Planetary Annihilation LiveStream: March 22nd, 2013

About light on metal planets.

I'm gonne asume that a metal planet is like a deathstar. Big *** weapon of mass distruction left by the once that came before... Anyway if a metal planet orbits a sun lighting is the same as planet.

What if the metal planet was just floating in space. Everything would be pitch black. (In theory) But that would be no fun so of course you would see something. Wil the metal planet have its own light? Like production facilities, observation towers, mysterious glowing structures and giant glowing generators. Or wil it just be a boring dark chunk of metal?

Will you be able to use the metal planet like a weapon? If you could activate it would it light up the planet? Or is it just fun for production because of the infinite metal?


PS. I think the robots would have no problem operating in darkness. Because of night vision, heat vision, radar, sonar and what every they will invent in the future.

PPS. Nice live stream keep it up!

Haha work would be fine, they love this kind of stuff. It's the wife and kids that object, saturday morning is 'their time'.

Absolutely loved the stream.


And I have a simple question: will the game have a minimap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_map) to move faster on the planet?

Firstly, let me say how much I enjoyed the stream. I understand that showing development tools/builds is something that devs may be uncomfortable with, as a lot of people just don't have the technical skill to understand what is being presented to them. This kind of dev/player relationship requires a thick skin on behalf of the devs, and a lot of open-mindedness on behalf of the players, particularly being willing to accept if you don't understand it, you have to either read up on it, or trust the guy who does. I hope that the devs can continue giving us these insights into back-end systems, even if they have to split of some of the streams into a "technical development" series.

For my own part, I was particularly interested in how the techniques here parallel some of the work I have been involved in. I'm currently a PhD student studying Nuclear Materials, particularly in the field of simulating the behaviour and motions of atoms of alloys used in nuclear reactors. We have to rely on computer simulation as it's extremely expensive to put test samples in a reactor, then analyse them afterwards. One of the things my group often looks at is trying to determine diffusion pathways of impurities through atomic structures. This is in some ways similar to the techniques shown in the video, as a an atom will take a low energy pathway over a higher energy option, just as a unit will path-find through regions of a low "cost" if they are able to. However, in the work we do, the motion of the atom is strongly coupled to the field through which it moves, which I get the impression occurs less in flow field system shown here. It would be analogous to having a giant unit squeeze though a narrow canyon, moving the canyon walls out of the way, which in turn, effects how the unit decides to move. These systems can end up being very computationally expensive. We have to use specific techniques in order to approximate systems when the motions are so strongly coupled. I'm curious if the devs anticipate such problems if each unit has a flow-field cost attached to the region around it.

Still, it's interesting stuff. I've looked up a couple of the academic papers on the matter, however if anyone can recommend some of the relevant literature on the matter, I would be most grateful. There may be scope for improving some of the techniques used in the field I work in.

I don't have any particular cites, but if you look up potential fields and navigation functions in robotics you'll find some similar things. My lab mate typically uses it for his low level bot driving, can be very robust to robots misbehaving (which they always do)

I absolutely loved the Live Stream. I'm sure that most people that would truly understand more of the tech demos are probably working (I am) while the live streams are playing. So maybe the audience might not be as interactive in the way you hope, but I hope that does not stop you from keeping the tech demos going. I think this really showed that our emotional and financial investments into this massive project is paying off.

Thanks!!

Really enjoyed the livestream. Don't be discouraged re: the technical stuff not being understood. I'm in Australia so tend to watch them after the initial broadcast.

I'd really appreciate a few sessions that got into the nitty gritty of a few of the concepts. I'm sure I'd be a fairly common type of person in this group: I have 'technical' tendencies, know how to code 'normal' stuff but am interested in the graphics/gaming and cutting edge algorithmic stuff you guys are implementing.

So any vids that aim at the 'informed but not in the industry' folk, would be really great!

Keep it up! Looking forward to the next stream

Mark

Really loved the video (couldn't catch it live, so watched the recording.) More techy stuff is always nice! Of course, I'm a bit biased, as I intend on becoming a game developer, so this stuff is really interesting. Couple of questions:

First off, how difficult would it be to have the flow field reflect things like a ferry on its route or a unit cannon? Yes, if explicitly ordered, it'll just treat the ferry pickup or unit cannon as its goal, but what about when it hasn't been explicitly ordered? Could the flow field reflect that the ferry or the cannon would be the cheapest means of getting to its destination?

Second, could there be a way of slaving a unit to a different unit's flow field? For example, if I order unit A to escort unit B, you could do it behind the scenes by constantly giving A orders to go to B, but that would mean constantly creating new flow fields as the target location changes. Thoughts?

