zoot

I guess it comes down to a combination of: Massive amounts of overdraw Sorting problems due to alpha blending General inefficiency of the algorithm ?

Wow!

I agree, though the nice view which Spahbod used should be just as easy to generate. A pro like myconid could probably figure it out if he didn't already have tons of things to do

Good points

You're right, it is too complicated Specifically, the scheme would become a mess if the distance back to the dropsite is too great for the elephant to keep up with the gatherers. The stack of resources would just keep growing and growing. The one problem that could be with letting the elephant be a dropsite is that the resource collection rate might become unrealistically high? Or maybe it wouldn't.

I honestly do not believe any of those examples would cause problems I am not saying you are wrong, just that those cases should be fixable with minor changes. As I see it, this is not true. The foundations differ also in which tile they are placed on. One of the tiles just happens to be rendered above (i.e. at a different height than) the other. That won't cause a problem for the pathfinder because: Regarding ranges: How is this different from what we have now? Units can already be placed at great distances from each other vertically while being in range horizontally. Likely you have a much better understanding of the code than I do. All I'm saying is: I don't see it. I'll leave you to decide if that's just because I'm an ignorant f*ck

First of all, I take issue with calling it "fake" as that implies that some "truer" method exist, which I don't agree with. That said, in which respect would the pathfinder be dumber? What would a pathfinder using this method not be able to do that the pathfinder currently can do?

What problems? What is the exact issue that arise? If there is a non-minor overhang, what is going to stop the pathfinder from ignoring the fact that it is an overhang and just treat it like any other ground surface?

This is a bit of hack but I'm just throwing it out there: the elephant UI could have a button that would let you designate a particular point to be an 'elephant shuttle point'. Gatherers in the vicinity of this point would see it as a normal dropsite and stack their gathered resources there as treasure. The elephant will then shuttle back and forth between the shuttle point and the nearest 'real' dropsite to collect the 'treasure' and bring it back home. Obviously, enemy players can try stealing the treasure before the elephant arrives to pick it up.

It already is seperate, as far as I can tell. The pathfinder works on a 2D logic, the renderer works on a 3D one. Can you give an example of a case where that might a problem? One case I can think of is if you had a ravine type of thing and then stretched ledges on either side towards each other so they would form a 'bridge'. But the map designer would almost have to be on a special mission to break the pathfinder to do something like that in the first place

How about 2D euclidean pathfinding?

Thanks, I was considering buying that talk a while ago. The slides will give me the gist of it. Subject to implementation, it could just be another material. The technique basically just extrudes a flat texture into 3D space, so its coloring would reflect the texture used: Probably the cleanest way to control height would be with myconid's new terrain XML, so the "tall oatgrass" terrain type would have one height and the "buffalograss" type would have another etc. I assume the length of the invidual 'blades' can be varied relative to the base height by varying their alpha (high alpha -> short blade, low alpha -> long blade).

Fortunately, development isn't a static process like that. If the trees are perceived as slowing anything down, they can be taken out or put back in at any time.

Really? I imagined the pathfinder could just operate on the vector field as if it was 2D. So if a tile has been 'stretched' over a ledge, it will visually look like an overhang, but to the pathfinder it would still 'look' like it did before the tile was stretched.

Also, it would break the main function of SVN: to keep crude people out. (inb4 )

Can haz grass? (Here is a page about the technique. I realize it's not super simple!)

Maybe instead of being a builder, it could have an inspiration aura similar to what female citizens has, only stronger?

Can we make an elephant dropsite that is mobile but does not shuttle back to a 'real' dropsite? That would simplify things quite a bit, I think.

Is resolved in latest commit:

I believe it selects one on the basis of a quality setting:

I don't know if it has been prepared for testing yet, but this is what I get in Atlas: In-game I get a similar message, though it renders everything but terrain.

myconid suggested something similar here:

If this is true, I think even the programming dept will like it

That doesn't resolve the smoothening, it just reduces it. At lower gradients, it will still be impossible to make a truly steep surface. Those kind of sceneries are great for flight simulators and that sort of thing, but they possess no "drama", as far as I'm concerned. They also seem impossible to navigate for land units and would require excessive amounts of memory to load. I also suspect they looked a lot crappier before non-real-time rendering.