Opinions on culldistances

[Mantasisg 172]

I have almost ended up googling "brainstorming" haha  But I don't want to end up as just another internet expert.

Go on with your imagination game then, I won't spoil it anymore, if it hurts. Perhaps you'll imagine the way how to make 3D grass work in far distance without exploding GPU.
 

[Sqeezorz 839]

On 21.1.2018 at 2:06 PM, Vattenlarv said:

Dude, c'mon... are you seriously suggesting that a 10 story building, with different interior in each apartment, furniture, some windows blown out / some half shot out / some whole, unique wholes in walls leading into other apartments, wholes in ceilings floors of some apartments with make-shift ladders providing access to a different floor without having to use the staircase, elevator stuck on one floor but you can access the service ladder in the elevator shaft, but maybe not reach all floors from that one ladder, and whatever else you could imagine would not provide more opportunities to hide, store loot or whatnot than one of these: 

 

Imagine those two buildings being completely unique, with only the general architecture in common. Shelling, weather, wear and tear, and people have opened up several entry points, and once you are inside there are 2-4 ways of accessing every individual floor, with each floor different from the other. The possibility to board up or block certain access points, forcing potential enemies into choke points unless they either blow up your blockade or waste a crowbar on it, making lots of noise giving away your position and activity. 

On level 8 you stumble across an apartment. It has obviously been a hold up for a larger group at some points. Most windows are covered up, and the ones that are not are enforced to provide cover for look-outs. In the living room there is a big whole in the wall, probably caused by shelling. There is a dodgy suspension bridge built between the two buildings, leading in to a room with a sturdy fire door, that can only be opened from the inside. An escape route! 

Use your imagination, mate. These two buildings could be super interesting, terrifying, important, just awesome. Now they are two generic buildings, that both look exactly the same, you can not differentiate one floor from the other, and there is nothing inside any rooms to obscure the vision for a potential sniper searching the building from a tree line a couple of hundred meters away. 

 

Gaaaah, the lack of imagination and creative thinking is so god damn frustrating sometimes. 

Good idea with "little" work, and mutch more tactics. 

Vote for Maze-8-floor-Towers.

[Vattenlarv 81]

2 hours ago, Mantasisg said:

I have almost ended up googling "brainstorming" haha  But I don't want to end up as just another internet expert.

Go on with your imagination game then, I won't spoil it anymore, if it hurts. Perhaps you'll imagine the way how to make 3D grass work in far distance without exploding GPU.
 

Sorry for the harsh tone and "fight-picking" earlier, buddy. Text on the interwebs bring out the demon in me sometimes.

I am a dreamer, and dreams are IMO just as important as "know how" and elbow grease. That is all!

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

12 hours ago, Vattenlarv said:

I am a dreamer, and dreams are IMO just as important as "know how" and elbow grease. That is all!

Hi mate, been a while. I, for one, find your idea interesting but not really fitting the concept. Chernarus in my opinion should remain vast, even if there seem to be areas of "nothing" in-between. Not only it is often not nothing and in the seeming middle of nowhere you can find some interesting structures, both to marvel at and hide a barrel in, but the space itself serves a purpose. Can you imagine vehicles in a 1sqm area? Even if only one spawned, half the time you would hear some engine constantly droning in the distance. And what about hunting, what kind of animals could you successfully chase and hunt in such a small habitat?

And personally, I just like having vast spaces all to myself. Until the final game mechanics arrive, I give a wide berth to all those "exciting interactions" because I find them actually somewhat boring and ridiculous. First of all, interactions can't possible give me anything, i.e. there is literally nothing I could use another player for (at the moment, unstucking vehicles is probably the only thing an experienced survivor could use a hand with). Therefore, the possible outcomes are limited to either "okay, we had a nice chat" or "one of us is dead or sent running". Strategically speaking, as far as surviving chances of my toon are concerned (and I really try to "be" my character), approaching another player is the most stupid thing we could do next to drinking gasoline. Perhaps if the game was much harder...?

Secondly, DayZ combat "physics", under which everyone runs faster than bullets and punches harder than the Hulk, is... look, I just don't think there's a less authentic FPS on the market, unless we count the first Wolfenstein. 75% of videos I've seen, the only thing they miss is that Benny Hill soundtrack.

But I firmly believe that the devs have something up their sleeve to actually make interactions worthwhile and interesting in more ways than "I'm bored with looting and thus ready to die". Until then, I'm just happy with focusing on making my toon thrive and explore, drive around and hunt.

[Vattenlarv 81]

1 hour ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

Hi mate, been a while. I, for one, find your idea interesting but not really fitting the concept. Chernarus in my opinion should remain vast, even if there seem to be areas of "nothing" in-between. Not only it is often not nothing and in the seeming middle of nowhere you can find some interesting structures, both to marvel at and hide a barrel in, but the space itself serves a purpose. Can you imagine vehicles in a 1sqm area? Even if only one spawned, half the time you would hear some engine constantly droning in the distance. And what about hunting, what kind of animals could you successfully chase and hunt in such a small habitat?

