The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

xyphic

X
Wicz said:
I'm fairly sure NMS has caves.
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We don't yet know what the cave networks in NMS will be like. Caves and cave systems in general are hard to model procedurally due to the processes involved in their creation -- some could be based on weather processes, some created through tectonic activity, etc. -- and their viability depends on their structure and the forces acting on them. All of which make it difficult to generate realistic systems in real-time. NMS, as we know, isn't going for realism in quite the same way as the Elite devs, so presumably have more leeway with their algorithms.

I'd love to see cave networks in-game, especially when we can get out and walk around, but I can understand that it'd be hard to do them well in real-time.
 

Straha Yeagar

S
Mike Evans said:
I mean offline in terms of rendering, not internet connection. I.e. offline rendering you can spend weeks rendering a scene if so desired because you don't have to be able to interact and move through said scene in real time like in a game. Terregen is a good piece of offline terrain generation software.
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Yeah, that's what I was meaning...the terrain generation and rendering being done on the local workstation
 

3941

3
If Frontier ever does caves, I wouldn't expect them on airless planets and moons. Caves are usually formed by flowing water, aren't they? As are overhangs.
 

Wicz

Wicz
3941 said:
If Frontier ever does caves, I wouldn't expect them on airless planets and moons. Caves are usually formed by flowing water, aren't they? As are overhangs.
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Volcanism forms some fantastic caves, and lava tubes e.t.c.

One of the ideas for "building" on the moon was to make use of pre-existing caves and tunnels/lava tubes.
 
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Artie

Artie
Mike Evans said:
... and that by implication you can never have interesting looking terrain with just heightmap and texture based variation.
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There can be beautiful landscapes made just with heightmaps without any doubts. I think majority of us who are looking for caves, etc. are looking for it not just for purely aesthetical purposes, but because sense of adventure, danger and discovery while exploring it. Where it leads? Don't I get lost there? Do I fit in the narrow paths and will I be able to return? Will I find any glittering underground cave with crystal clear lake and maybe some pirate treasure? You know... :)
 

Jynessa Loraeyn

J
From http://www.gamesradar.com/elite-dangerous-horizons-will-let-you-land-planets/

"We’re extending Wings so they can work with ground vehicles as well so people can co-operate," explains Braben. "They can do things like attacking surface bases, discovering them. There will be lots of things hidden beneath the surface of the planets. The beauty is it’s a huge expanse so you can scan the planet from low orbit. There are different sort of layers to it. Ultimately you can actually drive around in your own little surface vehicle that we're calling the SRV." (my bold)

I'm not going to jump to any conclusions at what may or may not be in Horizons just yet.

And while I love the idea of No Man's Sky, and I'm looking forward to it, it isn't a released game yet. All we've seen so far are demos. No one has properly played it in the wild yet. I really hope they do well, and they're doing something that's very different to Elite. They're doing almost everything by procedural generation (probably because they had to) and without Elite's dedication to re-creating the real Milky Way as closely as possible. Also No Man's Sky's 1970s sci-fi book-cover aesthetic means they aren't going for the kind of photo-realistic visuals of Elite... hopefully that will save them some trouble on rendering the detail of their worlds. Best of luck to them.
 

Wicz

Wicz
Mr.Hidden said:
There can be beautiful landscapes made just with heightmaps without any doubts. I think majority of us who are looking for caves, etc. are looking for it not just for purely aesthetical purposes, but because sense of adventure, danger and discovery while exploring it. Where it leads? Don't I get lost there? Do I fit in the narrow paths and will I be able to return? Will I find any glittering underground cave with crystal clear lake and maybe some pirate treasure? You know... :)
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Interesting and immersive gameplay :)
 
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Jools

Jools
Mike Evans said:
Got any links for that tech that's realtime and on a planetary scale? I only know of couple of products that have that but they're offline solutions.
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None on planetary scale apart from No man`s sky (which is not a product yet, but they have shown them already working) that is true. So i bow low. Well minecraft. But that is not a good example.

I have only seen some real time demos.One of them was a demo form that one team (2 guys actually) at a demo party in 2012 (I believe), i think they were Hungarian. They had some big (not real planet sized but still huge, it felt endless) mountain environment with canyons, caves and overhangs. The graphical fidelity was not on par with Elite though, I have to admit that, it was still impressive. The funny thing is they created it not for a game or anything but just to use it for some fast fly through scene in their future demo project which was supposed to be a techno micro opera :p But when they showed it off they said it was PG and that they can create endless environments like that.

