Request regarding the terrain "biomes"

AtlantisAuthor

A
First off, the Winter Update looks great and is a welcome addition to the existing base game (it also added bumper cars, which had been a glaring omission up till now). Fantastic work, guys!

Anyway, I have a request regarding the Terrain options available to the player within each "biome" you can select at the outset of each Sandbox park you create. While I understand that the current "paint" options are there to accurately reflect the sorts of surface and/or vegetation at ground level for each type of area...and that Planet Coaster is a park simulator....this is also at its heart still a videogame, and within a videogame the possibilities truly are limitless.

As things stand right now, if for example a player wanted to recreate Disney's Animal Kingdom, then when it came time to make the Expedition Everest coaster (please bear with me here; I realize that the pivoting/rotating track segments on the ride aren't currently possible in PC, but that's a subject for another thread) they would have no way to accurately depict the attraction's "snow-covered" peak. Granted it's artificial surfacing and not real snow and ice, but the point is that Planet Coaster's Terrain pallette for each biome currently limits the options at a player's disposal and thus prevents them from fully realizing rides or areas of their parks which they may want to follow a particular theme.

Why can't Arctic/Snow simply be a theme WITHIN a given park, the same with Desert, Caribbean, or any other biome? RCT3 offered this and it's a bit surprising that PC hasn't already. The biomes themselves certainly offer players plenty of unique background choices, but the ability to have distinct areas of your park that reflect each type of biome...a Western or Arabian-themed desert area, a North Pole village, a Jungle area or Savanna (thinking wildlife/prehistoric here but that may be a future update/expansion), etc. all within the same park...is currently restricted because the surface "paint" tools are only able to reflect the likely surfaces/vegetation of the biome you choose at the start.

This is really a simple thing to fix, and players could then have the options to use them (or not) as they see fit.
 

Abletudu

Abletudu
AtlantisAuthor said:
First off, the Winter Update looks great and is a welcome addition to the existing base game (it also added bumper cars, which had been a glaring omission up till now). Fantastic work, guys!

Anyway, I have a request regarding the Terrain options available to the player within each "biome" you can select at the outset of each Sandbox park you create. While I understand that the current "paint" options are there to accurately reflect the sorts of surface and/or vegetation at ground level for each type of area...and that Planet Coaster is a park simulator....this is also at its heart still a videogame, and within a videogame the possibilities truly are limitless.

As things stand right now, if for example a player wanted to recreate Disney's Animal Kingdom, then when it came time to make the Expedition Everest coaster (please bear with me here; I realize that the pivoting/rotating track segments on the ride aren't currently possible in PC, but that's a subject for another thread) they would have no way to accurately depict the attraction's "snow-covered" peak. Granted it's artificial surfacing and not real snow and ice, but the point is that Planet Coaster's Terrain pallette for each biome currently limits the options at a player's disposal and thus prevents them from fully realizing rides or areas of their parks which they may want to follow a particular theme.

Why can't Arctic/Snow simply be a theme WITHIN a given park, the same with Desert, Caribbean, or any other biome? RCT3 offered this and it's a bit surprising that PC hasn't already. The biomes themselves certainly offer players plenty of unique background choices, but the ability to have distinct areas of your park that reflect each type of biome...a Western or Arabian-themed desert area, a North Pole village, a Jungle area or Savanna (thinking wildlife/prehistoric here but that may be a future update/expansion), etc. all within the same park...is currently restricted because the surface "paint" tools are only able to reflect the likely surfaces/vegetation of the biome you choose at the start.

This is really a simple thing to fix, and players could then have the options to use them (or not) as they see fit.
Click to expand...

There is a limit on them because of the terrain tool. RCT3 did not have this because it basically just raised or lowered blocks and could not actually sculpt anything.
 

AtlantisAuthor

A
I've read the "technical limitation" responses, but in all honesty this is one baffling case of the term "technical limitation".

With all of the customization tools available in Planet Coaster you're telling me there's no way to simply enable players to "paint" snow, desert, or other terrain types as needed (minus appropriate vegetation, of course) ON TOP OF an existing biome surface? Real parks do this all the time, mostly artificially (artificial mountains, snow, and so on) to distinguish certain rides or areas. Why can't a "park simulator" manage the same feat? Can't there be SOME workaround?

