We know PB5.1 has a higher tri limit, but remember that doesn't only apply to models...
Terrain is drawn with guess what? You guessed it, triangles. So now you can have larger maps as well :). good news for anyone whose thinking of making entire planets in BZ2 :lol:. I wouldn't have thought about it unless i was told, so just relaying that to any mappers out there.
I strongly suggest anyone considering space maps reads through the changelog and looks at transparent textures etc. Theres a far less expensive way to do it now than an alpha channeled texture, and it works.
Remember, changelog is you're friend...
You sound very cheerful... cheerful and pleased...
Makes me think you've had some successes, possibly with a space map? :)
I'd love to see space maps branch off as almost a TC of BZ2, just to show what they can do.
-Av-
Not really.
An ingame square is 2 polies. The standard building (4x4) takes up 32 polies of the terrain.
A 4096x4096 MAP takes up 8192 polies. A 8192x8192 map would take up 16384 polies. The only map bigger than this old max is 10k by 10k.
10000x10000 is the biggest map you can have, but it is only slightly bigger than 8192x8192. It generates EXACTLY 20k polies.
If anyone is wondering, I'm using 3DS Max to see what numbers it can land on correctly.
GSH made another patch. Of course im pleased :lol:
Strangely, i've actually been doodling with the shell more than maps recently, apart from 'Rock Pools'. What makes me happy however is that online games could now get very big... and very long...
EPIC has loads of space-based stuff. It looks great but i don't know how it plays. Shane Ward did some space stuff for 'Assimilation' and while it was well-done at the time, you just knew it wasn't 'supposed' to work :P.
I was under the impression it was going to be larger than that. According to a discussion on IRC ages ago... GSH will be able to clarify.
Either way, its an extra kilometre and a half at least. except its not... because you cant have 10,000 x 10,000, it has to be one of the power of two sizes to texture correctly. Otherwise you get some VERY strange occurences. My experience of it wasn't pleasant.
Exactly, and the next exponent of 2 is 16384x16384 and this generates around 33k. So in all actuality, the map size didn't go up.
I'm pretty sure the polygon limit is visible polygons... which is limited due to the fill rate of the GPU in your video card...
The size of a map would be more of a memory issue, not a video card limit. An example of a video card limit would be if you set too high of a view distance. Doing that you see polygons disappear when you exceed the fill rate of your card.
Pushing the polygon limit up might let you set a longer view distance terrain-wise, but no video card made could render all the way across a normal map now... not polygon by polygon. Games with flight-sim viewing distances use other tricks to render such a large area, they certainly don't render each polygon of the terrain all the way out for miles and miles...
And for the record I love large maps but only if they're done with creativity. Just having a huge desert to fight in isn't better than Dunes, but if you have one group on an island and one in the mountains with a desert between you it starts to interest me...
-Av-
As far as I know, the map size limit hasn't been changed in TA5.1. It is the same as it always was.
Commando is correct. The terrain's max size has not changed.
Terrain is drawn as small patches, not one giant mesh. Thus, increasing the max poly count for .xsi models does nothing to the terrain code -- it's completely separate.
-- GSH
Either way of looking at it, map size is still the same as it was before anyway. :-P
However, increased map size would be a neat thing to have for the bigger projects. ;)
Not really. It can be really boring driving round really huge maps, and the slower vehicles take forever to get anywhere. They also tend to be ugly because the mapmaker gets bored of doing the miles and miles of terrain. I would much rather play beautiful well made maps with interesting props, plant and stuff on them.
Big maps with fast ships are a blast!
I drive around Mega Mountain and other big maps like that about 70..90 and can get across them in about 15..20 seconds. Now imagine a DM map the size of Mega Mountain with ships (and bots) that fast and weapons adjusted accordingly.
F-U-N.
A large strategy map could be fun. Instead of the more traditional 4 players, you could have 8 or maybe more. Now that would be awesome, wouldn't it?
Actually, I may start making one...
Quote from: Mr X on September 08, 2009, 11:44:39 AM
A large strategy map could be fun. Instead of the more traditional 4 players, you could have 8 or maybe more. Now that would be awesome, wouldn't it?
The problem with large strategy maps is that running around to scrap pools, your base, the enemy base, and other places gets REALLY old REALLY fast. 8 players would be fun, but what happens when it comes down to those last 2? You might have two commanders with basically unlimited scrap running a massive base all by themselves 4000 miles apart.
And possibly a 4000 mile walk... game over.
"Just Shoot Me" or "Pick Me Up"
If you use slow stock ships, it'd take forever...
Quote from: Red Devil on September 07, 2009, 10:08:07 PM
Big maps with fast ships are a blast!
I drive around Mega Mountain and other big maps like that about 70..90 and can get across them in about 15..20 seconds. Now imagine a DM map the size of Mega Mountain with ships (and bots) that fast and weapons adjusted accordingly.
F-U-N.
G66 ramjets and rush if combined with game.cheat bztnt, you will speed around the map like a misguided shadower with 10x the exhaust output. :-D :-D
Well... there are big maps and there are BIG maps... as always it's best not to go crazy...
