Mines (Stone and Metal)

[Guest]

Changing mining to the concept used in Settlers V (only played 5) or the oil concept in RoN would be cool.

[LordGood]

@stanislas69

[Stan`]

35 minutes ago, LordGood said:

@stanislas69

Okay so basically sculpt the texture on the mesh, then bake the texture, and bake the normals and ao

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, LordGood said:

that graininess is a result of the details in the normal map. AO and spec maps drive the definition in the stone you present, but separate actors cant cast AO onto each other, which would be quite a boon to mountains and cliffs

Another vote for SSAO.  

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

So, the "weathered" variations of cubic look nice m8. I put the sharp cubic ones under the large quarry objects so that it'll look carved up when they are depleted. Not perfect yet, but still nice. The quarries themselves aren't great for this purpose and there could be some nice custom jagged "quarry" objects underneath instead, but the concept is there.

Edited April 7, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Sundiata]

Any chance for a simple animation of the ore "sinking" through the ground as it's being mined, slowly revealing the more jagged edges behind it. Would be a nice visual indication of how much ore is left.  

[Guest]

Somewhat ontopic, but mostly offtopic given this is an art thread.

Maybe, mines should be infinite. This does need the slot concept. Mines would be placed on the map in such a way the game is balanced. The visual actor should probably be smaller though (?). If any of you played RoN, imagine metal (maybe stone too?) being the same as oil. Would add more strategy for expansion. 0 ADs late game metal demand is comparable to RoNs late game oil demand.

Using this oppurtunity to say, I am still very much a fan of DEs farming paradigm.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

Any chance for a simple animation of the ore "sinking" through the ground as it's being mined, slowly revealing the more jagged edges behind it. Would be a nice visual indication of how much ore is left.  

I'm starting to think that the stone quarries should look exactly like this from the start. But yeah, a quarry "diminishing" as it's being consumed is something I've wanted for a while. It could be an extension of the "damage" feature maybe, which is already in-game.

 

I could imagine a "claimed" quarry would have ladders, scaffolding, etc. show up. 

[Stan`]

28 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'm starting to think that the stone quarries should look exactly like this from the start. But yeah, a quarry "diminishing" as it's being consumed is something I've wanted for a while. It could be an extension of the "damage" feature maybe, which is already in-game.

The more I think about the more the resource supply components is gonna identical to the health component

[LordGood]

5 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Okay so basically sculpt the texture on the mesh, then bake the texture, and bake the normals and ao

I only bake the normals

[LordGood]

specific stones with quarry cuts in could be the depletable stones in the meantime

[Trinketos]

11 minutes ago, LordGood said:

specific stones with quarry cuts in could be the depletable stones in the meantime

The square stones are rare from my point of view .

[LordGood]

normals look great on the desert ones

[Stan`]

18 minutes ago, LordGood said:

I only bake the normals

You don't have overlapping uvs do you ?

[LordGood]

Just now, stanislas69 said:

You don't have overlapping uvs do you ?

no, AO is feasible but without inter-actor AO its a bit unnecessary

[Stan`]

In my case since I am using the game's terrain textures my uvs overlap so I can't bake the normals :/

[LordGood]

1 minute ago, stanislas69 said:

In my case since I am using the game's terrain textures my uvs overlap so I can't bake the normals :/

Bake to a new texture without overlap, then carve normals and bake

[Stan`]

Will do then ze can finally put #993 behind us 

[LordGood]

and this is how i mine sandstone in minecraft

[Guest]

On 4/4/2019 at 9:24 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

To take it one step further, with a slotting concept you could add slots to mines whereby you can allow the player to "claim" mines by building storehouses there (and could extend this to a farmland concept where you claim juicy free farms by building a Farmstead on a slot

Any chance anyone is hiding a perfectly good visual actor for slots? I suppose the screenshot is showing atlas placed fences (?)

Slots themselves weren't hard to do (arguably hacky, but meh), but I have no clue whatsoever how to work with the actor side of things. A foundation actor does not look good at all. Will probably throw this onto github later so feel free to do whatever you want.

In the following, the house was restricted to slots. (flexible enough to have different types of slots, that each holds different buildings). I only did the bare minimum needed to make it work.

Spoiler

 

 

[LordGood]

why not a low max distance from quarry stone? could work in the meantime, or making mines non-regenerative territory roots. or both

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 minutes ago, LordGood said:

why not a low max distance from quarry stone? could work in the meantime, or making mines non-regenerative territory roots. or both

I believe max and min distance can only apply to objects already under the player's control, not gaia-controlled objects.

Instead, could have neutral generic mining camp dropsites on the map next to the quarries that players can capture.

Edited April 7, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[LordGood]

@(-_-) Try one of the decal actors, geology/stone_decal_desert_b.xml should work nicely for a desert visual, if that doesnt show well enough, one of the new spartan building decals- props/structures/decals/spart_3x3.xml will show nicely on most terrain

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, LordGood said:

and this is how i mine sandstone in minecraft

 

I reduced max gatherers to 4. Since you have to overlap the quarried objects, the pathing can really only allow about 4 units to gather from the individual blocks without lots of bad bumping into each other and shuttling glitches. These are starting to look really nice.

For cliff ones, I wish they were taller/extended further downward.

[JamesWright]

On 4/4/2019 at 12:24 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

To take it one step further, with a slotting concept you could add slots to mines whereby you can allow the player to "claim" mines by building storehouses there (and could extend this to a farmland concept where you claim juicy free farms by building a Farmstead on a slot). Like so:

 

This could be a way to allow players to gather these resources outside their territory and provide points of contention outside territory boundaries while providing additional immersion.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

LookWhile units are actively mining the stone, we could even have a cool dust effect:

 

Looks nice,

Would this be an addition to a future update?

And would you be able to move storehouse into a new slot or just period after the mine begins to wear down to cut down on time for travel between resource and storehouse?

3 hours ago, LordGood said:

 

 

I reduced max gatherers to 4. Since you have to overlap the quarried objects, the pathing can really only allow about 4 units to gather from the individual blocks without lots of bad bumping into each other and shuttling glitches. These are starting to look really nice.

For cliff ones, I wish they were taller/extended further downward.

It would also be nice if every hill could be mined into as in like having a mine entrance or something as a build able structure  in like Village or Town Phase.

Edited April 7, 2019 by JamesWright