Base View

[mikker]

Yeah, but the control room had a choke point. Front doors, you know, the entrences that you did not make.

[Guest drewid]

I think I'm starting to see things your way about the base facility size drewid.  But rather than 1.5m² "tiles", I'd still prefer 1m² elements therefore making the facilities 15x15 squares and 30 x 30 sqaures (in the case of Hangars) respectively.

 

For the alien base though let's keep them at 10meters but say make the alien bases 9x9 or something, with intellegent design behind them (alien chokepoints for sure)

completely agree. With 1 x 1 x 2.5 m blocks, way we can maximum consistency between baseview and battlescape (given some compromises for simpler object s if necessary.)

 

 

I like the idea of smaller alien rooms too. With maybe the occasional biggie thrown in for scale and scary darkness.

[Guest stewart]

Hmm? I didn't think of that! "Facilites" in all Battlescapes then do need to be on a 15x15 basis unless we code XcomBases as exceptions (which we shouldn't). So for the alien bases there are two ways to handle this.

 

1) The "rooms" are 10x10 with connecting tunnels to the 15x15 boundries.

2) The same "scale of the 10x10" is kept but more rooms are thrown in per facility to fill up the 15x15 facility size.

3) All Alien facilites are of the 3x3 facility size where we make combinations of 9 10x10 facilites. On the 15x15 scale this makes the equivalent of a 2x2 faciltiy. Did that make sense.

4) Combo of all the above.

[Guest drewid]

I was under the impression that pre-defined buildings were going to be placed "randomly" (within parameters), and the ground grid was then going to be generated to "fill in the gaps".

 

Is that wrong?

 

Of course we can use the STJones building generation system to build alien bases

 

Rather than have special case code as such we could govern the build using parameters from scripts. (to set style, placement factors, ground type etc.)

[Guest stewart]

What I'm getting @ is that the XcomBase is an instance of a battlescape map. If base facilities are 15x15 squares then so are the "facilites" of the other battlescape types. In the case of the alien base battlescape instance, if we want to keep the rooms as 10x10 then that will take some work to do if battlescape is inherantly 15x15.

 

Nodamean Vern?

[Guest drewid]

I wouldn't assume a "square land chunks" model for the battlescape terrain, or is that fixed already. I thought we were building up a landscape in a different way.

 

I think we should assume that our "atomic panels" are based on a 1x1x2.5m box.

 

These are built into "macros", of a size and shape to be determined, either by hand or in the "Jones Patent Building Generator TM".

 

Sizes to be determined by play?

 

That means the building blocks are our standard size, and we could actually start on building up a library of them nowish.

Deciding on how they are arranged could wait until more of the blanks are filled in.

[red knight]

Bases are just a special case only because instead of houses you have modules, and instead of being n meters appart they are exactly one next to each other... so i dont get why you are discussing that... From the code point of view is just the same....

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest drewid]

I sort of figured something like that but I wasn't sure.

 

So from a Battlescape point of view the size a facility (human or alien) doesn't matter, so alien bases can be arbitrary (given some pinch points n stuff.

 

Human bases will be same as now, two sizes of facility, "small" and "hangar" on a 6 x 6 grid.

 

Breunor and I are working on a "required assets list" so people can actually start making stuff. each facility and objects to go in them.

 

We could use Breunors building blocks as placeholder if we need to in the meantime.

[Guest stewart]

Bases are just a special case only because instead of houses you have modules, and instead of being n meters appart they are exactly one next to each other... so i dont get why you are discussing that... From the code point of view is just the same....

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Hmm? Does this mean then that the Xcom-base instance of battlescape has special code to space the facilities into a tight grid?

[Guest drewid]

I'm guessing that when you build a battlescape one of the parameters you pass in is "building spacing", so on a farm it might be 'random spacing 10-50m', on a base it would be 'random spacing 0 - 0m'

probably in a script or something?

Just a guess mind you. I'm just an artist so i know nuffink

[Breunor]

I would think that while the typical battlescape is semi random in placement of buildings, the xcom base is not random at all, every facility has an exact location that's fed into the engine for placement. But then, I know far less than drewid, so I'll crawl under the rock he's hiding behind...

[Guest drewid]

Hey I knoew nothing I'm just an artist. You're right of course, bases are a special case beacuse they are pre-designed by the player.

[Guest stewart]

RK, I guess every battlescape map has some intrinsic background and the battlescape facility objects contain a datamember denoting say the top left corner (assuming all such objects are rectangular). So when the map is built some placement algorythm for xcom bases see's that these fields are already filled in bye "Basescape" or what?