And personally, I just like having vast spaces all to myself. Until the final game mechanics arrive, I give a wide berth to all those "exciting interactions" because I find them actually somewhat boring and ridiculous. First of all, interactions can't possible give me anything, i.e. there is literally nothing I could use another player for (at the moment, unstucking vehicles is probably the only thing an experienced survivor could use a hand with). Therefore, the possible outcomes are limited to either "okay, we had a nice chat" or "one of us is dead or sent running". Strategically speaking, as far as surviving chances of my toon are concerned (and I really try to "be" my character), approaching another player is the most stupid thing we could do next to drinking gasoline. Perhaps if the game was much harder...?

Secondly, DayZ combat "physics", under which everyone runs faster than bullets and punches harder than the Hulk, is... look, I just don't think there's a less authentic FPS on the market, unless we count the first Wolfenstein. 75% of videos I've seen, the only thing they miss is that Benny Hill soundtrack.

But I firmly believe that the devs have something up their sleeve to actually make interactions worthwhile and interesting in more ways than "I'm bored with looting and thus ready to die". Until then, I'm just happy with focusing on making my toon thrive and explore, drive around and hunt.

What up dude!? Yeah, back in the DayZ forums, rocking out! 

I know, the idea is not really suited for DayZ, and a decision to reverse all the work and shrink the map down to 1-2 km² would literally cause all the DayZ-fans' brains to explode and poor BI would have to go into exile, deep in the amazon jungle to evade the wrath of all the DayZ-survivors.

I do think that a landmark of a unique set of buildings, with greater detail, a lot of access points and so on (as mentioned earlier in the thread), would be a pretty cool point of interest in Chernarus. Maybe a place like that would serve as a point of interest for many different reasons. Players who do look for interactions, of all sorts, would definitely find it there. Keep the details to an acceptable minimum to be merciful to Mantasisg's precious computing power. I am still not a dev, but a couple of wholes in walls / ceilings / floors with ladders or rubble to help you access different floors throughout a building should not kill your FPS dead, or? 

Edited January 23, 2018 by Vattenlarv

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

14 minutes ago, Vattenlarv said:

I do think that a landmark of a unique set of buildings, with greater detail, a lot of access points and so on (as mentioned earlier in the thread), would be a pretty cool point of interest in Chernarus. Maybe a place like that would serve as a point of interest for many different reasons. Players who do look for interactions, of all sorts, would definitely find it there. Keep the details to an acceptable minimum to be merciful to Mantasisg's precious computing power. I am still not a dev, but a couple of wholes in walls / ceilings / floors with ladders or rubble to help you access different floors throughout a building should not kill your FPS dead, or? 

Spot on, as long as nothing is taken away, I think it would be great to have a complex anthill-like structure where a lot can happen. Exploring new structures is one of my favourite parts of DayZ and I hope that the devs haven't said their last word yet (although they rather overdid their deforestation in the NW). Overhauling the multi-floor Chernogorsk buildings seems like exactly the right idea!

[pilgrim* 3514]

[ say.. duh.. there are NOT a million trees on the map - just thought I'd mention that - nowhere NEAR ]

If you look at a brick wall 5 meters away and a brick wall 100meters away they do NOT have the same skin (the same texture)....
And WHY?

Because in FACT both those walls are the SAME distance from your EYES - because you are looking at a FLAT screen, dude .. An object is drawn smaller to make it seem further away, and larger to make it seem closer - but if you put the SAME skin on a tree that 'seems' 2 meters away as you put on a tree that 'seems' 100meters away - that would look really totally cr@p. So the further from the camera, the different textures you MUST use.. (for instance say)  0-20meters use texture A , then 20-60meters use texture B, over 60meters use C..over 200m use D.   These are different patterns pasted onto the same object, because - big object (near) or small object (far) must look different (like IRL) even though they are all REALLY in fact at the same 50 cm from your eyes. Everything is FLAT right there in 2D at your eye distance from your screen.

So if you limit the game to 1km x 1km you will have pretty much exactly the same problems as you have now. HOW will you depict an object 1km away and an object 12 meters away ?? - the same? NO way.

If you stand at any point inside you 1km play area, you will see the "rings" around you where one texture is substituted for the next as you look further away.  It can't be avoided. Put a "close" texture on a "distant" object and try to "cull" it... it will be ether invisible or a MESS.

