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umm, you're kidding right? This isn't even remotely feaseable.AF wrote:omfg, i have nevers een people go so bazarre over such a simple thing todo.
First off, a map the size of altored divide or brazillian battlefields is not gonna go with a spherical world, you need large maps, at least 25x25.
Secondly, the current map format isnt one to be used for this, preferably a variant of zaphods new renderrer.
Thirdly You're all overcomplicating this by huge proportions
3D mesh worlds? mdoels? lmao, do you nto knwo how populous did their maps? the agme saw the map in the same way other games saw it, only that it had the property of co-ordinates rolling back on themselves so units fof on th west side appear on the east side and vice versa.
Sphere worlds for spring the easier way:
To gain a populous style sphere world map (single sphere only) Implement units going offmap reappearing on the opposite side.
Then, make it so that all the camera co-ordinates and the co-ordinates used to draw ingame are curved around the central point, giving the illusion of the terrain beign curved bakc on itself. This filter could be applied to the camera and any other routines, but all processing would be the same using the normal flattened map approach. All thats needed is an algorithm tod etermine the required radius and then filter the co-ordinates before they're displayed.
This would give the illusion of a populous III style planet map. Once that is all done the onus is on the map maker not to make the map too small and to make sure all the terrain joins at the seams perfectly with no nasty aesthetic problems. No 3d world models, no meshes, no nasty implementations of new map formats, just a simple tag addedd to a map saying it is spherical and maybe a few extra tags to help the engine.
For a spherical design you'd have to compleatly redesign the way the grid works. A 100 by 100 grid wouldn't give you a sphere, you would need an entirely new way of handling your grid. Considering that the spring engine is basicly built entirely around grids we're talking a from the ground up rewrite to impliment proper spherical maps.Forboding Angel wrote:it's obvious that many of you have never generated terrain lol.
for spherical design, you would need at least a 100 x 100 or it would look really weird.
Rendering that size is pretty much impossible, unless of course you have 62 gigs of ddr.
In terragen it would take prolly 2 weeks to render. in l3dt I'm sure at least 12 hours.
So for your idea we need randomly generated map terrain. This crap isn't as easy as you guys think. Ya it sounds cool, but a wragaround 25x25 spherical?? Are you insane? Road to war is 28 x 28. Can you image playing that spherically? Your eyes would pop out of your skull trying to do that.
Edge wrappi8ng is jsut a horrible idea. You think spring runs like crap now? Just wait. If you did that it would take practically a supercomputer to do all those calculations.
You are absolutely correct, I dont disagree with you since my proposal was never to use the current spring maps. I also understand that implementing this with the current spring engine is wery difficult.SwiftSpear wrote:Dox, what I'm saying is that if you just take a rectangular map and have a transferance system from the sides you don't get a spherical map, you get a dimention warp double cylinder. Civ uses a single cylinder, which works well enough, but really doens't represent a spherical that much better then a single rectangular plate does, a double dimention warp cylinder doesn't represent anything but a phyisics nightmare.
fully 3d mesh playing environments are far beyond the capabilities of the spring engine. Spring heavily relies on the X and Y cooridinants being locked for unit movement and trajectory physics.
Just so i dont laugh next time i read your post, an easier word for the 'dimention warp double cylinder' is a torus. 'Dimention warp double cylinder' sounds like something out of a cheap sci-fi movie...SwiftSpear wrote:Dox, what I'm saying is that if you just take a rectangular map and have a transferance system from the sides you don't get a spherical map, you get a dimention warp double cylinder. Civ uses a single cylinder, which works well enough, but really doens't represent a spherical that much better then a single rectangular plate does, a double dimention warp cylinder doesn't represent anything but a phyisics nightmare.
fully 3d mesh playing environments are far beyond the capabilities of the spring engine. Spring heavily relies on the X and Y cooridinants being locked for unit movement and trajectory physics.
