Making a planets

[pat_mathis]

Okay, this isn't really something I would really plan to do but just for poops and giggles, how would you go about to make a randomly generated planet?

Let me explain in more depth. I've always loved CIV type games and I've never seen one that did the map in actual 3d. I was thinking, how cool would it be to be able to play a game like that were the over view of the map like a globe and be able to zoom down on the map to see your cities and what not. Then it would also need to have blacked sections of the map for where you haven't been, clouds and other weather paterns, and maybe even colored spots one the map to define regeins.

I was thinking that I could either do the map as one big ass model with billboard effects for every thing on it. Then just have lower res models for zoomed out. Not too sure... What do you all think would be a good way to do this?

[Ed Mack]

First create a really good LOD framework :)

Billboarding would be part of it definately. You'd need your data-set to be well organised so you could load up small areas easily, as the player got close in. Having lower resolution world maps would be important too, so at larger distances you don't have too much processing to do.

[anubis]

i would probably start out by just generating some nice planetary surfaces without the zooming

[pat_mathis]

i would probably start out by just generating some nice planetary surfaces without the zooming

How do you mean? Like with a flat surface?

It would be nice to be able to execute the battles in real time as apose to just dice roll the whole thing. Which would need about I'd say 5x5 or so km map in detail with terrain that wouldn't be too open and dull. Then what happens when I fight in the same spot twice? I'm thinking that when a fight goes down that it would randomlly generate the terrain in more detail based off of the over veiw map. Then save the basic lay out of that small map to use again. Of course by the end of a game I could be looking at alot of save space. Or would it be better to try and use static numbers that generate the terrain...

Hmmm... let me try and put this into words...

Based off the over view map I could use the use say surrounding areas to work through the map and generate the details (with no sudo-random numbers aplied for each loading of the map) so the whole world is mapped out from the start and will never change. Well, save for developing the land.

The other big hurdle that just came to me is how could you keep it manageable, game play wise?

[anubis]

no... i was more thinking about starting at the zoomed out level.

i think it would be cool to have seamless zomming in the end. you could probably have some low res heightmap for the entire world. as you get closer you generate more detail via midpoint displacement (probably not the best pick...). the advantage would be that you only need to store the seed for the map.

http://www.vterrain.org/Elevation/artificial.html

this should probably have some good information.

[NeZbiE]

Eh, a real simple algorithm to generate a not too shabby world is to use a varient of the fault-line algorithm for spheres. Maybe if you zoom into a specific area, use some form of patch/interpolation to make the surfaces look nice :-)
I've tried something similar with not too shabby results.

[justdan]

All you would need is some decent ai. It's not to hard to come up with something like that.

[theAntiELVIS]

Perlin noise.

Go here:

http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/

A great library for this stuff - easy to use and it has several applications for just the kind of stuff you are talking about.

-tAE-

[bignobody]

Hey AntiElvis! Good to see you're still alive and kicking. I got a little worried when gracelessland disappeared for a while... It's usually good for a smile.