Politician Archive
Thread: Paving Roads?
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Ghost8833
Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:37 am
#1
I think at a certain level of Politician you should be able to pave. I think its rather lame that these huge cities like North Beach, Naboo on Starsider and Ater Imperium, Dantooine on Kauri have grass for roads...
The way I think it should work is when you reach the level, you go to the city management terminal and select Pave Roads option. I have two ideas on what happens next.
1.) It paves the roads all the way to the city limits
or
2.) You go into a UI that allow you to "paint" the roads on your city like you would paint terrain on Command and Conquer map editos.
Feedback / Acknowledgement would be appreciated 
Chibi-Bar
Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:52 am
#2
while it is a nice idea... the load time would be UGLY!!! 
of course I love the idea of paving upto city border.... but alas... this would look weird without flatten terrain...
nudnick
Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:55 am
#3
Not really, if they made it a texture like the ground is, there wouldnt be much of a difference. I hope there are diff types for each planet, like hard dirt roads for tatootine etc. something that fits the planet (kinda like houses)
Chibi-Bar wrote:
while it is a nice idea... the load time would be UGLY!!!
Laeren
Tue Jul 06, 2004 11:58 am
#4
At Fan Fest, the devs said that actually "flattening" the ground would be too server-intensive (because of the terrain engine). However, they did say changing the color tiling in some instances would probably not cause a huge load.
Laeren
Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:03 pm
#5
Ghost8833 wrote:
yeah good point, didnt really think about the lag, then again I know nothing of programming / terrain engines ETC....
Does anyone here have any idea on how this would lag up an engine or are they going off what they've heard or read on webpages??
We were told at Fan Fest by lead programmer Andy Somers. I think that's a pretty good source He said that because the terrain is generated dynamically, it has to feed off a set terrain, across all the galaxies. To make permanent exeptions to this terrain for every city across the galaxies would force a recalculation of each individual terrain spot that your character is standing in, based on your relative position to an altered terrain-level spot. This in turn would cause massive amounts of lag, as each and every character's terrain path (height, slope,terrain feature, etc)would have to be individually calculated every 8 meters, rather than just loaded based on the terrain graph that is universally applied to every server.
He said that because the terrain is generated dynamically, it has to feed off a set terrain, across all the galaxies. To make permanent exeptions to this terrain for every city across the galaxies would force a recalculation of each individual terrain spot that your character is standing in, based on your relative position to an altered terrain-level spot. This in turn would cause massive amounts of lag, as each and every character's terrain path (height, slope,terrain feature, etc)would have to be individually calculated every 8 meters, rather than just loaded based on the terrain graph that is universally applied to every server.Think of it like a McDonalds vs a gourmet restaurant. Each dish at McDonalds is easily pieced together from a standard template, day after day. But, each meal at the gourmet restaurant is painstakingly prepared, based on the specifications for that evening (dish of the day, the chef who is working that day, etc etc). Which serves food faster? The McDonalds, of course.
Chibi-Bar
Tue Jul 06, 2004 1:10 pm
#6
that is a WAY better explaination than I could have come up with... yay Laeren!!
Reggi
Tue Jul 06, 2004 7:12 pm
#7
What would be cool is Large "tiles" that an Archetict can make and you can only place a certain amount, like lamps and terminals and such
Chibi-Bar
Wed Jul 07, 2004 12:00 am
#8
well... I think it would normally load the "normal" terrain and then overlay the "paved" I can see the lag (that is what I meant by ugly)
it would be like houses except with roads.. (delay or not loading content in homes)
Ghost8833
Wed Jul 07, 2004 12:13 am
#9
yeah good point, didnt really think about the lag, then again I know nothing of programming / terrain engines ETC....
Does anyone here have any idea on how this would lag up an engine or are they going off what they've heard or read on webpages??
Acantho
Wed Jul 07, 2004 8:06 am
#11
well the problem with roads for my city is I have roads that are between two small houses facing each other with their footprints touching.
How would they pave that?
I know whatever they would put in would probably involve a template
How would they pave that?
I know whatever they would put in would probably involve a template
Chibi-Bar
Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:47 am
#12
I think if they are going to put in paved road (by which ever means possible) it would be easier to also have ability to flatten terrain (which someone said that is not happening)
Think about it... if you pave road.. that means even ground.. what about a hill? going to make a steep incline like a house ramp? or block it off? (like house foundations.. with new placing rules.. you can almost get a 3-tier ramp) hehe... are they going to have a sudden drop if the road is paved next to a cliff??
I can see a whole issue of bugs and problems... what if a road are misalign and block entrances
DaQuilla
Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:55 am
#13
I distinctly remember Plinka, our first corespondant, quoting the devs from the correspondant forums about pavement being discussed ... that was in one of here last posts (search function is giving me a hard time just now though )
)I'd think you might be able to place it rather like you place fountains spacewise, so you can also place pavement between houses directly next to each other ...
Pavement on slops shouldn't be a problem - we see it in many NPC cities ...
Pavement poping up very late like houses do, or much worse decorations of a city, could be fixed, if pavement is registered to the world like civic buildings are (notice from how far away you can already see city hall, shuttle port and clone center) ...
Simply paving the whole city radius wouldn't make any good atmosphere IMO since the space between houses are very big and again you would have no sense for streets.
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