[red knight]

For the engine the idea is to not differentiate if you are indoor of you are outdoor, you only should be able to place the meshes into the appropriate position (in the battlescape specified format) and there you go to play battlescape the special case is on what you feed the battlescape engine thats all... From there is nothing different... Maybe after finishing if we want to allow for damaging bases on alien's base raze then we will need to pass special data back from the battlescape engine (but i wont bother with that now, cause it is in the whislist)...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest stewart]

If I understand you correctly then we need to have standard sized "facilities" (irregardless of Battlescape mission) then don't we?

[Breunor]

The cut and paste building parts I have made so far allow you to create buildings that are more than just squares or simple rectangles, but I expected we would include a "yard" for each building, whether that be some grass and fencing, or sidewalk when there's a street adjacent. When you include the yard area, it's very simple to create square modules that can be put into the battlescape in a tile format. What we would need to do is determine where a street would be in the battlescape to align these modules.

 

Perhaps we say for example/version1 the terror sites have 2 streets that cross in the middle of the battlescape, and if each model is built with the 'front door' (which faces the street) side facing south, then an algorithm can be coded that rotates each model depending on where the road is so it's facing the right way. If we use the 6x6 grid system of the base view for the battlescape as well in version1, then buildings could be laid out like in the following pic. Say the little squares are 4m square, then streets are 8m wide and 'building sections' are 16m square. You could also make businesses that are larger, maybe they take up 2 chunks in this grid. All you'd need to do is increase the number of street blocks to balance size and game performance. Once total polys are determined, maybe 2 or 4 of these overall grids can be used based on current hardware.

[Breunor]

I should clarify that the 4m squares are just relative to the picture, and not relative to any battlescape view. If there were squares in the battlescape similar to the original game, there would be 8 going across the street (8m). I wanted to clarify since there seemed to be some confusion regarding 'a square is a square' in another thread.

[red knight]

Lets apply the KISS principle here... We do it in the way you had posted and eventually can make a more complex battlescape implementation...

 

Base facilities will agree to a standard, probably different to terror site distribution, probably different to general Crashed UFO's.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest stewart]

If we do KISS then we should (for v1.0) use the Xcom-battlescape-standard-sizes-for-things approach, right?

[Xracer]

Anyhow. who said anything about well lit?

 

In come the alien ships and EMP the place.

We are stuck with dull red flickery emergency lighting, and sirens going off everywhere.

 

Dark corners smoke and confusion.

 

oh yes

Now that sounds like a battle scene, most defenetly when you are being raid i don't think all the light will be up and running after all your base had to be attacked and some damage must have been inflicted it for it to be assaulted, weapons have to be down, etc..

i really like the idea of having a darker area where to fight.

 

anyway just my $0.02

[Breunor]

We could also come up with a couple layouts for different missions which have predetermined spots for each object, if the algorithm is still being developed. Once we have the minimum number of models done for each mission, we can lay them out for the battlescape testing purposes, etc.

[Guest drewid]

How does the original work from a code point of view?

IIRC there were pre-built landscape squares that were bolted together randomly.

 

Is there any mileage in looking at how that algorithm works or is it too simplistic for our landscaping system?

[red knight]

How does the original work from a code point of view?

IIRC there were pre-built landscape squares that were bolted together randomly.

 

Is there any mileage in looking at how that algorithm works or is it too simplistic for our landscaping system?

Too simplistic, and i wont do that (thats just insane)... it looks like prebuild patches, and it sounds correct for the year the game was introduced (i had played it on my 386 with 8 Mb an a brand new Sound Blaster 16...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest drewid]

I was thinking more in terms of

 

}

Here is a town,

These are the buildings and spaces,

Go arrange them randomly.

Fill in the gaps with our terrain generator.

}

[Guest blaa]

We could blend methods. The terrain generator creats the map sections (we still have the human-made prefabed ones too!). And then these are knit together like go-ole regular Xcom does.

[Breunor]

Will the terrain engine allow 'negative' height in the map? For example, to put in a stream or something like that? I know you could just put a flat water surface on the ground, but it would look really impressive if it was below the normal ground level by a couple feet, with a bridge or two crossing it. It creates a tactical choke point for those who can't fly, would be particularly interesting in future versions when multiplayer comes out.

[Guest blaa]

That shouldn't be a problem. Representing things emersed in water probably comes down to a couple "ifs".

[Deimos]

Will the terrain engine allow 'negative' height in the map? For example, to put in a stream or something like that? I know you could just put a flat water surface on the ground, but it would look really impressive if it was below the normal ground level by a couple feet, with a bridge or two crossing it. It creates a tactical choke point for those who can't fly, would be particularly interesting in future versions when multiplayer comes out.

Hmm, that would be interesting. As it would present other options. There could be the option to go through the stream in which case movement would cost about four times the usual and half of those would be spent trying to get out in the right place as the current pushes the soldier with the flow. That'd add a whole new tatical challenge under fire