[Hoth] - General Map Discussion

Yeah like what Sceluk was saying.

As for the fighters I think that the Empire should have a makeshift air landing pads set up by their base (like a small version of the one found on Endor) to launch their fighters from. Also I was thinking that the Empire's base would be like a prefabricated garrison base with small walls and supply crates to look like a staging area.

Hmm, I'd like to keep fighters out of this if we can. there were no ties in the movie (probs too cold or something), and I feel they feel out of place.
The Empire has Orbital Strikes, AT-AT's (which double as AA in skilled players hands)+target-locking rocket launchers.

I was thinking about not having the fighters for the empire but if we are going to have capital ships orbiting with fighters attacking each other in the atmosphere then they will just come down to the surface. Besides I think that in order to efficiently counter the X-wings the Empire needs fighters of their own (however we can just do not as many)

Fighters in space yes, on Hoth (except for snowspeeders), no.

Weren't we aiming for the land to space transition battles like Battlefront 3 was going to be, though? I am sort of confused now about the mechanics of the game

If I\we can implement them. (ground to space transitions that do not kill non high end PC's) Its not as easy at it sounds.
If we do, is not a problem. X-Wings and TIE can't function properly in Hoth's cold atmosphere, its stated in a lot of places. That's why they used snowspeeders.
So while X-Wings can launch from Hoth's base, they have to go directly to space, and the TIE's have to stay up there.
We could have a timer that blows you up if stay too long in Hoth's atmosphere. just enough time for an x-wing to launch and get to space. stops people from taking TIE's down there.

I really like the sceluk's idea for the timer but we can modify it. So we could have a nice feature for the TIE's and The x-wings and the other fighter. If they are staying too long in hoth's atmosphere they will freeze and fall like rocks(which means if they are not intentionally landing they will crash). If the pilots manage to land their fighters and if they are engineers/pilots (not some troopers) they will be able to repair their fighter just so they can leave orbit.

But that will be if we manage to properly implement the ground to space. In my opinion that transition won't kill low end PC's since if you are on the ground you won't be able to see the fighters in space because they are too small. So they will see only whats going on the ground. The same goes for in space. Of course we have to test it first in multiplayer....

SharkYbg wrote:

I really like the sceluk's idea for the timer but we can modify it. So we could have a nice feature for the TIE's and The x-wings and the other fighter. If they are staying too long in hoth's atmosphere they will freeze and fall like rocks(which means if they are not intentionally landing they will crash). If the pilots manage to land their fighters and if they are engineers/pilots (not some troopers) they will be able to repair their fighter just so they can leave orbit.

But that will be if we manage to properly implement the ground to space. In my opinion that transition won't kill low end PC's since if you are on the ground you won't be able to see the fighters in space because they are too small. So they will see only whats going on the ground. The same goes for in space. Of course we have to test it first in multiplayer....

that would work great!! We could have it for if you fly too long on the surface then your ship will start to freeze and eventually just stall and crash. We could have a dynamic snow shader where you can see the ice building up on your ship and your screen can have ice forming around it or something to let you know when you're about to stall. An example of the snow shader is in the Crysis 1 sandbox editor for the objects they have a freeze shader that shows ice that builds up on the object dynamically

Well guys, i will start some heighmap, the first 2048x2048 will be just a test, and i will make it bigger to 4096x4096 (but i dont think that we gonna really need such big stuff like that, but i can only say that we i test).

Take a look, this inspired me alot to do Hoth enviro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v2L2UGZJAM&list=LLRXHItTZ4bCA9OankxkQ1WQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=118s

some concepts from Hoth (by some bioware lead designer)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150435111548860.373889.28984808859

i hope to show some screens this week, cya \o

Ben2356 wrote:

SharkYbg wrote:

I really like the sceluk's idea for the timer but we can modify it. So we could have a nice feature for the TIE's and The x-wings and the other fighter. If they are staying too long in hoth's atmosphere they will freeze and fall like rocks(which means if they are not intentionally landing they will crash). If the pilots manage to land their fighters and if they are engineers/pilots (not some troopers) they will be able to repair their fighter just so they can leave orbit.

But that will be if we manage to properly implement the ground to space. In my opinion that transition won't kill low end PC's since if you are on the ground you won't be able to see the fighters in space because they are too small. So they will see only whats going on the ground. The same goes for in space. Of course we have to test it first in multiplayer....

that would work great!! We could have it for if you fly too long on the surface then your ship will start to freeze and eventually just stall and crash. We could have a dynamic snow shader where you can see the ice building up on your ship and your screen can have ice forming around it or something to let you know when you're about to stall. An example of the snow shader is in the Crysis 1 sandbox editor for the objects they have a freeze shader that shows ice that builds up on the object dynamically

You guys nailed it
Yeah stalling and crashing makes more sense. It's more realistic and not a cheapo mechanic, heh (like mine...which I usually hate, must have slipped through). Love the idea of the snow and ice building up. We could have a 'heat' meter that tells the player how much time they have left.
Guys, I don't know if any of you ever studied CG, but the main problem with ground to space, is even if the ships and stuff are not visible, the engine (unless you tell it otherwise), is STILL going to render (and logic) that stuff. In SP it might be solved by just disabling stuff when you get far away, but in MP, its a lot harder (everything has to keep going on). Its gonna take some serious coding to get this up. Its not impossible, and I already got some ideas on it .

