What if we added support for cnc3 style 3d terrain?

Radaral · Cyborg Soldier **Joined**: 26 Feb 2007

Could you imagine if the ground terrain was 3d how much better it would look when you double the game size? anyone have any ideas how to build this option into openra engine?

Graion Dilach · Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 7:50 pm Post subject:

Sure!

I mean, who cares that movement is cell based, pathfinding is cellbased, c&c3styled terrain was everything but cellbased, let's do it!

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SMIFFGIG · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 1:44 pm Post subject:

Graion Dilach wrote:

Sure!

I mean, who cares that movement is cell based, pathfinding is cellbased, c&c3styled terrain was everything but cellbased, let's do it!

cnc3 confirmed for next OpenRA release
Good work GD Very Happy

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Banshee · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 4:16 pm Post subject:

SMIFFGIG wrote:

Graion Dilach wrote:

Sure!

I mean, who cares that movement is cell based, pathfinding is cellbased, c&c3styled terrain was everything but cellbased, let's do it!

cnc3 confirmed for next OpenRA release
Good work GD Very Happy

Nope, his real plans are for C&C4 in the next OpenRA release, because it is far more popular and fun #Tongue

.

HG_SCIPCION · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 4:38 pm Post subject:

Banshee wrote:

SMIFFGIG wrote:

Graion Dilach wrote:

Sure!

I mean, who cares that movement is cell based, pathfinding is cellbased, c&c3styled terrain was everything but cellbased, let's do it!

cnc3 confirmed for next OpenRA release
Good work GD Very Happy

Nope, his real plans are for C&C4 in the next OpenRA release, because it is far more popular and fun #Tongue

.

yay, C&C4 is more fun than C&C3, agree!

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Isaac_The_Madd · AA Infantry **Joined**: 16 Jul 2015

In all seriousness if 3d terrain support is added to OpenRA, it would be cell based. (To avoid a complete rewrite of everything.)

Radaral · Cyborg Soldier **Joined**: 26 Feb 2007

So what I'm getting here is it could work however it would screw with the AI hunt commands as well as when you click your army and select them where to shoot. well what if we added the option for say vxl terrain? I believe it has been attempted in the YR engine however it refused to load it in any color except solid black and was very buggy. but say we built a second option for vxl as opposed to hva, say lgt or tex? or maybe no hva or secondary side file needed with it? would vxl terrain still screw with key hunting and interaction script commands? and if so could we whip up a new variant of vxl say txl? or 3xl?

Banshee · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:28 pm Post subject:

Nope, you simply don't get it at all. A huge part of the engine would need to be recoded, from rendering, path finding, physics, etc...

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:43 pm Post subject:

Banshee wrote:

Nope, you simply don't get it at all. A huge part of the engine would need to be recoded, from rendering, path finding, physics, etc...

So why couldn't voxel terrain work instead? voxel vehicles handle all that fine so why not voxel landscapes? or even trees and walls?

Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

Only if you want a one frame per minute slide show with the slow vxl renderer.

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HG_SCIPCION · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:38 am Post subject:

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:

Only if you want a one frame per minute slide show with the slow vxl renderer.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY????!!!!

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Graion Dilach · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 1:28 pm Post subject:

Voxel terrain cells are bad idea, how do you intend to create one? Voxels are good for objects but that's it. So yes, you can create voxel trees and prolly you coulda hack together a voxel wall trait as well.

Interestingly though, now that I have an actual GPU - yay! - the voxel renderer seems okay. Apparently it just needs a heck of a GPU.

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=======================
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4StarGeneral · General **Joined**: 14 Sep 2006 **Location**: Limbo

You'd be better off starting from a real engine made for 3D, like Unity, Spring, or OpenRTS.

Though you can technically make a cell-based 3D terrain type game, it's been done. OpenRA is just entirely not made for 3D.

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pchote · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 06 Feb 2015

The RA2 VR prototype (which is OpenRA + the RA2 mod + a custom UE4 rendering process) is a good example of how that is wrong:

OpenRA's internal state is fully 3d, with a cell grid only for pathfinding and building placement. There aren't any significant technical limitations stopping somebody interested from implementing a 3d terrain renderer.

4StarGeneral · General **Joined**: 14 Sep 2006 **Location**: Limbo

Good, I like being proven wrong. I didn't think the engine had the capacity to run it so smoothly and read that as being entirely in UE4 with assets from OpenRA's RA2 mod (which is easily expected), but I'm glad it can. Not sure how that went from 2.5d to 3d in that scale, ditching the cell grid and a dynamic 3D camera ('m guessing the UE4 part), but if it can be done, great.

