Flying buildings

[Juli51]

[Lion.Kanzen]

This a artistic problem with the base , and never it's been fixed with some.

 

[Enrique]

Hi Julián, 

Since Lion didn't want to spend 5 minutes in his post to explain the issue   I'll comment on it. Here's the problem:

Large structures are able to be constructed on uneven terrain and the origin point of the structure (center point) ends up being higher or lower than the perimeter in relation with the terrain. This issue is much less noticeable on smaller footprint buildings. The team thought about the possibility to flatten the terrain when the foundation of the building was placed to start constructing, but it was too easy to exploit this mechanic to make non-walkable dead ends for units and was thought to be too impredictable to mange it. The solution that was adopted was to "extend" the structure geometry further into the ground to avoid the floatiness as much as possible. However there are still some buildings that do not extend enough further into the terrain. The examples you pointed out in your post are very good ones since these buildings (except the parthenon) are very commonly used, so they'll have to be worked on.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Even i haven't an idea how complicated is this issue, @Revan Shan noticed this in his YT channel, only asked why some buildings have the issue and others don't. 

[Enrique]

It's okay Lion, don't worry.

It's just that sometimes it looks like you feel compelled to comment on a thread even though your reply does not clarify or help understanding the topic at hand. This is prone to confuse people, specially newcomers. (like the "Double typo" comment on another Julian's bug report thread). Just pointing out that spending 3 or 4 more minutes on the reply could help a lot.

Ontopic: We could create a list with buildings that need the foundation extension so they can be add to the art task dev tracking list.

[elexis]

Flying Wonder: #3913

[Juli51]

Ok, now I understand, the problem with the foundations are also very visible in the walls as they often meet slopes and and mountains.M

In the picture below mind the foundations of the tower right to the left of the red coloured wall.

Besides I took the picture because I did'd understand why couldn't I close the wall at that point of the slope and yes on the nearby areas as there is no visible building or resource on it.

 

[fabio]

@Juli51 did you place that buildings in first post in Atlas or during a game? IIRC in Atlas you can place buildings everywhere, while inside a game the terrain is required to be flat, and that should make this issue more difficult to happen.

[Juli51]

During a game. The issue is that some slopes allow me to place the walls and towers and others nearby no. I find that very estrange.

[wraitii]

That is "normal", passable terrain is defined by the slope of the terrain and not the terrain texture - contrarily to most other RTS games (and to be honest maybe we should change it).  In that case probably you are going over some impassable terrain with your wall.

[Juli51]

Well, the think is that usually fortress and military walls are builded mostly on difficult terrain. Here a few samples of medieval castles on my area.

[LordGood]

You bring up a good point; you're also not making me want to go to Spain any less, hot dang those castles are gorgeous.

[feneur]

For game play reasons it is not as easy to be 100% realistic in this case. Units need to be able to walk to the building site, but if we make it possible for them to walk everywhere then one can't use steep cliffs to block units from passing. There might be some way to solve it, but it would require quite some thinking I'd imagine.

[LordGood]

Well i mean if you can hang a bit of a wall over impassible terrain it would fix the walls leaving gaps and letting units through, not necessarily build walls on a ridge where they'd be useless anyway

[Juli51]

That would be also a good point, to end walls with imposible terrain in a nice join.

[Juli51]

There are a few more. have also a look in google search - images: castillos Alicante (spain)  and: castillos Murcia (spain)

Edited December 18, 2016 by Juli51

[FeXoR]

In my opinion we generally have made the right choices:

- Building placement depends on (among other things) the slope (though I didn't read the code exactly it's something very similar at least). In the pictures of the fortresses the buildings are placed on high ground mainly, not high slope. Actually one can clearly see that they are build at the edge where steep terrain begins, so they actually avoid it. This is both realistic (though one can build entire towns inside a cliff it's not done that often) and helps to avoid problems with units not being able to reach a structure (though this still can happen and without a passability/buildable area overlay it's hard to detect e.g. when creating a map).

- Buildings have a "foundation" reaching into the ground. Though this definitely might not fit some tastes of visual appeal it's better than both other options (flying buildings and terrain flattening below the building) IMO. Why terrain flattening doesn't really solve the issue/invokes more issues than it solves is a bit harder to explain. Posts about terrain flattening:
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18265-terrain-flattening/#comment-285151
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/16762-building-construction-terrain-flattening/#comment-255903

Thanks @Juli51 for reporting this though. I at least find it hard to keep track of all issues there are in 0 A.D.

@wraitii: While I don't agree textures and passability should be linked by default one could paint passability (or other terrain properties) in Atlas/random maps (Not sure if that is possible yet). Since both are placed on tiles one could add "custom terrain" that paints both at once, the texture and unpassability. That could lead to unexpected behavior of the game leaving the player puzzeled why he can't a building at a specific spot if we don't show the overlay when a player is about to place a building (by default, may be a setting).

I'm unsure about adding such a feature would be really a gain for the common case if there is not allready a "buildable" propperty for tiles

 

 

[vladislavbelov]

3 hours ago, FeXoR said:

- Buildings have a "foundation" reaching into the ground. Though this definitely might not fit some tastes of visual appeal it's better than both other options (flying buildings and terrain flattening below the building) IMO. Why terrain flattening doesn't really solve the issue/invokes more issues than it solves is a bit harder to explain. Posts about terrain flattening:
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18265-terrain-flattening/#comment-285151
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/16762-building-construction-terrain-flattening/#comment-255903

The first link is unreachable (https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18265-terrain-flattening/).

I agree with @FeXoR: current version has the balanced solution.

 

[Juli51]

Quote: "In the pictures of the fortresses the buildings are placed on high ground mainly, not high slope". 

Well, some times yes, as it's used to create a flat surface on an imposible terrain (see picture attached). I just pointed that some of the most beautiful castles and cities of the ancient and medieval world were made that way and that it would be nice to have that in the game as well.

But In any case I don't understand much about the difficulties of coding 0AD so I rely on your criteria an expertise.