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Is MC2 rendered using rasterisation, ray casting, or ray tracing?

DoYouHaveAnyOats said:

username said:
The solution here is to implement real time ray tracing. It works by reducing a frame's samples to extremely low levels ( thus speeding up render times), then using AI to improve the quality of the frame until it looks realistic. Lots of games are implementing this feature now, including minecraft (which looks similar to MC2).

MC2 with real time raytracing could look similar to this, minus the detailed bushes:

again not a programmer but like I feel like to develop all that would take almost as much time as the game, and its just light.

Nvidia already developed the system so most of the hard work is done, all bast needs to do is add support for Nvidia rtx. Of course since this feature doesn't impact gameplay I don't expect him to implement it right away, but if he works on it steadily over the course of the game's development we might see a fully raytraced MC2 before the beta testing ends. Then again I could be totally wrong and adding support for rtx might be crazy hard, or their might be other hurdles, but at the moment I don't think that's the case.

That planet looks like a grassy wonderland, the kind of place you'd want to explore for hours just to see everything. Also seems like a good place for a picnic.

bastecklein said:I have been thinking of that very issue @GeneralWadaling due to the day/night cycle in the game.

In MC1, the lighting effects are a simple filtered color overlay drawn over the game screen, so they do not impact performance too terribly much.

For MC2, the performance hit would be far greater. You can see it yourself in the time it takes to render a scene in MagicaVoxel, which is actually a compiled application (unlike JS) and is only performing a single render (MC2 needs to perform the render, ideally, 60 times every second).

Generally lighting in a 3d game uses pre-baked light maps, where all lighting information is compiled and saved before hand. In MC2 this can't really happen since the player is literally building the game world in real time.

For performance reasons, an actual 3d scene can have at most 50-60 point lights on a fairly high end desktop computer. That might sound like enough, but for a large city with a lot of lit up buildings, it's not enough at all. And for mobile that number could be as small as 5 or 6. I ran into this problem when I started adding dynamic lighting to Death 3d. I was putting lights everywhere and the game was starting to look absolutely beautiful until the engine ground to a halt, and on mobile it would only display a black screen.

There are options to fake lighting though, which I am considering. First of all, I am considering adding an option in Voxel Paint to make a voxel "illuminated." Basically, the voxel would not emit any light outwards, but it would be unaffected by the world light level, making it appear to glow in the dark. This option will be added in Voxel Paint v1.6.0 (I am releasing 1.5 today), whether or not it is implemented in MC2. Even that will add some overhead to the engine though, as the illuminated voxels would need to be broken out into a separate object, and then the two models would need to be grouped together as one, or multiple if different brightness intensities were desired.

You can also use a static sprite to fake lighting on the ground, which is a method used in a lot of games that require dynamic lighting. Basically you take a .png image which is a circle that has a gradient of white (or whatever the light color) in the center, and fades to transparent around the edges. You then just lay this sprite on the ground where you want a light to shine and do some color blending to make it look like the area under the light is illuminated.

I could also add a "Render" option to MC2, where just for a single frame it can compile your current scene with all sorts of lights and effects turned on and save a static picture for you. Could be a fun little option. In conclusion though, I have absolutely been thinking of this very issue, it's just a bit more complicated than it seems it should be. At the end of the day though, it will need to be "hacked" in some way, because just having each building or unit emit it's own light will simply not be doable :-/

The solution here is to implement real time ray tracing. It works by reducing a frame's samples to extremely low levels ( thus speeding up render times), then using AI to improve the quality of the frame until it looks realistic. Lots of games are implementing this feature now, including minecraft (which looks similar to MC2).

MC2 with real time raytracing could look similar to this, minus the detailed bushes:

In mc1 oil was collected from tar pits and placed in barrels for sale, in MC2 however it would make more sense for oil and gas to be extracted from wells that have to be drilled deep into the ground. These wells would then connect to pipelines that will take the oil/gas to a refinery, powerplant, shipping barge, or another settlements storage facilities.

Oil and gas wells take a day to drill and they can be placed anywhere, however if there is no oil/gas under the well it will not produce anything, so players will have to conduct geological surveys to find oil/gas deposits deep underground before placing a well. Also players will have to use lots of steel and electricity when drilling for oil/gas since a drilling apparatus needs to be built using steel, and the it is powered by electricity.

These ideas are great, but I would tweak a few things.

First, I would make all logistical infrastructure like roads and train stations the responsibility of players rather than having the engine take care of it. Players should be incentives to build their own shipping networks by having to compete, and one way to compete is by providing faster shipping than other players.