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Radaral · Cyborg Soldier **Joined**: 26 Feb 2007

Are you truely sure the Openra could never be made to support voxels to the degree I'm saying? Voxels have gone a long way since 2001. in 7 days to die everything that isn't a character or item that a character uses is a voxel. it's based of the unity engine. are you truely sure openra couldn't be upgraded to use the unity voxel handlers, in-game renderers and drivers or dlls that allow the game to use voxel formats. another question is if this does turn out to be able to work is it worth the effort? I see it as really making the addition of the long awaited subterranean logic much easier to finally get working. it may help with terrain logic heights or cliffs too but the last one I cannot confirm. it may just be easier to have a custom double pixel version of terrain and cliffs. say by default it uses the ra1 cnc1 versions, but when double pixeled it uses ra2 or even gangstas ts rewire terrain for that scale?

Guest · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:43 pm Post subject:

Radaral wrote:

Are you truely sure the Openra could never be made to support voxels to the degree I'm saying?

wouldn't be any point. voxels work well with small sized objects. actual 3D models work better with anything larger. If you look at other games which have been modded to allow 3D and voxel support, such as GZDoom, a lot of modders using it favour 3D rendered objects over voxels since voxels are actually more taxing on the CPU/GPU. IIRC, the way most westwood-era C&C games handled voxels was to use the voxel files to create a series of 2D images (similar to red alert/ TD vehicle SHPs) and then render those 2D images in game as a workaround for not having true 3D.

Banshee · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 11:09 pm Post subject:

guest wrote:

wouldn't be any point. voxels work well with small sized objects

Voxels are recommended for games with 3D interactions where the camera's distance to voxel objects does not change (like... games with no zoom or insignificant zoom for aerial units), so you can use stuff like Direct2D to render the scene, discarding the need of graphics cards with 3D accelerators. In this case, each voxel is painted like a pixel in the screen and, to make things faster, images with all possible rotations of each voxel are pre-cached in memory. With that in mind, it is clear that spatial size doesn't make that much of a difference for this kind of usage. It makes more difference for storage and pre-processing, but it doesn't compromise the gameplay at all.

Of course that I am aware that this is not how OpenRA deals with voxels nowadays.

TAK02 · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 4:45 am Post subject:

What about E:BFD? It used cells, but was completely in 3D. Important: There's barely any lag, even on weaker comps! (I tested it on my old HP Mini from 2009, so yeah)

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Blade · Cyborg Commando **Joined**: 23 Dec 2003

I would like to point out that the original C&C was already ported to a 3D engine commercially on the Nintendo64. The logic will still use cells, just the drawing is 3D.

Holy_Master · Commander **Joined**: 21 Jul 2004 **Location**: Thailand

with current engine any chance for 2D terrain with real 3D unit (not voxel)?

SMIFFGIG · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:57 pm Post subject:

Blade wrote:

I would like to point out that the original C&C was already ported to a 3D engine commercially on the Nintendo64. The logic will still use cells, just the drawing is 3D.

This is a good point, I never thought about his. I wonder how much work was involved in this.

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Holy_Master · Commander **Joined**: 21 Jul 2004 **Location**: Thailand

another c&c game with 3D but it's on IOS however it UI design very much similar to c&c64 and for me the game look amazing.

TAK02 · Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:10 am Post subject:

Graphics are good, controls and thus the game still suck tho.

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

graphics and gameplay look to me like it's a game for children from 6-12
I miss the C&C's that don't look like a bad joke with a gritty pseudo-realistic atmosphere.

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TAK02 · Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2017 6:18 am Post subject:

Tell that to EA

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Guest · Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:33 pm Post subject:

Holy_Master wrote:

with current engine any chance for 2D terrain with real 3D unit (not voxel)?

This has the same answer as for terrain: yes, but only if somebody with sufficient interest and ability chooses to spend the time to implement it.

DonutArnold · General **Joined**: 18 Jan 2005 **Location**: Finland

This is something I'd like to see as well.

G-E · Defense Minister **Joined**: 09 Feb 2015

My thoughts on voxel terrain, could easily be done in VXLSE as a flat 100x100 square which then gets rotated and flattened into isometry during pre-render. The "voxel" would only have to be a single layer thick presumably since I don't hear the "black dot" problems of RA2, and no normals or dynamic lighting would need to be applied, just a shadowed state.

In fact each voxel cell could be internally rendered/cached like a flat sprite if performance is an issue, thus opening up the cell art to alternative forms of creation, while behaving exactly like ordinary cell art.

I understand someone would have to write this thing, but I'm just suggesting it should be very feasible to do without a massive performance hit as some suggested.

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