If there is literally no way to add in such a simple thing, I have to say it's one bizarre disappointment.
 

Chems

Chems
Frontier made a choice, its not like they could have more terrain paints but just choose not to... Id rather have the awesome voxel based terrain system with less paints than one more like rct3 with more paints.

That said, if I am not mistaken is the current terrain paint limit 9 paints. If it really isnt possible to add more paints, they maybe could let us choice the paints we want to use when we start a park. I wouldn't mind swapping one of the like 4 grass paintings to desert for instance.
 

Angelis1

Angelis1
Chems said:
[...] That said, if I am not mistaken is the current terrain paint limit 9 paints. If it really isnt possible to add more paints, they maybe could let us choice the paints we want to use when we start a park. I wouldn't mind swapping one of the like 4 grass paintings to desert for instance.
Click to expand...
I am totally in favor of this compromise.

I mean with 9 textures, I can have :

- 2 different grass types
- 2 different dirt types
- 2 different rock types (grey rock + the famous red rock)
- 2 different sand types
- 1 snow type

This is more than enough to cover all themes [yesnod]
 

breezerHOG1

breezerHOG1
this is a major deal IMO having a limit of 9 terrains or "biomes" would be fine IF we could choose our 9 terrains, having all these different park types with only 1 major theme to them each is quite frustrating, I hope in time with better CPUs we can have bigger parks and people will obviously want to have more terrain options to there parks, so if this is one of those "work-in-progress" deals that would be fine
 
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Chems

Chems
Angelis said:
I am totally in favor of this compromise.

I mean with 9 textures, I can have :

- 2 different grass types
- 2 different dirt types
- 2 different rock types (grey rock + the famous red rock)
- 2 different sand types
- 1 snow type

This is more than enough to cover all themes [yesnod]
Click to expand...

Yep! And with the intensity slider you can combine them aswell to create way more paints. Eg: grass with very light dirt on it to create coarse grass like looking paint.

Gives me an idea actually... Frontier should let us save a combination of different paints with their intensity settings so we could easily make more paints from the 9 orignal ones and use them.
 

knighty

knighty
AtlantisAuthor said:
I've read the "technical limitation" responses, but in all honesty this is one baffling case of the term "technical limitation".

With all of the customization tools available in Planet Coaster you're telling me there's no way to simply enable players to "paint" snow, desert, or other terrain types as needed (minus appropriate vegetation, of course) ON TOP OF an existing biome surface? Real parks do this all the time, mostly artificially (artificial mountains, snow, and so on) to distinguish certain rides or areas. Why can't a "park simulator" manage the same feat? Can't there be SOME workaround?

If there is literally no way to add in such a simple thing, I have to say it's one bizarre disappointment.
Click to expand...

I agree it sucks we don't have it, but actually the technical limitations are almost certainly very obvious and easy to understand. The number 8 is very telling in the potential limitations. There could be a variety of specifics but it's likely to be one of 2 things.

1. It could be an issue with texture sampler counts in the shaders for the terrain which limit it to 8 (which is the number for every biome, people keep saying 9 but one brush is just the "default" brush that paints another texture depending on gradient, just like when you use the terraforming tools).

2. It could also be that the terrain texture weight (the amount of each texture per voxel) is packed into a structure that only allows 8 weights.

Now, neither of these reasons actually means it can't be done. You can use multiple passes of the shader to get past limitation 1 and have 2+ structures per voxel to get past limitation 2, but they are technical limitations nonetheless and both of these solutions would have potentially drastic performance implications that aren't obvious to the user. Putting down just one extra texture would effectively double render time for the terrain which is probably significant if you use multiple passes. I do find it strange if that is the limitation though since PC uses DX11 which has a massive maximum texture sampler count for shaders.

Considering the fact that this is probably the number one requested feature for PC outside of management functionality, I would be surprised if Frontier aren't internally working on overcoming these issues as we speak.
 
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Periocus

Periocus
This is actually bothering me a lot, next to missing management features and funfair rides, at the moment.

