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Klivve Cussler
Ransoms Incorporated
49
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Posted - 2013.02.18 21:38:00 -
[1] - Quote
Preface: This idea came to me while thinking about how to better give planets a sense of distinctiveness, while at the same time reducing workload.
Basically, the idea would be to procedurally generate up to four distinct plant species per planet by mixing and matching attributes found in plants on Earth. These species could then be saved with a minimum of overhead and rendered on any map taking place on that planet. That would give each planet a unique ecology without the need to tie up an art team for five years thinking up alien grasses.
So, each plant species would have several attributes:
1. Size 1-4 (Ground Cover, Bush, Small Tree, large Tree)
2. Branching model (use existing earth plants as models:Grass, Bamboo, Pine, Oak, Cactus, Rose, etc) this determines the basic structure of the plant
3. Trunk Texture (Barbed-Rose, Bark-tree, Scale-palm tree, Bamboo, etc)
4. Trunk Color
5. Leaf Model (Palm frond, oak leaf, lilly pad, pine needle, fern frond, etc)
6. Leaf Size
7 Leaf Color
Each planet could randomly generate one plant species of each size and store the attributes. So for example, you could have a tree sized cactus-like plant with a palm-tree-like skin in pale yellow covered with tiny purple fern-type leaves.
Then when the planet is rendered for a battle, the unique species of that planet are rendered and slotted into the maps. This could be further modified by biome (desert maps would maybe only render bush sized planets, or grasslands just large trees and ground cover, for example), lattitude, or whatever.
Basically, this system could produce a uniqueness to each planet that would be easily recognizable without a lot of overhead in the art department. |
Klivve Cussler
Ransoms Incorporated
49
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Posted - 2013.02.22 22:23:00 -
[2] - Quote
CCP may well have thought of this already. But it never hurts to put it out there.
Re character name: Thanks. I usually name my characters after characters, not author's, but ol' Clive writes himself into almost all of his novels, so I guess I'm not really making an exception. |
Klivve Cussler
Ransoms Incorporated
49
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Posted - 2013.02.22 23:40:00 -
[3] - Quote
Quote:On a related note, I would love to fight on a planet with very giant plant-like organisms (not necessarily plants by our definition) that look like huge mushrooms, or other cool fungus.
Tres cool. That would be awesome. The Disney movie "Treasure Planet" has some good art of a planet like that.
The thing about making something look and feel "alien" is that it needs to feel familiar. If you make something truly foreign to your experience, you don't get a strong feeling about it. But if you make something that's familiar, and yet at the same time, completely wrong, you get a strong "alien" feeling.
Star wars does this fairly well. Every planet, every monster has a familiarity. Hoth, Dagobah, the Wampah, the creature in the garbage dump, the creatures in the Geonosian Arena all of them are familiar, but just different enough to be alien.
Avatar (the James Cameron one) is another example. All of the flora and fauna are very familiar looking, and yet when you look closely, they're completely different from anything on Earth.
So for vegetation, it make sense to use terrestrial plants as a basis. There's such a huge variety of plants on Earth that we get that alien feeling just going to a different continent. We don't actually need to invent something new when we could have:
Red Brocolli shrubs, growing in the shade of giant yellow mushrooms covered in blue flowers, and tiny green pine trees underfoot.
or
Giant leafy cactus trees as far as the eyes can see over fields of knee-high oakleaf ferns.
The familarity makes the differences more stark, and increase the "alien" feeling |
Klivve Cussler
Ransoms Incorporated
49
|
Posted - 2013.02.23 01:19:00 -
[4] - Quote
These are awesome. Reminds me of some of the underwater life here on the Pacific Coast.
The thing is, there aren't enough artists on the planet to render a unique ecosystem of plants for each Temperate planet in New Eden before the PS5 is released. While I'd love to have the professionally created alien life like this in Dust, we'd still have have only a handful of plants across hundreds of planets.
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Klivve Cussler
Ransoms Incorporated
111
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Posted - 2013.05.01 21:48:00 -
[5] - Quote
Now that I've seen the initial work of the Flowers and Friends team, I'm giving this a bump. I like what I see so far, but I want massive variation planet to planet. |
Klivve Cussler
S.e.V.e.N.
General Tso's Alliance
234
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Posted - 2014.04.10 17:02:00 -
[6] - Quote
Ulysses Knapse wrote:Procedural generation can be horrible if done incorrectly. It's usually better, aesthetically and functionally, to create assets on your own rather than have them be procedurally generated. The only reason you should use procedural generation is when dealing with massive amounts of things that absolutely need to be different from each other. I do not think plants fall under this category; aesthetics don't become as repetitive nearly as quickly as gameplay does, not to mention aesthetics are not the primary focus of Dust 514.
After a year and its own dedicated team, we have a total of 3 types of plants: Grass, tall grass, and a tumbleweed. While there is certainly a likely case of there being some rather odd looking plants with this approach, isn't that the idea? These are supposed to be alien planets.
The differentiator of this game was supposed to be the unique battlefields on thousands of worlds. Focus on Gameplay, console limitations, and god-knows what else have given us five maps with random buildings, soil and sky. If we can't get a decent repetoire of designed plants, I'll take procedural generation, even if we end up fighting under the shade of giant fuscha broccoli plants. |
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