What is the first element that you will notice in Empyrion when starting a new game in your escape pod? Of course, the planet you are landing on - in particular: the terrain. Thus, the quality of the terrain or terrain generation has a huge impact on how a player perceives Empyrion. We’ll do a quick recap on the current mechanics, so you can better categorize what the planned changes will encompass. Currently, all of the terrain is procedurally created. That’s what the description says. Although you might know what “procedural” means, we will give a quick rundown on what the effects of this terrain creation method are, as the implications and details might not be as obvious in this context. Procedural terrain does not just mean “randomly created terrain”. Actually the random factor, the SEED you pick when starting a game, is only the final part of the terrain creation, applied to a previously created set of rules on HOW a specific terrain should be created. So procedural terrain is not really random - by changing the Seed you do not completely change the appearance of a terrain but you create variations of the same type of terrain. To give you an example: When you work with our procedural terrain generator (http://empyriononline.com/threads/a...rrain-generator-create-your-own-terrain.11020) you are basically defining a set of rules on how the terrain should be built up by the algorithm. These modules can work in different ways and will influence the terrain building in different ways. The more awesome or special-looking you try to make your terrain, the more modules you will need to use. This comes at a cost: performance. This is because procedural terrain is NOT just printed to something like a fixed “heightmap” and then modified, but it is always created by the modules and the instructions for the terrain building algorithm they hold (randomized by the SEED), delivered by a .DLL or .XML file in the Content folder. What does this have to do with the terrain in Alpha 7.0? A lot because of this ever increasing, non-avoidable performance draw, the level of details for terrain you can do, have a natural limit to an extent, as a too performance-demanding terrain will result in artifacts, chunk load-issues and other visible hiccups when you play the game. So, possible optimizations aside, our procedural terrain is limited in its scope by performance. Plain and simple: creating high-quality awesome procedural terrain is possible, but may be very slow (at the moment). That’s where Alpha 7.0 comes into play, adding the “handmade fixed terrain” as an alternative. What is the difference to procedural terrain? Handmade terrains allow much more terrain details on a higher quality level. It is created in a heightmap editor, modifying the shape, canyons, hills and other specialties mostly by hand. Other than the procedural terrain, the shape of the handmade terrain is not affected by the Seed. It’s like picking a Seed for a procedural terrain and always playing with this Seed, which a lot of players do anyhow, as we learned from the feedback we evaluated. The teaser screenshots you have seen in the last update notes and this update are made with heightmap-based, handmade terrains. What is the biggest advantage of handmade terrain? You can create awesome terrains with a high quality level that will not demand more performance than any of the procedurally created worlds. Since the terrain is a fixed heightmap, sometimes those terrains might even use less of your PC power as there is no algorithm eating up CPU and GPU time. In addition, handmade terrains will allow a more interesting distribution of POIs and resources. Thus, a scenario creator has much more control to create a specific setting or story. ------------------- Q & A ----------------------------- Q: Will the handmade terrain replace the procedural terrain? Absolutely not. We will try to improve the procedural algorithm to make it less performance demanding. For us, the handmade terrains are an alternative to the procedural terrains - not a replacement. Q: Can I create the handmade terrain myself? A: Basically yes. We are internally using a paid 3rd party terrain creator. You can buy a license. In theory, the game can also work with the export of any editor if it is using heightmaps and splatmaps (texture maps). Q: Can I modify the handmade terrain heightmap (shape)? A: Not directly, but although the heightmap is fixed, we plan to release several different versions of a “base heightmap” so you’ll have different variations for customization. Q: What elements can I customize? A: A lot: Decorations, terrain textures, NPCs, POIs and everything else that is defined in the playfield.yaml (except the shape of the terrain). For terrain textures, we have even created a handy in-game Terrain Editor which will allow you to quickly switch terrain textures! Changing a green world into a desert planet is only a matter of a few clicks! 1. Open Console (ö/~) 2. Enter "te" (without " ") > The editor window will appear on the lower right side 3. Open console or chat or inventory to get a mouse cursor to work with the features (workaround) YOU NEED TO DEACTIVATE EAC! (Options > MISC > EAC off > Restart game > resume game) The IDs for the textures used in the textur editor can be found here: [Handbook] PLAYFIELD REFERENCE SHEET v0.1 Q: Will the orange and green barriers vanish with the new terrain? A: Not yet, these barriers are result of the planet creation and not terrain creation Q: Will we be able to use procedural and handmade terrain playfields in the same savegame? A: Sure! So Planet A could be procedurally created. Planet B can use handmade terrain. You can of course not mix procedural/handmade terrain on Planet A at the same time. Q: Can i still drill and digg into the terrain of the handmade planets? A: Of course. The terrain does not change, just its creation. Please have a look here to get up to date about the new mining mechanic: A7.0 Experimental - Feedback: Mining Q: The handmade planets have a maximumg height of 512m - is this also available for procedural planets? A: Of course! Both methods will benefit from this 100% increase of the vertical playground
Do you have any general numbers to share on performance costs between procedure vs. hand-made? Asking since my comp now has great-great-great-grandkids; old 1GB 6850 GPU is maxxed using Fast but i5 2500k only running mid 50% load. Appreciate you taking the time to write & post this. And even though it is quite simple to manually change, as @rucky and others have said, in the future it would be very nice to have a New Game option to select between the two. If not obvious, I too am feeling a wee bit of the 'same terrain' burnout from all the new starts during experimental . Note: I understand why there's currently a 'speedbump' to changing; we all benefitted from more eyes on the new hand made terrain. Heck I spent a few RL hours searching about and reporting when Kavae & Alien Honey weren't showing up & the West vs. East lake resource distribution was (still is? haven't ckd B1300) uneven.
Devs - extremely well done, phenomenal job. Almost feels like a different game. The graphics/visual improvement with the new terrain is like night and day. I was fine with it before, although every new SP game, even varying the seed randomly, planets looked/felt very similar. This change is huge, nice work.
