Spring RTS Engine

Im planning on making one map that would use somekind of waterfall effect. Interested making such one? :) Think how cool it would be and how many useful functions it would serve!

Waterfall + Peewee + barrel = win!

but then u would need min. 2 different water levels or?

I looked at this problem for awhile. There is no way to do this except in the crudest sense atm.

To have a "waterfall" that isn't just one big animated object that isn't really terrain, you would need some very complex stuff to happen, basically.

I was thinking I'd maybe try a very simplistic version that was basically one big Unit pretending to be part of the map, now that I can do certain things. But that's it. "Real" waterfalls require a 3D approach to water (if not in the pathfinder sense, then graphically) and are a very complicated thing. I wouldn't hold your breath, basically.

One could try to screw around with the volcano widget in Mercury to achieve this effect.

The waterfall would have to be at the edge of the map, else you run into the MTR of water at multiple levels.

Yeah, when I'm talking about doing it with particle systems, that's the "crudest sense possible". It'd look worse than Warcraft 3.

I could build a "hill" that had an animated "stream" and a "waterfall", as a big model with normalmaps and transparency, right now. When we have invisible heightmap support, it will even be practical, although I don't currently have the code for doing a heightmap manipulation complex enough to make the hill easily passable by Units, etc.

That said, building such objects is pretty damn not-trivial.

AF wrote:The waterfall would have to be at the edge of the map, else you run into the MTR of water at multiple levels.

Not necessarily. Though it would be great to play around with different water levels, there might be some illusional tricks to make it look like there is 2 water levels for example a dam *wink*

Beherith wrote:One could try to screw around with the volcano widget in Mercury to achieve this effect.

Yes, this came in my mind, though im not sure if it would look very good.

Argh wrote:I looked at this problem for awhile. There is no way to do this except in the crudest sense atm.

To have a "waterfall" that isn't just one big animated object that isn't really terrain, you would need some very complex stuff to happen, basically.

Yes I see, but even particlesystem build waterfall could go in this case? I think it just needs some very sophisticated use of colors?

Yes I see, but even particlesystem build waterfall could go in this case? I think it just needs some very sophisticated use of colors?

I think that the particle-count you'd need to make it reasonably convincing would be pretty prohibitive. I mean, feel free to try it with CEG particles, just to test the concept, but I think you will find it's not really satisfying.

I know this is MTR terrirory, but couldnt one have two water planes just for visuals? We wouldnt need to be able to use both as water, just maybe have one impassable and visually act as water does (using some kind of map for where water should be rendered at X height and where it should be rendered at Y height)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnSpzqnaegs

Would be cool if we had a Alphachannel to the Maptexture, and a widget wich would generat a animated texture waterfall into every alpha.
Its old, its not the newest techtoy, and some of the progressive programmers will condem the idea of hard work for a step backwards- but we would have animated water- flowing downhill, if it worked..
PS: I mean, how big as a texture can a 1 second gif be, that loops only for this alphas? Or is it, that all the big Boys on the Plaground do it diffrent, with particles, and therefore it has to be done this way?