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Voxel Complexity and The Vertex Precision Tool - Discussion Thread


NQ-Deckard

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Skimmed the read, I was wondering if we could "export" a shape. So you can then "import" it by copying a string from somewhere. Could be extremely useful for Lua stuff as you could make something which generates the voxel format of a voxel you make on a screen or similar. And also just nice to have so voxel people can more directly share shapes.

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NQ, with this editor you got a winner. This will be easy to use and straightforward for new players, while still allowing all the shenanigans (up to the complexity limit in the future) and gives blocky ships no excuses anymore. Feels like christmas to see this video and cant wait to build ships with it :D

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Quote

we will gradually implement a limitation to the complexity that can be created in a single chunk of voxels. 

 

 

Could you give us some more details on what the limitation might be?

 

The sooner we know the sooner we can start considering it in how we are building now.

 

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Whoa, very exited about the vertex editor! This will change the game for builders. But I would like to know what exactly is meant by voxel complexity and how it's measured. After all we will need to be able to alter voxels in such a way that we can prevent the complexity from becomming too high. 

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I love the changes, but have a request/suggestion... Please give us the ability, via a dropdown, or number entry field to let us specify a snapping scale for the voxel editor. I see that very fine adjustments are possible, but having the ability to snap to points would make it easier to tie in with existing building methods or stay at a certain scale. Dividing the 1x1x1 voxel cube into 8ths, 16ths, 32nds, or 64ths would be a good starting point for choices. We could choose 8ths, and the vertex tool would then snap to that scale. Moving a point would snap to points at the chosen scale. Having a choice of scale instead of one fixed scale, or eyeballing/guessing, would be IMMENSELY helpful.

 

PLEASE incorporate this.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

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1 hour ago, Koruzarius said:

Looks great! I'm glad it won't be removing old constructs that are too complicated, though a bit worried about people who may want to update an old ship and are no longer able to =S Hopefully they can update it during the period where we have the numbers but they aren't enforced.

Agreed. Worst case, it doesn’t fix the frequent invalid voxels errors on large builds and all our in-progress builds trigger the magical complexity number meaning they’re nerfed, and can’t be finished. Best case: the invalid voxel error is fixed and the magical complexity value has enough headroom to finish the build. It really all depends how high this complexity figure is, does it scale off core size, and how it’s calculated (e.g.: does any irregular vertex add to the complexity ‘score’ meaning the limit can be triggered by any large angled plane?), whether this is going to be brilliant or terrible. 

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This looks good "on paper" and makes me very cautiously optimistic for one of the unique aspects of the game. 
It remains to be seen how this plays out but it certainly is a positive, one of the first ones in a long time for me personally.

 

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This is a good thing and it's a good thing that they are finally nerfing voxel complexity! Look at these hardcores complain! Do you know how long it takes to build in this game? By reducing the allowed details, you will be able to build faster and it makes the game more optimized! The economy and gameplay as well needs to be converted to a putting-out system (like in almost all MMOs) to make it inclusive to everyone and to make it much easier to set up instead of the current corporate factory system that we have which is not possible to implement equitably! The game is designed to be as extensive as technically possible instead of limiting it to make the gameplay feasible! It is unnecessarily complicated that for an MMO, we could not even have a functioning commerce after more than a year that the game has been soft-released! How about you limit the game and add a progression system so the commerce will work just like in all MMORPGs? A year have passed and you can give us another year and we will still never industrialize as a civilization-building community because the game has been designed to be as complicated as in real-life! Make the game more accessible to make it feasible, which it currently is not! It's about time that we stopped catering to the hardcores!

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3 hours ago, Eternal said:

By reducing the allowed details, you will be able to build faster...

I call BS on this. You will see a complexity measure as you build that is calculated by some unknown formula based on some unknown criteria (unlike the well defined voxel rules) which could at any time prevent you from completing your build the way you intended forcing you to rework what you have already done.

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The big question for me here would be ho wthese changes will affect existing constructs. WIll these limitations be applied to these as well and what happens if they exceed the limitations? Maybe @NQ-Deckard can elaborate on that.

 

I just fear we'll have a repeat of the stacked items fix.. going from "allowed" to "must be removed, not allowed" overnight.

Also,  what happens to designs using voxel tricks to get special slopes or curves, will those count towards these limitations and potentially go poof if they exceed those?

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From my understanding, the complexity will be based on how well the mesh engine can handle the build. If you have a lot of same material voxels in an area, that will be a low complexity, because the mesh engine can use compression methods to represent that area. However, if you have a lot of different materials, in a checkerboard pattern, each one of those is seen as a singular thing, there is no optimization to be done there, since it doesn't join any surrounding voxels of the same material.

 

I could be wrong, but that is my understanding of it. Maybe it will help some people understand this.

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That would mean NQ understand fairly porecisely why some constructs would not be handled well by the meshing system. from the way it was worded, it soudn more like they have a general/broad idea and created a threshold which should catch any potential cases based on that.
 

It would be great to get a bit more information on that as I see the reasoning fo rNQ but I'm not sure they are actually solving a problem here or more doing their usual carpet bombing.

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If there isn't a snap option where we can set the resolution (1/2, 4, 8,16, etc.) then this will be a major headache for building tetras and similar shapes, and ultimately a nerf from the current reactor system.

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13 minutes ago, Ving said:

If there isn't a snap option where we can set the resolution (1/2, 4, 8,16, etc.) then this will be a major headache for building tetras and similar shapes, and ultimately a nerf from the current reactor system.

I think it will be with shift. Or you can use reactors xD

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