"The Egg", off planet bases and Lighting

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by northbehemoth, June 4, 2013.

  1. northbehemoth

    northbehemoth New Member

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    So, after watching a few live streams and making sure that I was all set with the cosmic edition of the game. I had a few questions that I didn't seem to find the answer too and after searching the forums for a good hour they were still unanswered. So my hope is one of my fellow commanders may be able to shed some light on what I am in the dark about.

    First off, with the release of alpha coming to a good chunk of the community on the 7th these questions may be answered then but who wants to wait. So, It was stated that the egg will provide resources when landing with your commander too one of the selected spawn points. Do you think that the resources will vary pending on your locations resource proximity, or will it just be a flat rate in which everyone is given. Next is Off planet bases which will use "the egg" idea to launch what I am going to refer to as a construction bot to a moon or asteroid and set up an either base for additional resources and or a missile used too destroy a chunk of the planet. But, will the opponents be able to assault the addition base with regular flying units which have been upgraded to endure space or if at all, how would one be able to stop a moon base from being created. With the exception of intercepting "the egg" from taking off. And finally the lighting, after watching most of the pre alpha footage, the sun's presence is just amazing totally awe-striking however, when the "night" came to the dark side of the planet the units them selves didn't seem to emit very much light when not firing. Will there be an amount of light given off from construction and what not to make it a little bit easier to see, or do you think that the cold metal machines don't need light to annihilate planets.

    Anyways, Thank you for the time you took reading this and maybe responding.

    And above all else I look forward to meeting you in planetary annihilation.

    Cheers.
  2. 1337haxwtg

    1337haxwtg Member

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    A lot of that is kind of hard to answer at this point, particularly the lighting, since they are still adding more graphical enhancements to the game. They are focused on readability, so I don't think it will be an issue.

    I seem to recall them stating that you will be able to pick a starting location with the egg. Starting resources? Not sure. But proximity to resources is up to the player placing the spawn. Also, I don't think aircraft will be transportable between planets in the sense you said. It would require some sort of transportation mechanism, not direct flight.

    Hope this helped.
  3. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    First off I think they wanted the starting point selection to help a player decide between a good resource start vs a strategic position. The flat rate of resources that the egg comes with is intended to make it fair to start in a potentially barren planet for whatever strategic means they had and not get completely locked out of getting a decent start. Hence setting a minumum resource potential. I dont beleive the planet will be giving bonuses to the Eggs resource amount, its just so we all start the same and whether or not we have more resources comes down to whether we attempt to extract them.

    You raised a good point about intercepting transportation of the commander or building unit (whatever this is going to be, its down to speculation and I dont want to plant rumours)
    What we know is that there will be a rocket to launch things into space, perhaps tiers of rocket(speculating) and we know that there is a unit cannon that seams capable of launching units from asteroids into a planets atmosphere. (as i type this i am imagining the destructo-tennis match of asteroid to asteroid unit tactics with the unit cannons. muahahaah!)
    I would imagine that Orbital units might include an anti-space program blockade of sorts.
    Something that shoots down rockets on their way up, and maybe on their way in. So until its taken out you are grounded at least within a certain radius. (speculation)

    The strategy on stopping expansion might rely on prevention more, its like those scenes in the movies; The ship is being chased, the fleet almost has them, lasers shooting at it and then BAM its gone into hyperspace or what have you. "Damn you Darth Solo! Until next time!" ;)
    So once they are out, you will have to meet them when they enter play again on land/air/orbital. So with the lack of full on Space Opera fleets, we can be safe to assume that traveling through space is "out of play" unless traveling "in play" via asteroid/moon.

    LIGHTING
    This is low priority. However they did do a massive amount of lighting tests, they realise that lots of glowing, blinky, death robots firing light emitting missiles that glow on the ground as they annihilate and explode in the dead of night is freaking epic.
    So I really would not worry about the lighting, Uber intends to make the game readable as said above. I too would be super mad if the lighting sucked, I do CG lighting for a living hurr hurrr hurrdy durrr..

    Cheers
  4. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    We haven't even tried to tune lighting at this point so I wouldn't worry about it. We are still having some issues with the planet backsides looking "flat" because they don't have shadows. There are a few ideas we are going to try there.
  5. rorschachphoenix

    rorschachphoenix Active Member

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    Maybe no dark sides? Maybe no lights?
  6. teradyn

    teradyn Member

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    Don't they have a huge shadow, i.e. the planet?
  7. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    Yeah, which then looks like no shadow so they look flat and floaty.

