situations?

Ideally I'm really hoping to see a more realistic simulation of dog fighting, where the planes can take advantage of the differences in elevation, with high flying carpet booming / dive booming for precision targeting, or flying low to the terrain to avoid radar detection, with the added risk that your planes might crash because of the risk of maneuvering so low between hills and mountains.

I would also totally understand if most of that is to complicated a simulation to achieve for the game. given the tight budget. But from what I have seen so far you all appear to be miracle workers, maybe nothing is outside the realm of possibility?

p.s. when you where showing the pics of the planets that got blown up, I couldn't help but think of this

Well I am no technical expert but I would think in air it should be possible to expand on the math and make a 3d flow field. in that situation you would have a bottom altitude cost field and top altitude cost field with mountains adding 3d cost fields in the "fly zone".

Other planes would have a cost field 'bubble'around them.

However as i said I am by no means technical so I am just pondering based on the explanation of flow fields I have heard so far. I have no clue how heavy the pricing of the math for this would be.

Very interesting livestream, I'm just kind of waiting for substantive news on gameplay or alpha =/

Am I the only one that does not like the cartoonish look of planets? I know, it's early in the process but it was said, that this is the direction. I would prefer much more natural looking worlds. Mountains stuck out of the landscape too much. It looked like LEGO World. And, objects creating craters of that size would have destroyed the whole biome of the planet and played wild with the planets tectonics resulting in a hell of broken continents, burned surface, lava everywhere and the athmosphere blown away. I guess this was just for the demonstration of the capabilities of the planet creator but it was too much for my taste. One good thing: the prominent swirl design of surface elements of the kickstarter video was nearly not recognizable.
I prefer natural, realistically looking worlds.
Otherwise the tech-talk was interesting.

themindlessone < love the idear of aircraft actually having dog fights on planets while other units are fighting on the ground and missiles are like being like thrown around by other units and whatnot but i also think that the more you take away from say the rts feel which is like the plane launches from its platform and goes stright for where the x was placed to bomb it the more complex and less likely you can have like streamlined for muli-player but thats just me.

just an additional thing to this if planets had say planet fields of hight from the base ground like we see on our own planet and in other sim games that are in space where you have the outer field of the planet. if this where done then the aircraft might beable to be programed to fly within that area while everything else is being thrown around right underneath them.

If this game was also more like you control your units from either an rts feel or if you go from like a commander style thing where say you play the main commander and the other units are just play follow the leader untill the point of contact with enemy's around and then everything goes ape..

I was also going to say that the idea of the having say the flow fields going to work with terrain ie like mountain / hills and the rest will just be like for running over at free will ?.

btw I like the tech things being shown off and i think thats a big bummer that most of those people in that chat window when you did the live stream did not really grasp the whole thing behind that. I mean you where willing to show that stuff off and you have verry good feedback from that from what i can see.

And it also gives you something to talk about ....

If you say start on a planet and slowly make your way to other planets after you collected all your requirements for launching into space to find other worlds to take / destroy how would you like this world view.. like say 2d style world view where you pick your next world and then all goes 3d again or are you going to make say a ship controllable via the player and the player can then fly to the next planet and have the option of going 2d / 3d on the planets that they are working on to help speed up there own time management system ?.

I guess it is a matter of taste. I was a bit sceptical about the cartoonish style in the beginning but after seeing the desert biome with units in it screenshots is was very impressed and I like it that way. Considering the planets do not forget that was a very rough render and that it is all still work in progress.

Awesome stuff!

But, as a favor to the viewers, could you stop using circle wipes? They burn my eyes.

Hi Ubers,
(wall of text sorry)
I'm a New Zealander so unfortunately tuning into the livestreams while they are live is a bit difficult but i do very much enjoy watching them. I have a comment and a question which I hope either Jon or Elijah get a chance to look at.

