WE NEED TUNNELS!

WE NEED TUNNELS!

Requests for features in the spring code.

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Zoy64
Posts: 454
Joined: 12 Nov 2006, 00:30

WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Zoy64 »

we need a way to make maps that have tunnels, bridges, and the like! Why? because stuff like that is needed! We have gone far too long without this ability!

You might say that it is impossible with the Spring engine, well i keep hearing that nothing is impossible with LUA!

C'mon fellow Springers! let us fight for the ability to make more dynamic maps; let us work together toward a more awesome future!

Zoy!
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lurker
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Joined: 08 Jan 2007, 06:13

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by lurker »

Zoy64 wrote:i keep hearing that nothing is impossible with LUA!
Why are you letting hobos into your house and showing them Spring?
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Noruas
XTA Developer
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Joined: 24 Feb 2005, 02:58

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Noruas »

Nothing is possible with lua developers.
Master-Athmos
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Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 01:32

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Master-Athmos »

Actually just grab a programmer who knows C, lock him into a room and tell him he won't get out until he has rewritten Spring's pathfinder with a new support for the respective features...

Zwsg is showing that this might work with Lua too but my guess is it won't turn out all too well although I'm always open for surprises...
Super Mario
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Joined: 21 Oct 2008, 02:54

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Super Mario »

+1000 for the bridges and tunnels map feature implementation.
AreaFire
Posts: 41
Joined: 27 Aug 2009, 18:08

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by AreaFire »

We need better pathfinding before we can ever hope to have tunnels.

I watch my units take the most terrible paths from point A to point B. It's bad enough on some maps that I have to lay down a series of waypoints to get them there correctly.
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Caydr
Omnidouche
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Caydr »

Lua. Not LUA. Gawd.
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smoth
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by smoth »

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Argh
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Argh »

I am actually building a demonstration / concept map showing that we can, in fact, do a Starcraft-type map, with blocks, and that it will function faster than Spring's current system. I've already done early tests, to put it another way, and it works as planned, and demonstrates that visible-block searches are much faster than Spring's map mechanics.

But it will also require pretty difficult content creation techniques, so it's not exactly something most people can build, let alone deploy, and it won't get along with Air MoveType very well.

We'll need new content-development tools to really make it practical for everyday use, outside of tech demos, but building the demo is pretty easy, so I thought I'd go ahead and do it.
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smoth
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by smoth »

z has some stuff, I have thought about whipping up some stuff. problem is the units and them effectively being blind.

Hell argh, aircraft fly through cliffs whenever they can
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Argh
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Argh »

The bigger problem isn't the cliffs, although that's a doozy, with any of the areas where height rises considerably. It's that the non-map areas will have to be around the waterline, due to some issues, whereas the rest of it needs to be a bit above it. Well, that, and tiles have to have very strict height requirements...

At any rate, I should have a demo of this done later on this week, once it looks halfway-decent graphically. It won't be as interesting as zxswg's demo with an undulating heightmap, but it'll demonstrate the basics of making a tile setup practical, I hope. The main thing is that I've proven (to myself, at any rate) that it's quite practical to use a tile setup in this engine, and that fetching the tile objects is, as I suspected, a lot faster than the map renderer, since it just needs to deal with a very local search. There are a ton of practical problems past that point, though.
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Caydr
Omnidouche
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Caydr »

Say practical a few more times.
Regret
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Joined: 18 Aug 2007, 19:04

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Regret »

Caydr wrote:Say practical a few more times.
Practical.
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Pxtl
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Joined: 23 Oct 2004, 01:43

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Pxtl »

CAPSLOCK! EXCLAMATION MARK! MY COMMENT IS IMPORTANT!
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TheFatController
Balanced Annihilation Developer
Posts: 1177
Joined: 10 Dec 2006, 18:46

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by TheFatController »

In terms of effort spent for reward received adding tunnels would give pretty low yield imo
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thesleepless
Posts: 417
Joined: 24 Oct 2007, 04:49

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by thesleepless »

is there a way to add paths to the pathfinder dynamically using lua?
if so things like tunnels and bridges should be somewhat easy using lua. if not, maybe it could be added? how hard would that be?
Master-Athmos
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Joined: 27 Jun 2009, 01:32

Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Master-Athmos »

All official responses on this topic lead to comments saying that even the author said the pathfinder wouldn't be that much optimized but still it's way beyond trivial and as it is able to let everything go to hell nobody wanted to touch it...

So I guess before we hack in Lua stuff we're rather getting a new one / upgraded one anyway as it seems no one would dare to have an in-depth look at it otherwise...
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Argh
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Argh »

is there a way to add paths to the pathfinder dynamically using lua?
No. We can't tell the pathfinder that any given square is "valid", and we can't mess with the TypeMap (which I keep bringing up because it has some really spiffy use cases).

From what I've seen thus far, though... unless you want a true 3D tunnel, where you can drive over it as well as through it... it's not hard to do... just annoying to build. A true 3D tunnel requires a totally different kind of pathfinder, though, and would have few real uses in this engine.
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Argh
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by Argh »

I posted my first practical shot of this practical application in the Lua sub-forum, because I need some help with a non-trivial algorithm.

Haven't even messed with forced drawing / optimization yet, but it looks like my prediction that prebuilt geometry would be a lot faster than the SMF renderer is pretty much right on the money. I am starting to suspect that the only real performance limit is the geometry limit of the card, since it's barely using CPU at all.
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smoth
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Re: WE NEED TUNNELS!

Post by smoth »

smf juggling all those tiles I suspect is where most of it's performance hit comes from IMO.

Don't get me wrong it is also a huge mass of tris but still.

then again that is just my thought, it has little backing beyond me just seeing what kind of fps effects higher compression levels had
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