You have a number of textures and one can switch them. That would be a real help.
 
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gregorburns

G
knighty said:
I agree it sucks we don't have it, but actually the technical limitations are almost certainly very obvious and easy to understand. The number 8 is very telling in the potential limitations. There could be a variety of specifics but it's likely to be one of 2 things.

1. It could be an issue with texture sampler counts in the shaders for the terrain which limit it to 8 (which is the number for every biome, people keep saying 9 but one brush is just the "default" brush that paints another texture depending on gradient, just like when you use the terraforming tools).

2. It could also be that the terrain texture weight (the amount of each texture per voxel) is packed into a structure that only allows 8 weights.

Now, neither of these reasons actually means it can't be done. You can use multiple passes of the shader to get past limitation 1 and have 2+ structures per voxel to get past limitation 2, but they are technical limitations nonetheless and both of these solutions would have potentially drastic performance implications that aren't obvious to the user. Putting down just one extra texture would effectively double render time for the terrain which is probably significant if you use multiple passes. I do find it strange if that is the limitation though since PC uses DX11 which has a massive maximum texture sampler count for shaders.

Considering the fact that this is probably the number one requested feature for PC outside of management functionality, I would be surprised if Frontier aren't internally working on overcoming these issues as we speak.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing the limitation is based on memory usage of these textures. Terrain textures are generally pretty large, and contain multiple layers (like diffuse maps, normal maps etc.) so for starters, when we talk about 8 textures, in reality the real number will be a multiple of that.

I would also expect that the terrain textures are all loaded into memory and will stay there for the entire duration of the time you are playing, as the terrain is something that is omnipresent on the map and is never hidden: therefore can't be "streamed" from the disk when required, as is probable with ride textures etc. In the most likely case (and there isn't really any other way to do it) all 8 of the ground paints will all be loaded, even if only 1 is in use. Normally there would also be a hidden "mask" texture overlayed on top which determines the parts of each underlying image to show/not show, and with the blending of multiple textures at once in Planet Coaster, on a complex voxel terrain system, my explanation is probably greatly simplified. So it's easy to see where these restrictions come from. [happy]
 

stuk71

stuk71
They do look stunning, you can create some gorgeous landscapes.

At the moment I have been working a lot on the deciduous biome, and even managed to create a lunar landscape for a sci-fi ride in my park
 
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DreamMaster

DreamMaster
Angelis said:
I am totally in favor of this compromise.

I mean with 9 textures, I can have :

- 2 different grass types
- 2 different dirt types
- 2 different rock types (grey rock + the famous red rock)
- 2 different sand types
- 1 snow type

This is more than enough to cover all themes [yesnod]
Click to expand...

Thats what i kept saying since alpha 3.

I would personally chose:
(snow, grass, grassland grass, desert SAND, tropical sand,tropical rock, decidious dirt, deckdious rock, and 1 more muddy dirt.)

By rock i mean the none detail rock textures and i chose red sand over red rock as it would be more multi use and it fit well with the rock.

And if they can't let use choose well a seventh biome along those line would also be welcomed.
 
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stuk71

stuk71
cerealfruitcakes said:
Pics! or it didn't happen.

[wink]
Click to expand...

hehehe

hJu8Sjr.png
 

RemainSeatedPlease

RemainSeatedPlease
Lack of Terrain Paint choices per Biome is probably the biggest issue that needs to be addressed ASAP in my opinion.

Dark Ride content & lighting fixes, as well as, Custom Billboards/Image Uploads and Scenario Editor for Sandbox Parks are all at the top of this list as well.
 

Angelis1

Angelis1
RemainSeatedPlease said:
Lack of Terrain Paint choices per Biome is probably the biggest issue that needs to be addressed ASAP in my opinion.

Dark Ride content & lighting fixes, as well as, Custom Billboards/Image Uploads and Scenario Editor for Sandbox Parks are all at the top of this list as well.
Click to expand...
Add the improvements asked (sometimes since alpha) about the "building tool" (merge things together, move on every axis, duplication for everything), and we have the same "top of the list", so ... +1 [yesnod][up]
 
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