    Putting another shadow for the moonlight looked ok but is more expensive (may still do this).
  8. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    I suppose we could go back to this but so far the lighting has been a win.
  9. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    That would be the issue, everything within the planetary shadow would already be in a state of shade outside of the suns influence. A faked counter light of some kind would have to be constrained to the opposite side of the planet and maintain itself always on the shaded side. This would then cast a sort of cyan/white light like we do in movies. There is always a gigantic stadium lamp in night shots. Essentially simulating a full moon effect at all times just to make the movie look good.
    We do this in all our night sets but in PA's case there wont always be a moon on the dark side, and it wont behave like the real moon does by bouncing light onto the surface.
    Generally our eyes are trained by movies and animation to have a white/cyan rim and shadow in our night scenes, realistically if you are out camping and there is nothing but stars, you cant see your own hand in front of your face. This is artistically boring so clearly we turn everything blue and cast light on it. They may have to do some faking with unseen light sources like I explained above or have a backed in contact shadow that textures itself in when below certain objects (shadow grids), or a darker ao when out of the influence of the sun. (BLAH stupid copy paste function ruined my post)

    Anyways, im excited for the challenges this game is presenting. I am anticipating how the results go.
    Last edited: June 4, 2013
  10. JuggernautOfWar

    JuggernautOfWar Member

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    Please do not go back to having no lights and shadows. It really adds a lot to the game.

    I don't know if your engine supports it, but SSAO seems like a simple enough solution for 'flat' feeling scenes. SSAO doesn't take much resources either. Although now that I think about it another light (moon) would probably be less taxing than SSAO everywhere.
  11. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    i realise im echoing neutrino, im writing these at work between renders and take about 10-20 minutes to finish my posts haha
  12. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    SSAO is something we've talked about and will explore.

    We currently don't have any post-processing in the game so we have some work to do there.
  13. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    Definitely want to see some interesting AO.
    Biggest challenge I guess would be how the assets blend together procedurally.
    The easiest route tends to be the most render intensive. "just slap a live AO on the shader" is the reason I shoot nerf darts at art dep.
  14. JuggernautOfWar

    JuggernautOfWar Member

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    This is great news! Now here is a thought:
    If SSAO is something that could be implemented in the future I recommend spending very little or no resources on making the dark side of planets 'pop' right now since they will in the future anyway. This alpha (to my understanding) is not about making pretty and easy to digest graphics, but rather to let the community give feedback on core gameplay and systems.

    Spending resources and time making a secondary light source to liven up the dark side is a waste at this point in development if later there will be a better solution anyway.
    This is true. A workaround to this (probably temporarily) is to only have geometry and scenery use SSAO. Going this route is more time consuming initially, but presents less graphic artifacts and improved performance at the cost of units and buildings feeling 'flat' especially in darker areas.
  15. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    In the end. This flat scenery really only is an issue at times of peace. Clearly the true problem is:
    Why ISNT the forest burning?!
  16. sab0t

    sab0t Member

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    ^ this guy is the guy you need to watch out for
  17. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    Spore was so dissapointing that I have no way to unleash my anger upon micro sized planets until this game hit kickstarter. I know this is off topic but I think we need little spor-esque critters running around the forest for our death machines to roll over.
  18. veta

    veta Active Member

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    Yeah, in real life you generally have ambient light anyway. Whether starlight or moonlight it's not totally dark at night and there are ambient shadows.
  19. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    Actually quite the opposite in alot of cases unless you are in the city or the moon is out.
    I was in an open field at night while the moon was not in cycle over where I was. The only thing you could see was the stars and a full solid milky way. The sky was cut out by the pure black sillouette of the horizon. My hand in front of my face had no light whatsoever.
    I had to feel my way to my tent. We put ambient light into movies to make things more visible. In the city however, the light bounces off the clouds and atmosphere and at all times it is never really that dark. You dont notice how bright things are until the day a massive power outage reminds you that there are billions of stars in the sky.
  20. Ortikon

    Ortikon Active Member

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    not to bash your post though dude.
    Definately will need ambient light the way you are describing. In the end its an artistic choice, not a real one. The trick is to be artistically realistic.

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