Terraforming on the small scale

[DChurchill]

One of the big impediments to surface base building is uneven terrain. Not everything is the ice cream flats of Minmus. But if it were . . .

A bulldozer part to procedurally flatten surrounding terrain. I'm talking a few meters.

I'm pretty sure if we can procedurally build terrain, i.e. craters, then we should be able to build flat spots on demand.

Just a thought.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Hmmm,
 

If the game could do it w/o a major overhaul... seems it would just be tweaking a few pixels of a heightfield.. the game does seem to be able to reload planets in realtime (as I see it progressing through various LODs.... 

 

I'm for it!

 

oooh: Lets add realtime craters on impact!

Edited June 3, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[DChurchill]

The craters on the Mun are generated procedurally. I have to think that if the game can do that, then it can alter terrain on the fly.

I like the realtime crater idea, too. I was expanding a station around the Mun last night and I deorbited a pretty much spent delivery vehicle and was saddened a little when it didn't make a crater.

[ThiccRocketScientist]

1 hour ago, DChurchill said:

The craters on the Mun are generated procedurally. I have to think that if the game can do that, then it can alter terrain on the fly.

I like the realtime crater idea, too. I was expanding a station around the Mun last night and I deorbited a pretty much spent delivery vehicle and was saddened a little when it didn't make a crater.

Yeah that would be awesome if you could make craters with parts. Make some sweet bases on the mun by making a deep hole.

[SelectHalfling0]

I would love to flatten out a massive area and develop it with many structures, even road/path things.

[Zhetaan]

There's ... possibly a mod for that.

There was a mod-in-development at one point, hight KerpocalypseNow, that modelled impact craters and terrain damage; the dev mentioned wanting to include some kind of terraforming after the destructive part was done.  All I ever saw was an in-development preview, and that on another site, so I'll refrain from linking to it, but the important part is that dynamic terrain modification is possible and was at one point actively developed by the community.  Whether that developer wishes to continue working on the mod is an open question; the information is nearly a year old.

You should talk to the Kopernicus people, specifically @Thomas P., about this.  They know more than most about how to tickle planetary surfaces into surprising shapes, and given how much of that information loads on demand, if there's an easy way to make on-the-fly alterations, they'd be the ones to tell you what it is.

[pandaman]

Some form of localised terrain flattening would be a neat feature to have. Maybe it could be done by laying 'slabs' over the existing terrain that match the colour to give the impression of shaped earth without needing to mess with the terrain directly.

[Thomas P.]

14 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

There's ... possibly a mod for that.

There was a mod-in-development at one point, hight KerpocalypseNow, that modelled impact craters and terrain damage; the dev mentioned wanting to include some kind of terraforming after the destructive part was done.  All I ever saw was an in-development preview, and that on another site, so I'll refrain from linking to it, but the important part is that dynamic terrain modification is possible and was at one point actively developed by the community.  Whether that developer wishes to continue working on the mod is an open question; the information is nearly a year old.

You should talk to the Kopernicus people, specifically @Thomas P., about this.  They know more than most about how to tickle planetary surfaces into surprising shapes, and given how much of that information loads on demand, if there's an easy way to make on-the-fly alterations, they'd be the ones to tell you what it is.

I should really restore my thread for Kerbal Terrain Systems, after it got deleted by some forum bug. It isn't even hard to do dynamic rebuilding, you just need to have the right idea.

IF you are interested, this is the (stupidly small) source: https://github.com/ThomasKerman/Kerbal-Terrain-System

[Aperture Science Employee]

Terra forming would allow me to make Mun cities and such, and maybe even underground bases 

[DChurchill]

On 6/4/2016 at 5:37 AM, Thomas P. said:

I should really restore my thread for Kerbal Terrain Systems, after it got deleted by some forum bug. It isn't even hard to do dynamic rebuilding, you just need to have the right idea.

IF you are interested, this is the (stupidly small) source: https://github.com/ThomasKerman/Kerbal-Terrain-System

Yeah I do a little VBA code and that's about it. I'm a SQL guy. I wouldn't know what to do with that.