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  1. #1

    Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    So I've noticed these terrain pits randomly forming in my terraformed structures. Sometimes these fix themselves naturally, but generally I try to jump in the pit and fix it manually. I've also timed-out to the server multiple times when jumping into one of these terrain rifts to fix them. I can generally find at least one at any given time, on my castle or sphinx, after logging in.



    Screenshots are dark, it happened to be night when I thought to take some pictures. I outlined the pits in yellow though. What is difficult to see in the screenshots is outlined in the picture above. The pits extend much deeper than the outlying terrain, and end at a single point, rather than 2 to 4 points like something player made.




  2. #2

    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    It kind of looks like the terrain LOD code is improperly affecting terrain that is too close to you.

  3. #3
    Xsyon Citizen Kitsume's Avatar
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    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    I think this has to do with the way terraforming is laid out on a 1 meter grid. If you are partially off the grid on a tall wall, these imperfections appear. Also if you are raising or lowering ground near a tall object or are off to the side, sometimes it takes material from the adjoining tile to fill the one you are working on, averaging the two.

  4. #4

    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    Kitsume wrote:
    I think this has to do with the way terraforming is laid out on a 1 meter grid. If you are partially off the grid on a tall wall, these imperfections appear. Also if you are raising or lowering ground near a tall object or are off to the side, sometimes it takes material from the adjoining tile to fill the one you are working on, averaging the two.
    While I know what you are talking about, since terraforming makes a square tile around you. It's possible to move half or a quarter of an existing square, depending where you stand when you terraform. That said, this wall was perfectly made one square at a time and looked fine for hours. Then one time I look at it, and there's a huge gash. I'm not talking about accidentally terraforming the tile wrong, and forming a landslide. I'm talking about when existing terraformed land seems to corrupt itself without anyone touching it.

  5. #5

    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    Added an image to the original post, where I drew the pit shapes to highlight the difference.

  6. #6

    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    like was stated before, it looks like an error in the Loading of the new terrain. its probably going to require quite a lot of testing to iron out as terrain is manipulatable.

    it could be something like making the structure, then looking at something particular, or doing something. then going back and reloading the new terrain.

    or it could be an effect of nearby terraforming code getting mixed up.

    also it could be the original terrain code mucking with the new transformed code. this could be fixed by the daily baking of the terrain. or it could be exacerbated by it


    test test test! this could be a big issue that needs to be sorted.


    but this is an excellent report, screenshots are always a good idea. when i beta test, i map a hotkey to FRAPS so i can get screens on the fly.

  7. #7
    Xsyon Citizen Relandi's Avatar
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    Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.
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    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    Oh wow, so this does happen on land?

    I had only noticed this on the island Tiak and myself were making, thought it was possibly a bug with the terrain at lake level, or something.

    But yeah, this is definitely an error, I can't guess to what is causing it, but it's rather annoying. (Though, I'll admit, one of the holes landed very nicely on our island and made a death pit of water.)

  8. #8

    Re:Random Terrain Tearing/Pitting

    Hammon, thanks for the great explanation.
    I now understand that the same problem is present on other occasions that might be connected to this.

    when building a convex structure on the edges it might be that you hit a boundary of the shape you can build. the corner tiles cannot be "bend" to whatever you want to and they acquire a concave shape. This because the geometry algorithm has to "build" a flat surface across 4 points, which is not always possible (a flat surface in 3D is defined by 3 points). The flat surface becomes a curved surface, but there are situations where this causes artifacts.

    The discussion above is quite complex, I can't explain it in words.

    I think it has to do with the fact the only every second tile is terraformed. the one in between (the slope) is adapted to the other two. now in 2D space this means you have a kind of chessboard, but the tiles you terraform are every second in horizontal and vertical ways. this means there are "gaps" of second order... much like this:



    R: raised by terraforming
    S: slope (not terraformed but engine slopes it)
    X: second order gap (slope of slopes)

    My impression is that on edges the S (more so the X) become a problem. when you terraform, you incrementally modify the terrain. but when you re-load the landscape, the S and X is recomputed not incrementally but in batch.

    at least this is my impression, I might be wrong... I really don't know for certain how it works!

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