Water rendering

[sanderd17]

This water rendering is just amazing, I thought I'd leave it here:

http://mashable.com/...eo-water-games/

It probably won't be possible in 0AD (given the amount of water on some maps), but you never know.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Yeah, this kind of thing could work with a localized amount of water (say, a dude throws a bucket of water on a burning building, or maybe even a waterfall into a small pool of water), but rendered over a giant ocean I'd guess would be a nightmare.

[wraitii]

Even for fairly small areas it's very computationally intensive. There's a reason if hardcore realistic water is really rare in video games

[Ludo38]

Sure, 0 A.D. doesn't need this at all. Even few animation movies can afford such realism!

For 0AD's water, there could be much more humble water improvements, such as rivers flowing downhill or rain. Basic implementation of those things would be a nice add someday.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I believe Red Alert 3 had what I call that "bath water" implementation that we talked about a while back. 2:20 in this video:

I say it looks like bath water because the "resolution" of the dynamic water plane is too low to give an accurate looking "scale" to the water. The reason the resolution is so low is because anything scaled correctly would take way too much computing power. Probably a similar thing to 'position based fluids' -- we could use such a system, but the "balls" that are used would be so large as to make the water look like a tub of vegetable oil rather than viscous water.

[wraitii]

Current water rendering is not exceedingly satisfactory, so some changes are definitely in order. I'm not sure how doable a system like red alert would be, it's obviously fairly advanced, but we should be able to do better than what we have.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Current water rendering is not exceedingly satisfactory, so some changes are definitely in order. I'm not sure how doable a system like red alert would be, it's obviously fairly advanced, but we should be able to do better than what we have.

I'm fairly happy with the current water, though I would love to see it improved with:

-- The shore "foam" should fade in and out as it pulses inward and outward.

-- Make shore waves curved depending upon the general curvature of the shoreline. Perhaps just three shapes would be needed to look nice: Straight, slightly convex, slightly concave.

-- The ability to choose different water textures. For instance, the current texture looks good for lakes, while I think rivers and oceans would look better with different surface textures/patterns.

-- Directionality for rivers and streams. Would require the ability to differentiate between moving sections like rivers and more static sections like seas and oceans.

At the very least, some performance should be enhanced if possible.

[wraitii]

That along with different water levels would be nice. it would require changes to atlas tough for support, I'm not too sure how (i was thinking keeping a 2d map of water height, some basic info for running water.

I think changing the texture could then be handled automatically: if the water plane is flat/enclosed, it's a lake, I it's big enough, an ocean, and of it's of different heights, it's a river (possibly switching in the middle).

The rest of what you describe ought to be doable. Biggest slowdown right now is refraction/reflection rendering tough and there's not much currently to do to speed that up (need to speed the rznderer up...)

[Shield Bearer]

For some good ocean water, see Anno 1404. The water there is spectacular

[Pallav]

The water is nice but I was playing a random map and I noticed the wild elephants, they looked as if they were floating on the land and water instead of walking while the elephant units trained by me walked just fine with moving legs. Could anything be done about this...?

[Loki1950]

It's on the to do list the wild elephants do not have proper animation rigs yet.

Enjoy the Choice

[Pallav]

You people think of everything, dont you... That`s why I beileve this is going to be an AWESOME game when its finally complete...