Spring RTS Engine

Using this thread to post updates to my work on this map.

Spent a lot of time yesterday with a bunch of false starts to create a basic height map that still needs a lot of cleaning. but is a start.

Questions and crit welcome.

here are a few images for your perusal.

so i applied the same material that i created with cooper hill, modified it a tiny bit and here is the result.

with more tweaking this is going to look awesome :)

tweak, tweak..

PicassoCT wrote:tweak, tweak..

Wow that looks awesome

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=14342

Yep, on that screenshoop it does. Problem is, to keep it unoticeable when close up (just some diffcoloured grass) and still have that "Forrest Effect" when zoomed out..

Nice stuff, apply liberal amounts of polish :)

lookin' sexy

Beherith wrote:Nice stuff, apply liberal amounts of polish :)

This.

The problem with charlie is that is has all those spikey spires which spring doesn't play real nicely with (I mean they work, but the geometry looks all fucked up 90% of the time).

Forboding Angel wrote:

Beherith wrote:Nice stuff, apply liberal amounts of polish :)

This.

The problem with charlie is that is has all those spikey spires which spring doesn't play real nicely with (I mean they work, but the geometry looks all fucked up 90% of the time).

I've noticed the terrain popping in and out of lod for no reason. I'm planning on reducing most of the spires scale to only whats necessary for gameplay cause it also wreaks havoc with camera control too.

Increase viewradius in spring if it pops too much. ROAM is efficient even at high detail levels.

Beherith wrote:Increase viewradius in spring if it pops too much. ROAM is efficient even at high detail levels.

that's one of the weird things. over 300 it just gets worse and worse. as if other is a near range as well as a far range and scales both..

At 300 you start to run into the limit of ROAM's triangle pool. I recommend 100-150.
On high detail heightmaps you will get pops no matter what. Try /wiremap ingame.

120 is default I think, even though I actually play with 30.

On my desktop I actually seem to get the best performance in the 200 range, as apposed to a lower one, no idea why. Its hard to say if there's actually a change in my fps, but I most definitely don't see a decrease with a higher viewradius.

Is there a autoadapter for spring? Setting goals like 25 fps, dont need more, now go and get the best look out for me.
Or optimize for ridiculous large games? Something that autoadjusts the settings to what you are doing, the map you are playing, the number of players ingames? I mean beside ROAM?

There is an FPSmanager widget.

Not much work on this map lately... because I had hit some barriers, but those barriers are almost overcome.

Because of the size of the map I was daunted with how to fill it with features. and I have devised the following workflow using blender and gimp and feature placer

* Paint distribution maps and mix it with incline masks(so I don't put trees on the sides of mountains)
* Create particle systems using the distribution maps
* Export the particle locations to a set.lua
* Use feature placer to clean up any weird stuff and tweak
* Import locations back to blender so that I can use the locations to modify the texture and splat distribution masks

Only thing really that I haven't got functional yet is the export of the particle locations, but I've looked up info for that already and it isn't hard.

here is a quick dirty image from within blender so that at least there is something to look at.

Oh nice! I like this map - looking forward to playing your beautiful version!

Looks good

I think one thing worth noting is nice features can get a little expensive. Since it looks like your using quite a few, maybe have 2 sets? One for players who have yet to upgrade their computers and one for players who already have, switchable in the map options.