Okay xpld!
I suppose you already saw the rough design we came up with. So please stick to that (at least with the basic layout, you can of course change how high, maybe add in some hills here and there etc).
If you have a rough prototype done we can all take a look at it and decide.

The level design (not the enviro), will be like the original?

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110127160319/battlefront/images/b/b6/Hoth_Echo_Base.jpg

Not exactly. But in some parts similar. That's what we've decided on for now:


There's a better quality version in the dropbox in Concepts\Hoth\.

i've saw it here, its a bit similiar but quite larger!

no worries, i will use it as base for the main design of the level, as long is that big i will need to use a 4096 map.

Thanks Schlechtwetterfront :]

Does we already have any structure modeled on scale, like the bunker, outpost and others of this map?

I mean, even in bsp or final model just to adjust some space and scales.

sceluk wrote:

Ben2356 wrote:

SharkYbg wrote:

I really like the sceluk's idea for the timer but we can modify it. So we could have a nice feature for the TIE's and The x-wings and the other fighter. If they are staying too long in hoth's atmosphere they will freeze and fall like rocks(which means if they are not intentionally landing they will crash). If the pilots manage to land their fighters and if they are engineers/pilots (not some troopers) they will be able to repair their fighter just so they can leave orbit.

But that will be if we manage to properly implement the ground to space. In my opinion that transition won't kill low end PC's since if you are on the ground you won't be able to see the fighters in space because they are too small. So they will see only whats going on the ground. The same goes for in space. Of course we have to test it first in multiplayer....

that would work great!! We could have it for if you fly too long on the surface then your ship will start to freeze and eventually just stall and crash. We could have a dynamic snow shader where you can see the ice building up on your ship and your screen can have ice forming around it or something to let you know when you're about to stall. An example of the snow shader is in the Crysis 1 sandbox editor for the objects they have a freeze shader that shows ice that builds up on the object dynamically

You guys nailed it
Yeah stalling and crashing makes more sense. It's more realistic and not a cheapo mechanic, heh (like mine...which I usually hate, must have slipped through). Love the idea of the snow and ice building up. We could have a 'heat' meter that tells the player how much time they have left.
Guys, I don't know if any of you ever studied CG, but the main problem with ground to space, is even if the ships and stuff are not visible, the engine (unless you tell it otherwise), is STILL going to render (and logic) that stuff. In SP it might be solved by just disabling stuff when you get far away, but in MP, its a lot harder (everything has to keep going on). Its gonna take some serious coding to get this up. Its not impossible, and I already got some ideas on it .

Yeah I know that engine is going to have to work very hard because everything is going to be rendered. In SP we could just make a script that says if you are on the ground then don't render -- meters and up and instead use a dynamic countdown addition to the tickets meter to make it seem like there is something happening up in space. If you are in space then use that dynamic countdown as well as a piece of random code (used sparingly) to have the Command Posts shift from factions. When you are switching areas, whatever happened in each area is loaded into the level to provide what you have heard about while on the other front. So the 2 battlefronts are essentially split and there own separate rendering areas for the engine to reduce the workload. This is just a very rough idea and I trying to relearn C++ and LUA (been programming in too much Javascript ) so I could offer a helping hand. What are your ideas?

I don't think just disabling of faking the battle in space is going to work. If the player then travels into space we would have to spawn the whole space battle in a matter of milliseconds and make it look good, too.
We can of course disable rendering, but maybe that's handled by CE already. Everything which can't be seen by the player is not rendered. So if we either adjust the view distance or just put some things like clouds between space and ground it should theoretically work alright. But of course we have to test it.

Yeah it isn't going to be easy to make this flow smoothly, although I heard that Free Radical already had sorted out this technical aspect before they went under, its a shame. We obviously can't fake the battles in MP so that is going to make this game need a higher end computer unless we find out about the rendering. I would think that CE already has a rendering system like what Schlechtwetterfront said for these kinds of technical limitations but otherwise I think that would just be the wisest choice.

Check it out some screenshots of the terrain heightmap on dropbox, tell me your opinion guys, i'm all open to criticism and suggestions

That looks pretty good, maybe make some mountains a bit sharper, they are quite smooth right now. It looks really nice. Now can you make one with the above layout?

Schlechtwetterfront wrote:

I don't think just disabling of faking the battle in space is going to work. If the player then travels into space we would have to spawn the whole space battle in a matter of milliseconds and make it look good, too.
We can of course disable rendering, but maybe that's handled by CE already. Everything which can't be seen by the player is not rendered. So if we either adjust the view distance or just put some things like clouds between space and ground it should theoretically work alright. But of course we have to test it.

IIRC, CE3 MP is servert based right? So the server can handle all the logic, (it has to), then it tells each client what's up. It all depends on how the MP is implemented. Who does the final logic calcs? The server, or the client (based on data from the server)? Synching is gonna be a PITA. I will have to do some more research on this. I will create a thread in coding for this, so we don't clutter up this thread, which is Hoth specific level design and gameplay.

I don't know if it's possible but what about a choice before spawning (space or ground), on which the player can choose every time he die. If its ground, then he choose his class, or if it space, there is a animation while loading the space battle where the player see his X Wing take off Hoth and go into space, and then spawn in the space battle.
So there will be like two battles at the same time but loaded separately and only stats (like numbers of units left, CPs, ...) will be exchanged in real time between battles.

If I can figure out seamless transition, it will be in. If not, then we'll figure out something else.