I have a serious question that's been bugging me for a while now but it didn't become a "game breaker" until recently.

In our prototype, mining is extremely important. We were very pleased to find out how well Esenthel handles this, except for one hangup of which we're at a brick wall.

When mining (reducing points in the heightmap the same way you do in Ineisis) you eventually always come to a point where you hit the ocean within a few meters of digging. We've not found a single way of getting around this so far. Simply not using the ocean isn't a solution since our game takes place on a series of islands.

So the question is, is this a game breaker or can the ocean be "ignored" from existing below land masses?

When a player is inside the mine they should not be able to see the ocean so you could turn that option off. As they leave the mine you just turn the ocean back on.

That isn't a sollution because there are no "zones" currently in Esenthel to tell the fame that you're "in a mine". Plus mines are created constantly by players when they dig, so even if there were zones it would be extremely difficult to come up with ways of teaching the engine what a mine is.

What we need is a way of "painting" areas of the heightmap to exclude rendering of an ocean in those areas so I could simply set the areas on land 1km inland or so to forget the water table.

Currently this is not possible for "Water" / Ocean, you'd need to use Lakes (WaterArea)

One shouldn't need to do anything, the engine should know if heightmap height > ocean height at any point, then don't render water. Simple.

a good idea would be to make a mesh that matches your mine like a massive box underneath the land mass. Then what i suggest is while in the mine you switch to an environment without water, as soon as you are out of the dungeon switch to the environment that has ocean.

(04-07-2012 11:52 PM)scotty1121 Wrote:  a good idea would be to make a mesh that matches your mine like a massive box underneath the land mass. Then what i suggest is while in the mine you switch to an environment without water, as soon as you are out of the dungeon switch to the environment that has ocean.

Again, I need to re-re-reiterate that there is no "mine mesh" because mining is dynamic in our game. When someone mines it reduces the heightmap at that location by 1m, and then progressively more and more until mines "form" they never cease to be a part of the environment.

Also with regards to the "turn off the ocean" idea we thought of that also but just because the ocean isn't graphically renders doesn't mean it isn't still there, thus the player will be swimming through air.

temporarily disable underwater controls is possible.

Water/ocean should be ocluded by terrain. Having ocean under terrain costs some performance.
Once this is solved on engine side, you can use status of not being rendered to disable underwater controls too...

I agree, that this is issue. We have no dynamic mining in game, but we have big islands and having ocean under terrain is waste of performance.

(04-08-2012 02:21 PM)Demostenes Wrote:  Water/ocean should be ocluded by terrain. Having ocean under terrain costs some performance.
Once this is solved on engine side, you can use status of not being rendered to disable underwater controls too...

I agree, that this is issue. We have no dynamic mining in game, but we have big islands and having ocean under terrain is waste of performance.

Terrain occlusion would be a godsend but i think Esenthel already said that we won't be having it and that the upcoming occlusion would be more "zone based" for interiors.

I personally think that we should give Esenthel a shoot. I like the engine especially because of the freedom to code in C++. Yes performance is kind of lacking, and I do hope Esenthel would find better ways to improve it but I don't find it a reason to abandon Esenthel all together. I am sure, in some ways, he is trying his best to improve the quality of Esenthel and giving it enough time and support, I believed Esenthel Engine would be a incredible alternative to many engine out there.

For me, while performance is an issue, advance tools and samples is my priority. I am struggling to make advance particles and don't have much to go on with. I am sure Esenthel will figure out something nice for all of us, including improving the performance of Esenthel to 2x or 4x of its current speed. May the force be with you

(04-09-2012 05:15 AM)dylantan Wrote:  I personally think that we should give Esenthel a shoot. I like the engine especially because of the freedom to code in C++. Yes performance is kind of lacking, and I do hope Esenthel would find better ways to improve it but I don't find it a reason to abandon Esenthel all together. I am sure, in some ways, he is trying his best to improve the quality of Esenthel and giving it enough time and support, I believed Esenthel Engine would be a incredible alternative to many engine out there.

For me, while performance is an issue, advance tools and samples is my priority. I am struggling to make advance particles and don't have much to go on with. I am sure Esenthel will figure out something nice for all of us, including improving the performance of Esenthel to 2x or 4x of its current speed. May the force be with you

Geometry/Terrain Occlusion and very severe terrain LOD would accomplish that.

In our game we're getting around 30fps consistent until you get at least 10 lights visible and over 6,000 objects visible at a massive 4,000m viewing distance. With everything on in deferred. Our problem is only because we're making a "massive" game and occlusion is absolutely essential.