Fake Terraforming Objects

Not sure about putting this in Wishlist, it's not really a request yet, more just an idea for consideration.

I've been thinking about the way the POTs are all based on a limited set of templates, so that none of them can be truly unique (at least geographically). And Sannio explained in today's stream why POT owners can't have terraforming powers.

But in Opensim and Second Life, we used to use prims and sculpts textured to look like terrain to create fake terrain objects. If well done, even the prim-based ones could be realistic, and once mesh became the norm, the "fake" terrain objects sometimes looked more real than the actual terrain -- they certainly allowed more room for the land owner to create diverse biomes.

This isn't a priority for me yet, and I don't know how difficult it would be to implement, whether free assets exist that could be used in SotA or whether it's even something the POT and dungeon owners would want. But I'm all for tools that allow players to do their own worldbuilding.

For instance: Instead of all coastal towns having the same island off the coast and the same island in the lake, you would start with no islands built in, but with a set of decorative objects, in different sizes and shapes, that are textured to look like terrain. Then you pick the ones you want and drop them where you want, rotate them as you like, etc. You might still create islands, or you might drop them on the land to turn a hollow into a hill. One object might be a snowy slope, another might be a rock scree, a third might be a set of boulders. It would need the assets to be able to sink into the ground and into each other just a bit to blend in properly, but it would mean no two towns would have to be identical again. And regular players could get the smaller ones from the crown store. It's not ultimately any different from buying trees, you'd just be buying dirt and rock, that are textured and molded to match the real terrain.

Is this unrealistic with Unity? Is it something people would even want or use?

 

Sounds like it would be a total and I mean total remake of their whole concept of what they wanted to do with player towns. We all had the opportunity to have them build us a semi custom town, but in the end it was not feasible with the staff they had on board back then and the staff was a lot bigger than what they have now! I am no game developer, so probably not entirely on track, but I do remember the conversations, promises made, and the porky pigging that was done after the fact. Several high profile players and supporters quit the game over this subject.

 

Would be tough... I asked for a moat.... and this was the answer.

I won't say its not possible. But as Sea Bear has mentioned, they will have to start from scratch, and the developers can only do so many things. Who knows, EP2 is coming up soon (I think), they might consider your suggestion.

 

I guess as long as these “terrain parcels” are used like decorations just like trees or castle walls this could be an option but I guess you will not be able to e.g. generate that way new areas for lot markers. E.g. you could place 4 terrain parcels on the water to add a statue on a small island or a pyramid of 5 parcels to add a guard tower on high ground.
Another option might be larger decorations like dune, hill, snowdrift, grove, ... maybe with fitting fauna and flora (e.g. a salamander running once in a while across the dune and a wind-sand-animation at the edge) that you can add to the scene to slightly change the look of the area.

 

Its not that we can't do it, its more a matter of them having to change the templates so that each person has a copy of the template rather then all POTS sharing the templates. Once they allow us to have a copy then it would not affect all. I think we will see these tools one day along with many others. Just a matter of time and priorities.

 

Got a feeling these kinds of things end up in the 'if only we had 10 more programmers" box.

 

I wonder if I didn't explain well in the OP. The same-templates issue, and the can't-cut-into-the-ground issue, are why POT owners can't terraform properly now. What I'm suggesting here is a workaround to that, not a change to it. Unity wouldn't care -- wouldn't even know the difference -- between a deco object shaped like a clock or a fence or a tree and one shaped like a knoll or a rolling meadow or a small island. I don't see where there'd be a need for more programming, no more than for every other bit of pixel crack they release.

It would take at least a little more art work, but again, the free mesh is out there in the wild, I just don't know if it's in formats that would be usable for SotA or not. The real problem that I see is in blending the deco objects together and with the real terrain. I've heard Elgarion talk on his streams about some items being "squishy" so that they sink into the floor or walls more than others. We'd need these fake terrain objects to be similarly squishy, but I don't know how feasible that is or how common squishiness is already.