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DayOfWar Planetary render test

Name:	Bill Vee
Date Posted:	Oct 24, 2007
Rating:	4.5 out of 5
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If the google video is a little grainy then try this hi-res version on my other Blog.

What you see is a "moon" about 15 kilometers in diameter that gives you about 700 plus square kilometers or about 430 square miles of free roaming real estate to play around in.

Well maybe not a full size planet ,more like a real small moon, but scaling the terrain up is very easy.
This aspect of my game I have spent the most time and effort on. Still not 100% happy with it.
There is still an issue with the clip mapping that is causing "semming" artifacts.
I am happy enough I can move onto other parts of my game. Like the game assets.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	05/31/08 - DayOfWar Six Degrees Of Freedom Camera System 05/26/08 - DayOfWar Player Controls 05/08/08 - DayOfWar more Asteroids 05/05/08 - DayOfWar Moons/Asteroids 04/28/08 - DayOfWar Oceans 04/07/08 - DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 2nd try 04/07/08 - DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 02/22/08 - DayOfWar is a Finalist.

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Peter Simard (Oct 24, 2007 at 02:52 GMT)

Awesome work! Are you using a custom object to render the planets, or is it a modification of Atlas?

Bill Vee (Oct 24, 2007 at 03:15 GMT)

The "planet" the player is standing on is a heavily modified Atlas terrain.
Jupiter in the background is a DTS.

Maxwell Marsh (Oct 24, 2007 at 04:58 GMT)

I'm jealous.

Maxim Lyulyukin (Oct 24, 2007 at 08:18 GMT)

ahhh. looks awesome!!!

Andy Hawkins (Oct 24, 2007 at 11:29 GMT)

Kicking it up a notch again. Awesome! You might wanna start thinking about how to world build for planets. You don't want to be hand placing millions of objects. Perhaps use fractal generated forests, deserts, mountains, streets, houses, signs etc.

I noticed you got rid of the sliding problem too - well done!

Wade Lawrence (Oct 24, 2007 at 12:29 GMT)

Now you need an atmosphere that surrounds the planet.

Bill Vee (Oct 24, 2007 at 12:33 GMT)

@Andy- Was looking at the replicator resources for that. At least for the trees ,rocks and grass.

Bill Vee (Oct 24, 2007 at 12:46 GMT)

@Wade- I tried a couple of different approaches on atmosphere but nothing that looked right to me. It's one of the reasons the setting is on a moon with no atmosphere. I will eventually get back around to it. Right now my game is space/moon/asteroid based combat so it's not a necessity for my game right now.

Sam Redfern (Oct 24, 2007 at 17:15 GMT)

Nice work!

Ross Pawley (Oct 24, 2007 at 18:55 GMT)

@Bill, some of your earlier tests with the yellowish moon looked like you were just mapping the Atlas terrain to a DTS sphere. Is that no longer the case? I'm just curious how you're doing projection from heightfields to spherical coordinates(assuming this latest one is just a terrain).

Bill Vee (Oct 24, 2007 at 20:30 GMT)

@Ross- All of my test videos were of a modified Atlas terrain code. The reason the earlier videos look so different is this latest one takes advantage of the lightmaps on atlas terrains that GG just added to version 1.03. Without going into a lot of detail try the terrain program called Leveller and check out the options to wrap the heightfields to a sphere,disc or torus and you will get a pretty good idea what I am doing to the atlas terrains.

Ross Pawley (Oct 24, 2007 at 21:27 GMT)

@Bill, thanks for the reply. I've looked at Leveller before (specifically for those features) but I was never able to actually *find* the options. Mind pointing me at the particular menu/button/etc. that does it?

Bill Vee (Oct 24, 2007 at 22:09 GMT)

@Ross- under View-Base Shape... then in Shape pull-down menu select sphere. click OK.
When you edit the heightfield the sphere will reshape in real time. Mess around with it a little and you should get the idea how it maps out the heightfield.

Ross Pawley (Oct 24, 2007 at 22:18 GMT)

@Bill, thanks! I've read up on such projections for a while but not taken a look at putting it into Atlas yet.

Vashner (Oct 26, 2007 at 04:41 GMT)

I think that moon is full of gold and diamonds ready to be mined.

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