Ability to walk/move on features...

[Snipawolf]

This idea has been floating forever, but nobody has put it into here. If we made it to where units could walk or move on features we could have bridges. Other things could come from it, I am too lazy to imagine them though.

[Dragon45]

The problem is that pathfinding would have to be tweaked to check for essentially "new" land somehow, because that is what a bridge-builder feature would be.

[Peet]

Well it already compensates for walls... I think that feature could be implemented in a relatively minor patch.

[LathanStanley]

Well it already compensates for walls... I think that feature could be implemented in a relatively minor patch.

pathfinding is VERY simple, it sees "LAND" then it walks on land.

there are objects on "LAND" that stop units from moving, trees, buildings, other units, walls, etc. they have a "footprint" (x,y units) that blocks movement and a height that blocks aircraft movement. (it also acts as a hitbox)

the only difference to this is water, and steep hills, which the unit also take into account.

to be able to walk ON a feature, requires the feature to have mesh based collisions and determie if the angle of the mesh, meeting the land, is too extreme to climb or not.

meaning, the pathfinding engine, the collisions engine, the mapping engine, and probably most of the rest of the game, would have to be re-written basically fram scratch..

don't get me wrong, I LOVE the idea, but as of now, its not remotely possible.

sorry to burst your bubble..

[Snipawolf]

No worries, that re-write may eventually happen, but not for a long time...

Eventually spring will have model collision instead of spheres... Right? Please..

[HawkMan]

If spring is to survive against new up and coming games, it needs this very basic feature. Most of the reason why it's not possible lies witht he use of a pirmitive archaic engine for determining where a unit can move, wich in turn wouldn't be able to differentiate between on or under the bridge.

basically they made TA fully 3D while keeping the biggest negative abotu TA mapping.

with moving on features we could create some absolutely stunning maps, Rocks at the bottom/sides of a canyong you can drive over, giant military bases or bunkers with ramps and stuff, for possibly future scripted miltiplayer maps.

or what about ice flakes on the water, a huge river mostly covered in ice so units can move across, and with proper angles and gemoetry on the ice. with units moving on top and the ice turning partly transparent as a fleet of subs moves u nder the ice.

the whole pathfinding engine needs to be rewritten to allow for this or I suspect we'll see mappers start moving over to a certain other game to be released if this proves to have more freedom in creating better and more advanced maps allowing for such things.

[TradeMark]

I think it could be done by linking different path maps together, so they can make path map "clusters" where one layer is relative to 2 different layers, and then the unit checks where of those two layers it can move, if it can.

This is what i mean:

Code: Select all

             _____ Layer 1
Layer 1 ----<_____ 
                   Layer 2 

I dont know could it be possible like this... thats all what i got :)