Cogburn, technical restrictions on texture/color/flora/skydome/weather mods?

[abathur]

Also had an idea for PS that was a bit too fantastic for its time that involved each planet having a "continental adaptation facility" which, while locked, caused the continent to change to be more in line with that factions ideals. (for a PS example under VS control for the "longest" period of time on the scale you'd have large fully grown "alien" fauna growing all over the place with some unique storm types about. Even better would be slow modifications to structures to gain more characteristics, but harder to explain away. TR example would be the domination and cultivation of all the land. Under NC the land would grow free and chaotic with wild vegitation growth (maybe even blocking some roads) and more violent/frequent storms.

I don't have extended ideas for OUR purposes yet, but what's the sanity check on something like this say (presumably since it's WHILE LOCKED it would involve changing the textures through a progressive set at rough intervals when no one is on cont.)

Endgame would be a truly unique feel to terrain that had been enemy held for long-periods of time. If done well it would really give the "going into enemy territory" feel or hitting something the enemy really fights to keep.

[Cl2v2r]

I think it's a great idea. While I'm not sure that it would be easy, it would definately add to the experience.

If you remember what it was like when there were no home-conts, how people wanted something to be 'theirs' something to be their home. While sure, the other side of it was the whole sanc-lock issue.

The realistic PS player does not play to win territory, they play to advance their character (in BR/CR or kills) and to enjoy the fight. However this is only due to a lack of identity with any particular continent... excpet maybe Hossin. Everyone hates Hossin.

If there was a simple way of implementing a 'time owned = magnitude of reward' system, that'd be brilliant. Also, this would give an incentive to defend, instead of PS's 'only killwhores like to defend.'

[Cogburn]

Basically what you refer to are model and texture swaps on the fly. This is already a part of the engine. All items that are "objNCTree" would become "objVSTree" or some such. It's exactly the method that the empire banners and towers and player armor change on the fly now in PlanetSide. Not a big stretch.

The problem then becomes the exponential amount of artwork required.

I have a few people that have offered to do models, etc. I have asked each one of them to submit a sample or given them a task like "make a weapon like this", but none have yet to reply. :( It's only been a week so I'm not whining... yet. ;)

For reference, textures are loaded as each map loads in any FPS from Quake to PlanetSide. These are then stored in the texture memory of your video card. Most videocards on the market only have 64 MB reserved for textures. This means that if you cross this limit on your texture sizes and complexity that you game will be forced to swap to disk in the middle of a fight, thereby impacting gameplay. Perhaps this will be different in the future, but for now that's the case. Since most textures are 512x512 you can do the math and see how quickly that would add up for complex texture swaps on the fly.

[abathur]

Though the textures on a continent in THIS sense would only really be changing when owned and locked for longer periods of time... presumably only the necessary empire specific textures could be loaded... (though yes additional art assets necessary would make something like this a tertiary concern, something to do when you've found a good artist, have all your art assets done and he's bored while everyone else is testing and balancing gameplay elements or somesuch.)

[Cl2v2r]

Perhaps instead of retexturing the entire tree or what have you, something simple could be added or overlaid on the existing texture.

I'm not sure on the technical side of it though.

For example, x empire holds the base for x minutes, the trees within x distance have a vine sprite added to them. Just something small that won't add much to the required texture memory.