Maybe it would be better thinking around special solutions for specific gameplay events: there are some links and mentions earlier in the thread.

eg  (totally off the cuff) - If a player does not move AT ALL for 20 seconds he becomes invisible at a range over 50 meters. (decide what distance is reasonable). As soon as he moves he becomes visible again. 

eg - notice how players at long-distance always show as mainly BLACK figures (vector edges?).. doesn't matter what color they are wearing. Makes them very easy to spot when they are moving. Anything to do about that?

 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2018 by pilgrim*
~ self evident

[Vattenlarv 81]

1 hour ago, pilgrim* said:

[ say.. duh.. there are NOT a million trees on the map - just thought I'd mention that - nowhere NEAR ]

If you look at a brick wall 5 meters away and a brick wall 100meters away they do NOT have the same skin (the same texture)....
And WHY?

Because in FACT both those walls are the SAME distance from your EYES - because you are looking at a FLAT screen, dude .. An object is drawn smaller to make it seem further away, and larger to make it seem closer - but if you put the SAME skin on a tree that 'seems' 2 meters away as you put on a tree that 'seems' 100meters away - that would look really totally cr@p. So the further from the camera, the different textures you MUST use.. (for instance say)  0-20meters use texture A , then 20-60meters use texture B, over 60meters use C..over 200m use D.   These are different patterns pasted onto the same object, because - big object (near) or small object (far) must look different (like IRL) even though they are all REALLY in fact at the same 50 cm from your eyes. Everything is FLAT right there in 2D at your eye distance from your screen.

So if you limit the game to 1km x 1km you will have pretty much exactly the same problems as you have now. HOW will you depict an object 1km away and an object 12 meters away ?? - the same? NO way.

If you stand at any point inside you 1km play area, you will see the "rings" around you where one texture is substituted for the next as you look further away.  It can't be avoided. Put a "close" texture on a "distant" object and try to "cull" it... it will be ether invisible or a MESS.

Maybe it would be better thinking around special solutions for specific gameplay events

eg  (totally off the cuff) - If a player does not move AT ALL for 20 seconds he becomes invisible at a range over 50 meters. (decide what distance is reasonable). As soon as he moves he becomes visible again. 

eg - notice how players at long-distance are always mainly BLACK figures.. doesn't matter what color they are wearing. Makes them very easy to spot when they are moving. Anything to do about that?

 

 

 

I am not sure who or what you are arguing, Pilgrim*. 

As I remember it, millions of trees was mentioned in a status report, and I found some info after a quick Google search that the Arma 3 Chernarus port had close to 700,000 thousand trees. Arma 3 Tanoa some 500,000 trees. A shitload of thousands of loot spawn points was also mentioned in a status report at one point. Also, I formulated that statement as a question and not as facts. 

What is so unlikely about a million trees in Chernarus, and what is with the shitty bully-attitude? 

The whole point was to make it a highly detailed environment, but the level design would prevent you from ever having a clear line of sight of more than 300 meters. 

If you do not care to read what is written, then please do not get all "... dude ... duh..."-ish, and throw a lot of information around that no one has mentioned or asked for. It's lazy, and rude more than anything else.

See... see what you make me do, you bastards. Pissing me off again. I am not in any way "hurt" or "offended" like Mantasisg insinuated. Supposedly grown ass people arguing with a 10-year old's rhetoric just pisses me off. 

Edited January 23, 2018 by Vattenlarv

[pilgrim* 3514]

18 hours ago, Vattenlarv said:

I am not sure who or what you are arguing, Pilgrim*. 

As I remember it, millions of trees was mentioned in a status report, and I found some info after a quick Google search that the Arma 3 Chernarus port had close to 700,000 thousand trees. Arma 3 Tanoa some 500,000 trees. A shitload of thousands of loot spawn points was also mentioned in a status report at one point. Also, I formulated that statement as a question and not as facts. 

What is so unlikely about a million trees in Chernarus, and what is with the shitty bully-attitude? 

The whole point was to make it a highly detailed environment, but the level design would prevent you from ever having a clear line of sight of more than 300 meters. 

If you do not care to read what is written, then please do not get all "... dude ... duh..."-ish, and throw a lot of information around that no one has mentioned or asked for. It's lazy, and rude more than anything else.

See... see what you make me do, you bastards. Pissing me off again. I am not in any way "hurt" or "offended" like Mantasisg insinuated. Supposedly grown ass people arguing with a 10-year old's rhetoric just pisses me off. 

Very sorry did not at all intend to get all duh - duh ish . - I have always been interested in 3D distance-effect design problems on a 2D screen, skins, textures, selective in-sightline culling, realistic visibility of movement  at distance, and camouflage effect variation.  Certainly didn't intend to be shitty-bully. Thanks for the info that there are "a million trees" in Chernarus.

xxp

- as the Zen masters would say .. "what does a tree look like in the virtual forest when no player can see it?"

Edited January 24, 2018 by pilgrim*