First off the comment: I agree with Jon's comment that based on the questions being asked very few people seemed to grasp what a flow field was and the idea of cost in terms of movement, I hope however that you do continue with your tech heavy presentations because I think it is the most likely place for people to learn about the tech that goes into making the most fundamental part of the game possilble (unit movement), especially considering that flow fields technically behave differently to some other shortest route/memorization methods for solving pathfinding issues and as such what units do based on orders given may not yield what the player had first anticipated. I think is important for us as fans to understand the difference or at least be given the chance to understand and (hopefully) maybe spark a bit more interest in learning.

The question: Flow fields (after a little reading) seem like a very resonable way of handling unit pathing when cost is of primary concern (especially when you are thinking large numbers of units and scalability, your demo illistrated that very well). However there are many circumstance in an RTS where cost of unit movement (ie ease/speed at which it arrives to it's target) is not your biggest concern but rather the route travelled is of greater concern. Hypothetically imagine a set of units is faced with two possible routes one of which is through another set of objects (waste land of dead units or rocks or some such) at a marginally higher cost than the other route which is open ground that leads around a pass. Now imagine both routes will put you at the rear of your target but the cheaper router will cause your units to travel in front of the target, as opposed appearing behind the target and cutting it off (see image). In traditional pathing a player might expect units to take the shortest route (A) as opposed to the least costly (B). Players could probably over come this by queueing the path through the costly area with way points although that could lead to other problems. How do you guys plan on dealing with this kind of situation in pathing when using flowfields?

There is nothing more frustrating in an RTS than giving a unit an order and not have it follow the pattern you had predicted and having to fight with the game to get the desired outcome.Thats why I think it's key for players to understand the tech and why I really appreciate the work you guys are putting into showing us what goes into your games and the concepts being using (especially bleeding edge stuff). I hope you continue to show us the big stuff like this, because it gives players a better understanding of how and why things work the way they do in your game.

I am very much looking forward to seeing more.

Cheers
Jebus

The answer to that situation is simple, units will take the fastest route.

Cost is merely a value that exists to tell the flow field how difficult the terrain is and what effect that will have. If you want units to take a specific rout you hold down shift and lay out a way point and that takes you all of 4 seconds. So plonk a waypoint in the middle of that green field and the units will go that way.

A lot of people are attempting to use this cost value in new and interesting ways like defining areas units shouldn't congregate because artillery lands there but at its simplest it just tells the flow field what movement modifier the ground has between 100% road, 70% swamp and 0% impassable cliff. Units then take the fastest route.

There are serveral situations where a dynamic flow field would not behave as you have just outlined with waypoints. For instance if you look back at my image if the blue unit group is large enough saturate the flow field between waypoints added to force the units over the more costly ground you would see an overflow effect where units at the back of the group repath and flow around easier terrain as cost is continually reassessed.

With waypoints they would all attempt to get to the first waypoint first instead of the end waypoint, so if you try and force to many units through they would back up at the entrance instead of go around everything (after which point they would turn around, calculate the total cost for that maneuver). As the units at the front move forward the ones at the back move in behind them. As units reached the mid point the ones that backed up behind them wouldn't be able to move around the obstacle because they would have to go all the way around to approach their first waypoint from the opposite side which is now also full of tanks.

This thought occurred to me as well but we should remember that flow fields are primarily used to determine navigation through (between) impassable objects. The increased cost with for example a swamp would have little effect because the detour over no cost land will usually quite quickly take longer. And as stated queueing shift command would help. Also I think uber may be looking into possibilities of implementing flow fields for terrain types but remember: nothing is final yet.

Hi,
just jumping in and saying that I also did enjoy the live stream. Maybe for the futur simply tag the livestream as Devtech, Music, Gameplay or Whatever so people will know what will be streamed.
As someone else said Earth 2150 has a day/night cycle with interesting looking graphics because every unit has one or more spotlights, building have lights.

Do more tech videos please!

I want to say that I'm loving the day/night schedule along with the headlights.

Would we be able to determine anything via strategic view based on the color of the lights?

That video is why I'm here. Saw the kickstarter at the time but didn't back (aversion to amazon), then forgot about it. The video got me interested again, now I'm trying to choose which pre-order to get

cant be that difficult to tune in 9am on a Saturday morning? Perfect timing for live-stream over brekkie. No need for pesky excuses why you are watching during work hours