Ogre Tech Demo

For topics that do not fit in another sub-forum.

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
tzlaine
Programming Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1092
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:33 pm

Re: Ogre Tech Demo

#61 Post by tzlaine »

eleazar wrote:* We should probably put fighters on a level slightly above the "normal" ships for visibilities sake.
That's a reasonable solution, if fighter visibility turns out to be a problem.
* Couldn't the "Boids" behaviors be use to keep ships from clumping and intersecting? It doesn't bother me nearly so much that ships can pass through each other as that an indefinite number of ships could move to the same point, and all be perfectly invisible inside the largest ship.
Yes, I suppose it could, but I don't think that it will produce the desired effect when used with ships. Ships are sure to be a lot slower and less agile than fighters, so constant course corrections won't have the same effect. And I'd like to see the problem crop up enough to motivate solving it first.
* Don't we need some sort of collision detection to find out which ships are hit?
No. That's necessary in FPS games, but our hit determination will be entirely probabilistic AFAIK. Line-of-sight, etc., will not be relevant. We only need collision detection for the user to select objects, and for some other graphical niceties, e.g. an explosion may need to be placed at the intersection of a beam and a ship model.

M4lV
Space Squid
Posts: 89
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 10:51 am

Re: Ogre Tech Demo

#62 Post by M4lV »

An easier way to make flight paths coherent is to assign same speed and movement vectors to all ships aligned in one formation or grouped together somehow. That way they can't hit each other so it's only about preventing another group of ships to hit that group. Flying in strict formation will solve most problems (also those of all ships gathering at one point making themselves invisible). A full-stop for one ship when ellipsoids intersect and again re-taking of old course once they don't intersect anymore should take care of most other cases and the rest could just be neglected I guess.

tzlaine
Programming Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1092
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:33 pm

Re: Ogre Tech Demo

#63 Post by tzlaine »

M4lV wrote:An easier way to make flight paths coherent is to assign same speed and movement vectors to all ships aligned in one formation or grouped together somehow. That way they can't hit each other so it's only about preventing another group of ships to hit that group. Flying in strict formation will solve most problems (also those of all ships gathering at one point making themselves invisible). A full-stop for one ship when ellipsoids intersect and again re-taking of old course once they don't intersect anymore should take care of most other cases and the rest could just be neglected I guess.
This is a good idea, if we end up having groups of ships that fly in formation. At this point, that's not settled yet. That's one of the things we need a prototype to test. One school of thought is that to make things simpler/faster, each ship should be assigned to a group (and a group may be similar ships or complimentary ships, as in a carrier task force-like group). The other school of thought is that all groups should be ad hoc and temporary, as in RTS games -- just select some ships, hit Ctrl-1, and you have a group. Like I said, this is not decided yet, AFAIK ...

M4lV
Space Squid
Posts: 89
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 10:51 am

Re: Ogre Tech Demo

#64 Post by M4lV »

hm, if you're going with the 3D plane case strictly, we could think of another solution model derived from the atomic hull theory. When a certain amount of ships are within a square area of certain size, they are assigned to different height levels just like electrons which are in different quantum energy levels around the core. Only X ships per level are allowed. That way we always have only X ships that can possibly intersect each other's flight path. If the delta z value is sufficiently small, you won't even get firing distance problems in the z direction. Besides, if so many ships are gathering in one area, they can't fire at each of them present, so it's quite good to handle. Also it becomes visually clear where a lot of ships are currently because it's always where the 3rd dimension becomes "visible".

Within each level one can implement a basic ellipsoid check and can be pretty sure that none of the 6 other ships collide with two currently evading each other due to possible collision.

Cdrwolfe
Space Krill
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:54 pm

Re: Ogre Tech Demo

#65 Post by Cdrwolfe »

Well think of the positives, you won't have to worry about a collision detection system dragging down FPS and tanking the combat engine.

Regards Wolfe

Post Reply