Colliders for terrain scatter

[PhaserArray]

The title pretty much sums up the idea, colliders for the existing terrain scatter.

Edited October 8, 2014 by PhaserArray

[MKI]

Well you would have to understand doing this would change the feature from a randomly generated, any time i can change it feature to a on or off one. Currently it is all just flavor added to the game, that can be turned off an off and increased or decreased at any time. By adding hit \boxes to them you would force the player to either deal with possibly game breaking changes when they change the terrain scatters OR force them to choose the existence of them or not. (Optional terrain scatter hitboxes could add another element to this, but same issue apply.)

I'm for and slightly against this. It would make the game pretty interesting, hell imagine a drill science part that is used to go drill on rocks. It would also make landing much more difficult. But i do feel adding this can open a Pandora's box of bugs. Imagine a planet of hit boxes that are randomly generated. It could make the game fun, but it could also open up a lot of ways to ruin a players experience. (land on a rock funky and BOOM kraken attack)

It would be nice, but there would be some challenges in the way of implementation. This would also be a save breaking new feature as something on the moon might just happen to be where a new colliding rock is and BAM explosion.

[Murph]

I share MKI's concerns above. There are a number of ways that this could be game-breakingly bad. I also think that this may well put a terrible burden on the physics engine, possibly infeasible to implement.

Overall, it's not something that we urgently need in the game, doesn't solve any serious problems, doesn't add any significant value. It's something which could end up taking up a serious amount of development time, and I'd rather see that time spent on something with greater benefits.

[klgraham1013]

I think it's a fine idea, if it could be done. I just have similar concerns as those above.

[r4pt0r]

Is scatter in the same place everytime? If so, there shouldnt be much problem i dont think. They dont need physics, they can be immovable solid objects. then theres no need to stress the physics out. The game is already rendering all their polygons, it shouldn't be an extra load on the cpu. and if it is, I wonder how many polygons KSC is when you are on the pad? similar poly count to a landing zone terrain scatter i would think.

[Murph]

Is scatter in the same place everytime? If so, there shouldnt be much problem i dont think. They dont need physics, they can be immovable solid objects. then theres no need to stress the physics out. The game is already rendering all their polygons, it shouldn't be an extra load on the cpu. and if it is, I wonder how many polygons KSC is when you are on the pad? similar poly count to a landing zone terrain scatter i would think.

For them to be "immovable solid objects", they have to be represented in the physics simulation. The physics engine has to evaluate whether the moving objects have collided with each rock, and produce the result of the collision. There's a difference between physics collider shapes and visual polygons, which is why collisions often don't precisely match the visual model. The obvious way of implementing it would require adding a huge number of objects to the physics engine, or a constant performance-sapping churn of adding and removing objects to the physics simulation as you move over the surface.

[r4pt0r]

Are the KSC buildings are represented in the physics sim? just do the various mun boulders in the same manner as the kcs buildings. or am i misunderstanding?

[Murph]

Are the KSC buildings are represented in the physics sim? just do the various mun boulders in the same manner as the kcs buildings. or am i misunderstanding?

Yup, the KSC buildings are part of the physics sim, but they should not require a particularly large number of collider objects. Terrain scatter, on the other hand, would be many thousands of objects within the normal 5km diameter physics bubble, and a similarly high churn rate to add and remove the objects to/from the sim as you move around.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it's potentially rather complex, and potentially has a major performance hit. I don't see it as being worth the effort to implement.

[NWM]

I support the idea. The game would more challenging, and there wont be those stupid in the rock situations....