Ben/Brian: Any work on vehicles?
by Martin Schultz · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 08/11/2006 (10:24 am) · 11 replies
@Brian & Ben:
I know this has been discussed a lot on this and other sites and I don't want restart here any discussion on the problems with flying vehicles, but I would like to know if you guys have any plans to rework the vehicles or if that's currently no issue for you?
It's just I don't want to start putting a lot of time into this (and we all know how time consuming this can get!) and 2 weeks later you guys have a top-notch solution in MS4 already ready. I simply would like to avoid double work :-)
Anyway, any answer would be great.
Thanks,
Martin
P.S. Did I mention I really can't await MS4? :-)
I know this has been discussed a lot on this and other sites and I don't want restart here any discussion on the problems with flying vehicles, but I would like to know if you guys have any plans to rework the vehicles or if that's currently no issue for you?
It's just I don't want to start putting a lot of time into this (and we all know how time consuming this can get!) and 2 weeks later you guys have a top-notch solution in MS4 already ready. I simply would like to avoid double work :-)
Anyway, any answer would be great.
Thanks,
Martin
P.S. Did I mention I really can't await MS4? :-)
#2
08/11/2006 (11:38 am)
Interesting, Stefan, thanks for posting this info.
#3
08/11/2006 (12:56 pm)
There does need to be some work on the Vehicles with changes to the Terrain system (from Legacy to Atlas)... but I guess it'll be left up to the community to finish/fix
#4
Brian and I have PLENTY to do with just the tasks in TSE outlined on our milestone plan. :)
08/12/2006 (1:30 am)
TSE is about rendering, not game tech. If/when fixes happen it'll be as part of TGE dev, which is focused on the game tech side of things (which is why you're not seeing any shaders over there :P).Brian and I have PLENTY to do with just the tasks in TSE outlined on our milestone plan. :)
#5
08/12/2006 (2:08 am)
Thanks Ben for clearing this up.
#6
08/12/2006 (5:54 am)
Weren't there some issues surrounding vehicles and collisions with terrain (at high speed or something?), will these at least be fixed for the Atlas terrain? 
#7
08/12/2006 (6:26 am)
That is specific to the vehicle class Ian, not the terrain.
#8
Latest Atlas has much faster collision queries in those situations but that won't necessarily fix anything. :)
08/12/2006 (2:20 pm)
The issue is partially that in some situations the vehicles will try to grab LARGE amounts of collision data and process it. This causes bad stuff to happen, either crashes from things that don't expect to handle thousands or millions of polygons, or just very... slow... time before it finishes processing.Latest Atlas has much faster collision queries in those situations but that won't necessarily fix anything. :)
#9
08/12/2006 (2:54 pm)
Finding myself sighing "puuh, who on earth could fix the vehicles..." :-)
#10
I think the only realistic way your going to get a fully 100% solution is a physics system re-write. Our physics engine in Air Ace seems to be reliable in that way (so far), so it boils down to some really hairy physics engine problem, which rules me out instantly :)
As with anything, its not an easy problem.
08/13/2006 (3:15 am)
Martin, whats your problem? Your doing a FLYING game right? :) Just dont let em touch the ground :)I think the only realistic way your going to get a fully 100% solution is a physics system re-write. Our physics engine in Air Ace seems to be reliable in that way (so far), so it boils down to some really hairy physics engine problem, which rules me out instantly :)
As with anything, its not an easy problem.
#11
Usually the vehicles in my game Subsonic do not have any ground contact, except the case when you're willfully / accidentially flying your vehicle into the ground, but in that case they (usually) simply explode - basta... :-)
But in rare cases the player simply gets stuck in the ground when he for example did an unlucky maneuver and can't move any further (and he does *not* loose health while beeing stuck!). At that point I changed my game design to allow the player to "respawn" at the base station, but with the disadvantage to lose an important bunch of health. So from that point of view I'm fine now.
What currently really annoys me is that when I let AI flying vehicles travel through the mission by setting random setMoveDestination[/] targets they sometimes simply do not throw the [i]onReachDestination event although the moveTolerance is set to a very high value (i.e. 50). This combines with the observation I did that the AI vehicles sometimes don't update the destination direction vector they're flying to. I'm currently into trying to debug this and to hopefully find out, why this event doesn't always get thrown.
Did anyone else have this problem with ai flying vehicles and the onReachDestination event?
08/13/2006 (5:35 am)
Lol, you're absolutly right Phil... :-) Usually the vehicles in my game Subsonic do not have any ground contact, except the case when you're willfully / accidentially flying your vehicle into the ground, but in that case they (usually) simply explode - basta... :-)
But in rare cases the player simply gets stuck in the ground when he for example did an unlucky maneuver and can't move any further (and he does *not* loose health while beeing stuck!). At that point I changed my game design to allow the player to "respawn" at the base station, but with the disadvantage to lose an important bunch of health. So from that point of view I'm fine now.
What currently really annoys me is that when I let AI flying vehicles travel through the mission by setting random setMoveDestination[/] targets they sometimes simply do not throw the [i]onReachDestination event although the moveTolerance is set to a very high value (i.e. 50). This combines with the observation I did that the AI vehicles sometimes don't update the destination direction vector they're flying to. I'm currently into trying to debug this and to hopefully find out, why this event doesn't always get thrown.
Did anyone else have this problem with ai flying vehicles and the onReachDestination event?
Torque Owner Stefan Lundmark