Tree Obstructions

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think we need to increase the tree obstruction size so that we can truly make them impassable, or else just get rid of tree obstructions altogether. Right now, you got the worst of all worlds: Not only do units have to bump around trees affecting pathfinding, they also block building construction an make base building annoying. Also, currently it is nearly impossible to make an impassable forest without using a too many trees (stumps side by side to make a all). Example:

 

The new Hercynian Forest map I'm making for A25. You can see that I am using tons and tons of trees, yet here soldiers can walk right through with no problem. Using any more trees to make it impassable would severely impact performance even on my god-tier laptop.

Now, in Delenda Est this is expected behavior, because I've removed all obstruction from trees (you can even build over them), and furthermore I've created "Forest Grove" objects that make units who walk through move 50% slower (and fight 50% worse). That's fine for Delenda Est, but I think Empires Ascendant wants the trees to act like in Age of Empires. Right now, they don't. 

Even if I increase the obstruction size from w=1.6 and d=1.6 to w=6 and d=6, units still find paths through the forest. This obstruction size also affects the gathering distance of workers. So, I am currently at an impasse. 

[Yekaterina]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Use thinner wall of trees but put them on top of each other, as shown here:

[wraitii]

I disagree somewhat. I think the correct solution is to have impassable undergrowth entities, that are much bigger but still gatherable (though generating less wood). A wild forest isn't impassable because of the trees. Alternatively, having more low-trees that block movement naturally would also work.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, wraitii said:

I disagree somewhat. I think the correct solution is to have impassable undergrowth entities, that are much bigger but still gatherable (though generating less wood). A wild forest isn't impassable because of the trees. Alternatively, having more low-trees that block movement naturally would also work.

I just bring up the problem, because I don't think it's been discussed. How do we want forests to work? 

[wraitii]

31 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I just bring up the problem, because I don't think it's been discussed. How do we want forests to work? 

I do believe you could find some discussion on this, but you'd probably have to dig a fair bit.
Fact is we also don't have 'impassable terrain texture', and a few other things that make 0 A.D. quite liberal in where you can walk. 0 A.D. isn't too dissimilar from Age 3 in my experience in how forests feel, though maybe trees didn't have obstructions in that game? Don't recall. Anyways, it's not completely unrealistic, and I don't think removing obstruction entirely would be necessary.

I don't think most forests being passable is actually an issue, overall. However, I think we should have an easy option to make impassable forests, and that (to me) means undergrowth/old growth meshes to take up space and become impassable. I agree that it's annoying that we don't have that.

----

With that being said, and as I've stated before, I think our forests are pretty bad, particularly on random maps, since the trees are kind of all over the place, leaving too little room for construction and making dropside placement awkward. This ties in with forests being passable/impassable - impassable forests need meshes, and passable forests could probably be sparser (overall reduction in # of trees), but have more wood per trees.

Fixing all this isn't trivial nor my priority of the moment, unfortunately.

[maroder]

My two cents: Forest groves all the way. Combined with health variants there are just so much more possibilities and the need the build a new storehouse every minute to avoid transportation time is gone.

[maroder]

10 hours ago, wraitii said:

However, I think we should have an easy option to make impassable forests, and that (to me) means undergrowth/old growth meshes to take up space and become impassable. I agree that it's annoying that we don't have that.

Is that not only a matter of taking one of the shrub actors and increase the obstruction size or am I missing something?

[wraitii]

34 minutes ago, maroder said:

Is that not only a matter of taking one of the shrub actors and increase the obstruction size or am I missing something?

Well, sorta. I think they'd be pretty ugly just scaled up, ideally we'd have moss-covered stones, more dead/rotting trees, more vine-looking stuff. For tropical environments we need completely different setups, too. And for perf reasons it'd be good if these meshes weren't hundreds of props, so we need some dedicated stuff.

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 hours ago, wraitii said:

I disagree somewhat. I think the correct solution is to have impassable undergrowth entities, that are much bigger but still gatherable (though generating less wood). A wild forest isn't impassable because of the trees. Alternatively, having more low-trees that block movement naturally would also work.

muddy terrain maybe + trees.

To this we add other factors, such as certain plants with thistles...rocks...humidity 

 

Could you create something like a set of 2 factors?

 

Terrain + forest.

If you remove the trees, one each becomes less difficult ...

Trails could be cut by cutting trees, it is more flexible.

 

 

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

in dry weather too.

 

In wet te

In humid terrain with many trees the leaves become a visual trap, and together with the rock, and the stones come off.

[maroder]

1 hour ago, wraitii said:

And for perf reasons it'd be good if these meshes weren't hundreds of props, so we need some dedicated stuff.

interesting, so one small actors with many props costs more performance than one big actor without props (Given they have the same number of vertices) ?

[Silier]

moslty yes. One big actor has one texture. one material and one mesh to pass to gpu and then it does one big draw.
if you do the same actor and you divide it into props, every prop has own mesh, material and texture so everythings needs to be passed to gpu and drawn separately what causes context switching and that takes time.

[Stan`]

Yes, because for each prop you get one draw call at least. 2 for transparent meshes. Old hardware we support can have a hard time accommodating it

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Yes, because for each prop you get one draw call at least. 2 for transparent meshes. Old hardware we support can have a hard time accommodating it

 

Good thing I hate putting props in my structures.

Only difficult things I would add.

[Stan`]

24 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Good thing I hate putting props in my structures.

There are 3 upsides of using props

1. Allows for them to adapt to terrain:

2. Allows for fast update of building props.

3. Allow for variation.

[Lion.Kanzen]

9 minutes ago, Stan` said:

There are 3 upsides of using props

1. Allows for them to adapt to terrain:

2. Allows for fast update of building props.

3. Allow for variation.

Mine is simpler. It will serve me with the idea that I have for the nomads.

 

For now only simple things like option 2. Fast update building.

[Freagarach]

On 09/05/2021 at 8:33 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Not only do units have to bump around trees affecting pathfinding

Which makes for nice scenes (cavalry (with their longer rotation times) getting caught in a forest by infantry).