So yeah "the below average" statement was not very accurate (not to say ) and an exaggeration on my part which I apologise for.

But NMS have already shown it off. I hope you will surprise us one day.

Sorry for being rude... but this game brings my emotional state to the one i was in 20 years ago when i played FE2 with sweaty hands on a joystick (meaning early teenage years). i just can`t help it.

ED is great in many ways. But its not even half the miracle that Elite and FE2 were in their time yet (it would be if we got all the stuff from the DDF) and that is what I hoped for hence my constant mood swings from rage attacks to depression.

I should probably quit the forums altogether... They only bring pain and impatience.
 
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piugattuk

piugattuk
What I was thinking is maybe add caves to the environments on planets, caving could be something where you find hidden goods, a pirates booty, or special materials.

These caves should be something you have to decend near the surface to detect or see visually.
 

Drexel Viehbock

Drexel Viehbock
Didn't Braben and Bell practically invent PG? lol, I am not worried in the least.

Check out Outerra.com...they even have a tech demo you can download and mess with...
 

Armour

A
3941 said:
If Frontier ever does caves, I wouldn't expect them on airless planets and moons. Caves are usually formed by flowing water, aren't they? As are overhangs.
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What about man-made subterranean features, like mining complexes? They could have automated defences - pressure traps that trigger a collapse and force you to find another way out (or self-destruct), turrets... Overhangs could be a result of similar man-made processes.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Caves certainly can be added and generated trough PG, however as Mike pointed out it will be interesting how such generation can be done in ED, as ED does it all by science. I hardly doubt that they will arrive with first iteration as airless planets mostly doesn't have such caves.
 

Soliluna

Soliluna
Pecisk said:
Caves certainly can be added and generated trough PG, however as Mike pointed out it will be interesting how such generation can be done in ED, as ED does it all by science. I hardly doubt that they will arrive with first iteration as airless planets mostly doesn't have such caves.
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I'm looking forward to driving the SRV over the edge of craters.
 

emacinnes

emacinnes
Pecisk said:
Caves certainly can be added and generated trough PG, however as Mike pointed out it will be interesting how such generation can be done in ED, as ED does it all by science. I hardly doubt that they will arrive with first iteration as airless planets mostly doesn't have such caves.
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The general layout of the star systems is by science, but the mid and low level details on the planets surfaces don't need to be anything more than layers of pseudo-random noise that fits within the planet's general guidelines ( % of surface water, % of volcanism, % of islanding, stuff like that) etc.. Terragen, L3DT are both tools that generate good eye-level terrain that way. No need to go too far with the science and still get visually good looking and very varied terrain. Any cave system would just need to fit into that. Pick a subset of valid terrain suitable for caving (not water, a hint of volcanism, planet has large islands on it, or perhaps near an area designated for a comet impact etc.. etc..), where the surface L3 heightmap also hits an allowable angle & elevation such that the cave wouldn't appear out the other side, or be a hole downwards, or right on the top of a mountain. Then pick a number out of a bag (1 in 100) and if that equals 42, then punch a hole in the heightmap grid and the collision detection, and voila, cave.

Sounds like a piece of cake :)
 

tntfoz

T
3941 said:
If Frontier ever does caves, I wouldn't expect them on airless planets and moons. Caves are usually formed by flowing water, aren't they? As are overhangs.
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Would Frontier exclude old planets (that used to have atmospheres) from Horizons?

Assuming Mars wasn't terraformed in the game and currently had an atmosphere, then it would be a prime example of a planet that used to have an atmosphere. There should be quite a few similar planets out there amongst the galaxy.

A planet that suffered from erosion in the past (but has no atmosphere now) is going to be much more interesting to explore than a moon covered in craters.
 

Tinman

Tinman
tntfoz said:
Would Frontier exclude old planets (that used to have atmospheres) from Horizons?

Assuming Mars wasn't terraformed in the game and currently had an atmosphere, then it would be a prime example of a planet that used to have an atmosphere. There should be quite a few similar planets out there amongst the galaxy.

A planet that suffered from erosion in the past (but has no atmosphere now) is going to be much more interesting to explore than a moon covered in craters.
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I see what you are getting at, but...Mars (real world) does have an atmosphere.
 
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