Author Topic: CPU thrifty way of adding forests (Read 973 times)

Chairboy · « **on:** April 16, 2002, 04:58:11 PM »

Hi guys,

I have an idea for a thrifty way of implementing forest cover in the game (for GVs). In areas designated as forests, add an additional polygon layer that hovers something like twenty or so feet above the forest floor and has a texture mapped to it with green noise for the 'covered areas and transparency set for the areas of the polygon that are open. Make this 'forest layer' so it is transparent to weapons fire so that its major purpose is to provide cover, not protection.

This could make GV vs. GV engagements more interesting because we could hide a little, and it would make aircraft vs. GV stuff more interesting too because a clever GV pilot could slink through forest with the intention of avoiding aircraft instead of just setting off on a straight line towards his target.

The advantages of this are that forested areas would be more then just obstacles to GVs, they would also have a slight benefit.

Regards,

Chairboy

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #1 on:** April 16, 2002, 05:03:55 PM »

You mean.. do it just like IL-2 does it?

AKDejaVu

Chairboy · « **Reply #2 on:** April 16, 2002, 05:08:56 PM »

Well, I haven't seen IL-2, so I thought I was being pretty clever. Heh heh...

So, what do people think? This could really add some fun play to the game.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #3 on:** April 16, 2002, 05:12:42 PM »

It works well for the air to ground appearance for camoflauge... but its cheezy as all getout from the ground.

AKDejaVu

Zigrat · « **Reply #4 on:** April 16, 2002, 05:23:55 PM »

i think the best way to do it would be to fundamentally change vehicle and aircraft front ends. when selecting an aircraft, you would get a less detailed ground modeling with much higher visibility range (30 miles or whatever we have now). for GVs switch it to 5 miles visibility and up the poly counts accordingly.

hitech · « **Reply #5 on:** April 16, 2002, 06:00:05 PM »

Do the math on the terrain download size zigrat.

Chairboy · « **Reply #6 on:** April 16, 2002, 08:31:09 PM »

Here's a quick visual representation of what I mean, just in case there's any confusion.

One reason this might work is that it doesn't require making huge, sweeping changes to the UI.

It would probably be most effective to have the opaque areas be where tree concentration is high. If the game engine can deal with alpha channels, you could even have partial transparency to simulate partial coverage (ie, branches, etc).

NUTTZ · « **Reply #7 on:** April 16, 2002, 09:21:43 PM »

i think we discussed this in the TE forum over a year ago.

NUTTZ

Quote

Originally posted by Chairboy
Here's a quick visual representation of what I mean, just in case there's any confusion.

One reason this might work is that it doesn't require making huge, sweeping changes to the UI.

It would probably be most effective to have the opaque areas be where tree concentration is high. If the game engine can deal with alpha channels, you could even have partial transparency to simulate partial coverage (ie, branches, etc).

Zigrat · « **Reply #8 on:** April 16, 2002, 09:40:31 PM »

hitech well clearly your goal of keeping download sizes small is admirable. its great that users on slow connections can download ah in not too much time. but for users like me who can pull down 150 megs an hour no problem download size is really a non issue. with the advent of htc offering cds of aces high for 5 dollars i seedownload size becoming less and less of an issue.

your competitors all have download sizes at least 4 times as big as aces high. like i said, excessive download sizes are certainly not desirable but at some point of the game is going to be able to complete visually with the other flight sims out there.

personally i think while download size should be a consideration, if a 56k user (who can pull down 10 megs an hour) can download the game overnight (ie start up a download before going to bed and have it in the morning) then its pretty much a non issue (other than the added cost of providing the bandwidth on your end - i have no idea how expecive this would be for you).

hitech, please take my advice as a longtime customer who must have paid hundreds of dollars over the few years ive been playing. when i first started playing aces high in 2000 visually it was competing with the likes of european air war. but the standard has changed a bit. In aces high right now I maintain a steady 70 fps at 1600x1200 32 bit resolution. I think I could afford to have some more eye candy and still nto break teh performance budget (which is a testament to you really since I get fantastic performance at such a high resolution)

Just as a final example hitech, there are tens of thousands of players playing a modification for half life called counterstrike. this downloadable mod has attracted these thousands of users despite the download size being nearly a hundred megs.

fdiron · « **Reply #9 on:** April 16, 2002, 09:56:36 PM »

Come on, we have had the same 4 maps for the last 15 years. I think we could handle a few big downloads.

Glasses · « **Reply #10 on:** April 17, 2002, 12:04:48 AM »

I agree with Zigrat it's a nice attempt to keep download small for users with slower connections(like me) but even I at this time many of the new updates I have to leave downloading overnight and with new programs that let you resume your download even if the connection is dropped . Large downloads are an issue in the sense that I can't play right away, but I don't mind much and if it means adding more cover for Gvs increases the size of it, I have no problem with it, considering that in 1.10 we have a new Perk GV I think it would work well if vehicles had somewhere to hide or at lease conceal themselves much better than they can now,nowhere.

Saintaw · « **Reply #11 on:** April 17, 2002, 01:37:56 AM »

IF they DO implement this, I smell nasty 'U'NOE flying

mrsid2 · « **Reply #12 on:** April 17, 2002, 02:26:15 AM »

The download will only be a problem for the people who actually have to pay for their dialup time ($1/hour) and who can't get the cd because they live in europe..

But many of us europeans have cable or dsl connections just for the reasons mentioned above so I agree also, downloads can at least double from present without creating a single problem for 85% of current users.

LtHans · « **Reply #13 on:** April 17, 2002, 03:38:51 AM »

2D treelines simliar to the smoke rounds the tanks fire now.

Oh, and I would rather have the trees and download more than not.

Hans.

MANDOBLE · « **Reply #14 on:** April 17, 2002, 04:10:18 AM »

Definitively download size should not be the problem. I remember downloading 70Mb patches with a 56k modem as surelly most of us have done.
Now imagine, two more months til 1.10 and then 80Mb patch available, are we really going to consider that a problem? IMO, not at all. Obviously, if we have a 100Mb patch every week, then I agree, that would be a problem.

About FPS, what AH really lacks is a flexible system to configure the detail level, and this mandatory option is available in any other sim as far as I know. Changing screen mode doesnt help at all when the problem is derived from the number of polygons. In the other hand, ground battles are not so dependant on FPS as air combat, so, a more detailed terrain for groun units wont hurt the playability.

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