Like I said, they need to be done with creativity and, I think, provide for levels of progress as the players campaign across the map. This makes for a much different game than levels like River or Canyons, the difference being that the distance becomes part of the challenge.
There's room in BZ for many levels of games between straight DM and full-out RTS... and I love that.
-Av-
Sounds like a potential mod to me, heh... "Battlezone2: Turbo"... everything is the same, except the maps are doubled in size (and maybe 3x, but not any bigger?) and all action is sped up 2 times as well, i.e. 2x speed on ships, constructors, pilot walking, flying, etc. Of course, we'll have to see how that will run networked on the Internet (due to lag and normal internet interruptions, etc). Might work fine on a LAN though. Just an idea.
The first huge BZ2 map I ever saw was Ometiklon's 'Big Ass' map (I believe that was the name), which I think was a BZ1 map conversion(?).
We played with fast scouts (and fast, aggressive bots) in a DM a few years ago and it was smooth even then.
Big maps can be made much more interesting when certain artifacts are powered by .dll to do strange things. You can even make non-dll powered items that are fun, like the GH express ways, strange magnetic fields in some areas, collapsing cliffs etc etc.
If enough effort is put into a map it can be great fun to play. I always liked TimeVirus' maps because it just felt like hes put a lot of time into it, even if the majority of them were first created in winter, the textures, sky detail etc were really good.
I made a map using winter, and now im making another free-hand. Free-hand is FREAKING hard work, and its not long before you run out of ideas as to what to create next. i also find my free-hand maps are fairly flat, with not many craters, bowls and hills. Okay so my current one is designed to be fairly flat, but still.
I also like creating objects for maps, caves, paths and tunnels etc, along with special 'holding areas'. My first finished map currently known as 'Outposts' is a strat/mpi/IA map and its fairly large, but its very playable. I actually find it really fun. Heres an image of the overview of it. I think you'll really enjoy it once released.
(http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff29/thejamsh/MPIOutposts.png)
The key to a good map is taking youre time and making sure any changes look good from all angles. "Success is as easy as hard-work"
Quote from: TheJamsh on September 10, 2009, 12:41:20 AM
Big maps can be made much more interesting when certain artifacts are powered by .dll to do strange things. You can even make non-dll powered items that are fun, like the GH express ways, strange magnetic fields in some areas, collapsing cliffs etc etc.
Teleportation a la FE! Perfect to take short cuts round huge maps...
Or equip pilots with suicide devices, should shorten the distance to walk back to base. (recall mine to recall to recycler might work...)
The only recall mine at the moment is DLL based, and DLL takes a lot of work.
I love the secrets on Outposts, the whole area is incredible!
Somebody say Recall Mine? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U03dlh0Wbn0)
Yup, that's it. One of the most awesome weapons I've ever seen.
Quote from: AHadley on September 10, 2009, 09:52:24 AM...and DLL takes a lot of work.
I gotta say I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, i just modified my first DLL for that adjustable viewrange and it wasn't really that bad. Just takes a little patience.
Especially if you can just cut and paste in the already working code such as FE's or nielk's teleporters.
Quote from: ScarleTomato on September 10, 2009, 01:13:09 PM
I gotta say I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, i just modified my first DLL for that adjustable viewrange and it wasn't really that bad. Just takes a little patience.
DLL is a lot of work, it just depends on what you do. You simply saved an additional Ivar into a variable, then in the execute loop acted on the Ivar with a conditional branch.
The recall mine is amazingly complex in the code and that is not counting the various features. First I must track every time recall mine is made, this is done my checking all new items for special ODF line. Then I must read all the information into the area for storage. This area is dynamically sized, and may contain data of dynamic size, making saving and loading it so that it is usable at all in MP very difficult. Finally I must be able to find the owner of the mine. I still have to try a new function that should provide the owner, but GSH said when he added that to the DLL it might not act as expected. ATM I use proximity checks.
When you make a DLL that has to share data across the net with something other than Ivars and Svars you hit the most confusing and baffling coding of your life. That being said, if you simply insert new variables inside the spans that already exist, the code automatically sends those over the net as an array.
sure i'll agree with you that the creation of the code from scratch can be long, grueling ordeal that will take a lot of work. I'm definitly not trying to belittle the work you put into it, but i thought we were talking about just adding recall mines atm. Even the description in your youtube video says it's a class easily added into any existing dll.
Quote from: ScarleTomato on September 10, 2009, 02:05:00 PM
I'm definitly not trying to belittle the work you put into it,
Oh, didn't mean to make you think I thought that!
Yes, the recall mine is a seperate CPP file that simply must be made a template for the main DLL. If you do that, and change some private variables to protected (I think it was protected, it has been a bit) so that the template can use them, it works.
It is a wonderful system OM showed me. Literally add some text to the class declaration and change "private" to "protected". Works wonders!
Shoot a splinter that deploys the mine mortar-style into a base wouldn't work then if it were proximity based, would it?
Would make for some neat grappling hooks.