sounds cool, but not to kill your idea but... memory.

this is probably what LogicLoop would say.

still want...

Now that fauna is coming, what about adding new maps like a forest-style map. Giant trees, an outpost covered in vines, lots of grass, less sunlight because of the tall trees blocking them, etc. That would make for an awesome map. But, vehicles would have a harder time traversing through, I guess. Maybe add vehicles that are adapted to the new terrain? Either way,it would still be awesome.

Also, sorry if someone already posted this elsewhere, but I couldn't find anything like this beforehand.

So we could put in trees in to the maps. However, this counts towards our mesh limit on terrain (which last I heard is about 200 meshes). Trees will not work in the current "plant" system you see now. They have to be placed as a static mesh. I did clear this info up finally with a Tech Artist last week.

So it is a matter of convincing Team Daddies (CCP Stiffneck) of sacrificing other meshs for some trees and to make them.

It would require a duplicate of the game mode it is changing, then that game mode would have to be the one that randomly loads. We can not dynamically swap them in a single game mode layer.

So we could put in trees in to the maps. However, this counts towards our mesh limit on terrain (which last I heard is about 200 meshes). Trees will not work in the current "plant" system you see now. They have to be placed as a static mesh. I did clear this info up finally with a Tech Artist last week.

So it is a matter of convincing Team Daddies (CCP Stiffneck) of sacrificing other meshs for some trees and to make them.

That's 200 mesh object-types, or instances?

200 total static meshes on the terrain. We can go over that but not by much. That is our safe count.

One trick around this is "combining" a group of meshes around each other into a new single mesh. However, that doesn't alter the mesh material count. The different materials are still in use and that has a limit as well. It's all a really fine balancing act in the long run.

hey! just 20 minutes ago just to play a game in which I ordered 2 to be deployed ships and exploded! also ordered 2 tanks were destroyed GUNLOGI and also just starting that game. Exploded at the time of deployment! . As you know your tank costs me each and every ship? are expensive! Give me back my 5 million isk! my username is edgardo1156

hey! just 20 minutes ago just to play a game in which I ordered 2 to be deployed ships and exploded! also ordered 2 tanks were destroyed GUNLOGI and also just starting that game. Exploded at the time of deployment! . As you know your tank costs me each and every ship? are expensive! Give me back my 5 million isk! my username is edgardo1156

When you say materials are you referring to a texture or..?

Also, in the case of 'forests' couldn't you put together multiple meshes in the single mesh approach you've brought up and just use the same materials for each? I mean, would be hard to manage with the terrain elevation changing but you technically could put large tree trunks with all the actual floral bits at the top - much like how the Installations work, what with their elongated spikes.

Yes. Materials are textures.

So we are now delving a little further into territory I am not 100% up to speed on. Mainly because of differences between versions of the Unreal Engine. For example if I recall later versions of UDK support converting all the materials in a multi mesh merging into a single material. Prior to that particular version though, the materials for each mesh merged into a single mesh are still counted as an individual material for each one. So if we combined 15 meshes into one, we would end up with a single mesh using 15 instances / draws / calls of the material, even though it is the same material. So the mesh that Unreal has made actually puts in the mesh 15 separate material id's calling for the same material.

Also, if we were to just build say one mesh in max ready made with 100's of trees or even 25, and spread them out how we like, we still have to worry about the LOD. If we spread it across the whole map, then the trees would never use a low LOD. It would always be loaded at full LOD because the player is always close enough to the "single" mesh.

We would love to do them as well, believe me. But as you can see, we have to balance a lot of stuff. So many things have to go into consideration for every aspect of a game. It's a really interesting balancing act. This is why we have to set technical budget limits. If we just did what ever we wanted we would have all sorts of problems.

I'm sure it's already been considered but you could use sprites to decrease performance cost in some place. It'd be cheap as **** but there is the potential to replace long distance visual effects (smoke and the like) with them. World in Conflict used -ridiculous- amounts of sprites and it still was considered the most realistic looking smoke effects for an RTS in it's time.

Albeit, this is a suggestion from someone who isn't in game design (yet) but I blame you for saying in the dev blog to throw out all ideas even if you think they're silly =P

Can you make trees like you do grass and shrubs now and put them in "an invisible box" to prevent us passing through them? Would it be any different (from the Unreal Engine on PS3 technology limitations perspective) than making 3D models of trees? With meshes, textures and all "what comes with that"?

More times than not, grass and shrubs are usually just a few polygons interlaced together to make a grassy look from the side, but when you stand over them you see something like this:

http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2012/03/11__04_05_35/th2.jpg42328553-a3fa-4e76-94d6-4d5eadae8657Large.jpg

Do it enough times and you get this:

http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2012/03/11__04_05_35/th1.jpg6f48f306-9335-4ed4-ad07-2e51fd8ee21dLarge.jpg

A low poly tree wouldn't be too bad of a performance loss (like this one, which has a polycount of 277) but when you try to make a small wooded area of say, three dozen trees, that polycount suddenly jumps to 9,972. That's almost as much as your typical FPS character (fun fact: Kiril in Battlefield 3 had 15,818).

That's just the polycount as well, not including animations (assuming that they are swaying, or static) texture budgets, etc. When something as simple as Nanohive/Drop Uplink spam bogs down the system - adding a bunch of other stuff to the picture suddenly looks a lot less promising

But, as previously stated, I'm an amateur when it comes to this stuff - so don't take my word for it!