I'm another viewer from Australia who watched the youtube video after the fact. I ate up the technical content like crazy .Could see Neutrino getting frustrated at the end there and I wanted to tell the users in the comments to ask relevant, informed questions but obviously impossible. I support that there should be someone skimming the comments looking for good questions so Neutrino and co-host don't have to get bogged down with people mouthing-off uselessly. PLEASE keep the technical content. I speak for so many of the forum users and for my own friends who discuss what you show endlessly after the fact and it is the main reason we watch the videos. We really want to see the meat that is going into this game and Uber you are making this possible so please don't be disheartened by the hairtrigger masses, the people who get value out of what you say ARE WATCHING AND LISTENING.

I love this question from rabidchaos
First off, how difficult would it be to have the flow field reflect things like a ferry on its route or a unit cannon? Yes, if explicitly ordered, it'll just treat the ferry pickup or unit cannon as its goal, but what about when it hasn't been explicitly ordered? Could the flow field reflect that the ferry or the cannon would be the cheapest means of getting to its destination?
Understandably this would add complexity to the calculations. It would also add to the strategic options in the game immensely! WOW!

Also. The question was asked in the livestream, however poorly, about the user adding 'cost' via the UI to an area to re-route units or discourage them from entering a particular area or path. I understand completely that this is back-end stuff, is calculated on the fly by the server, and not relevant to any direct user commands. But, this too would add strategic depth to the game in a sense where, to use the artillery example from the livestream, a user could have the ability to 'warn' units that may not be under their direct control all the time of a potential danger zone (ie. like pegging a virtual fence around a minefield). It could be used similar to a 'ping' from multiplayer or a paint mechanic as elitron used. Strategic depth, minimizing micro-management, large scale command etc.

I would be really interested in hearing other people's thoughts.

This really is a good question. I'd really like to see units be able to say 'hey, i need to get to point A.. there is a transport route that shortens the trip considerably, I will automatically hop on the transport'. Or even as a last resort - give land units orders to move to the other side of a river, and they can't do it via land, so they find alternative routes.

Re: Jon Mavor's comment at the end of the livestream about sharing complicated under-the-hood tech...

Please keep the tech content in livestreams. You gave all of us who were or are in grad school for engineering/science nerdgasms because we can see the connections between what we do and what you do. Only thing is, a lot of us weren't watching live. Because we had things to do like finish our 27 page conference proceedings paper for AIAA SDM. If we had been there live, the questions we asked would have made you feel differently.

I am more excited about this game than I was before the livestream.

Will you release this "planet generator" to people (in prototype version ?)

Possible. I've been considering releasing it to alpha testers as kind of a tech test to see how things run on real peoples computers.

That could probably help find bugs if alpha testers are able to go nuts on pushing that thing around (not like you guys havent tested the life out of it anyways)

Loved the stream, man it can be frustrating listening to people that dont understand the nature of the demonstration, I dont know how to program but I can at least understand where its coming from in the interface, and what its function is as part of the game. At least they aren't suited publishers on conference calls though! AmIright?! worst critiques ever come from clients trying to make decisions for the sake of making decisions. "uh could we change the blue-ish under shading to charcoal?" charcaol? you mean greyer? arent you the artist. sorry..client rant.
great stream!

I'd LOVE to see the planet generator ASAP! (Alpha backer here)
Then again, I know exactly what to expect from unfinished prototype software. Other Alpha level backers might not...

alpha backer here, itching to mess around with planet generator! :mrgreen:

Release it when you've ironed out those kinks that got an impromptu showing during the Stream is my thought. No need to test its stability on everyone's machine if it's still unstable on your own

I'm in no rush. Take all the time you need Uber.

So how do your flow fields and formations interact?

I got the impression that units assigned to a formation have a relative flow field to a central point in the formation and that the formation as a whole has a different flow field the moves the formation to its goal.
so individual units are always trying to maintain formation.

I presume then that the formation is given a size and movement characteristics based on the composite units?

Or is it simply that the units are given final goals that are in the same relative layout as the initial formation?
Units try to move to a position that will arrange them in formation at the destination.

Would be cool to fiddle around with it.

I would also love to have a tinker, although i get the impression its not quite up to the tinker phase yet.

It seemed you could create all variations of tropical planets with 2 craters per size unit (which is plenty to get its features working). When it is ready to be an actual alpha instead of under construction i will be ready to tinker.

If i'm wrong then gimmy gimmy gimmy.