Second, I think that settlements should start out as dictatorships, and stay that way until enough players join the settlement. At which point players should have the option to organize a colonist revolt, which if successful will overthrow the dictator of the settlement and make it a democracy. Note, this is diffrent from wars, since no weapons are used to overthrow the dictator ( aside from rocks and other blunt objects colonists have).

Third, settlements should be able to to have more than just money, they should also be able to have stocks and bonds, since these resources are purely financial and can't be used to build anything. With these 3 financial resources a settlement can choose to keep their hard earned cash, or invest the cash and grow their money over time.

Apart from these 3 changes I would say the bulk of what you suggested would work fine as is. Keep up the good work! :)

This time the colonists are clipping through the sloped ground. I noticed that this only happens when they are going downhill rather than uphill.

Definitely, batteries are a must for renewables

bastecklein said:Here you go @Sobeirannovaocc , progress being made!

Nice, now that MC2 has a day night cycle, perhaps its time to add more features around that. For instance, in MC1, solar panels work 24/7 even during the night, which doesn't make sense. So maybe instead of producing static amounts of power, solar panels produce none during the night, and ramp up power production in the evening until the sun is fully up, and then ramp down when the sun sets.

I decided to see how MC2 would handle a bunch of solar panels and came across this bug. My rovers built 3 solar panels at once then stopped moving. Also when I was placing solar panels sometimes the game would place 2 down when I clicked once. This happens when I click between 2 tiles, so that might be causing the issue.

Certain resources can probably be turned into utilities like water and oil, but most resources can't be turned into utilities without changing the way my colony is played. If the old resource system is putting strain on the server, the solution is to give admins the ability to add another server. For example, if my dedicated server can't handle 100 large colonies trading, MC2 should give me the ability to add another server dedicated to processing resource transfers and transactions.

I made a 3d colonist for use in the MC2 alpha. I'm thinking about modeling a solar panel or a factory next, but I'm not sure which one I will make yet.

Cool, hope to see it in action when it gets implemented.

Cities do this all the time, they make zones for different buildings like industrial and residential buildings, and make sure nobody builds the wrong building in those zones. So why not add this to MC2. Maybe the settlement leader can divide thier land into zones that only allow certain buildings, then let other players build in those zones. This would give the settlement leader some level of control over their settlement, while also allowing other players to invest in the settlement without messing it up by doing something like placing a house next to a bunch of factories.

Here are some of my ideas for in game settlements.

Tariffs: if you sell your resources to another settlement, you will have to pay a tax to the settlement.

Trade deals: if 2 settlements want to trade freely, establish a pipeline, or work together on anything related to economics they have to sign trade deals. Trade deals can only be signed between settlements that have embassies.

Federations: settlements can also join together to create a federation (like the us), which will make laws/set trade policies that apply to all settlements. Federations will be lead by a president, who is elected by the settlements. The president is supposed to work for the settlements that elected him, but he can choose to be corrupt. In game this would probably be a setting that the player chooses from a pop up menu. There would be 3 leadership options, democratic, slightly corrupt, and rich moneybag. If the president chooses an option you dont like, you can impeach him with a majority vote.

I came across this issue while playing the MC2 alpha. The sloped ground is not rendering correctly.

bastecklein said:A bit more testing, this time with rovers.

I thinking I have found a better performing pathfinding method to where maybe I can have MC2 rovers work in the same manner as they did in MC1...

How does this new pathfinding method work and how much faster is it than the prior one?

Is the MC2 alpha version out, or is this an issue with the original game?

bastecklein said:I have a feeling that eventually, somebody will have a MC2 colony with a million colonists, no matter how "wild west" or "small habitat" I design the game. It might make sense to account for crime. It would be helpful at least in the event that I eventually re-purpose the MC2 engine to make a similar type of game in a different historical setting.

Eventually after MC2 is released, I did have thoughts of taking the MC2 engine and making a game about exploring and colonizing the new world, like a 1500's - 1700's time period. Instead of Landers you would show up on ships, and you would have to deal with the natives. Of course you could go diplomatic style and be nice, or go conquistador style. But anyway, I am getting off on a tangent, that is a discussion for another day!

If crime is added to MC2, it should probably be based on the number of colonists in a colony. For instance, you mentioned some colony will probably reach 1M members, so what if that was the minimum amount needed for crime to take place. This way, new players don't have to deal with crime until they can handle it, plus it mimics real life since small tight knit communities have almost no crime compared to large cities.

That makes sense, but unlike the wild west in space everyone is confined to small habitats, and can only go outside with spacesuits.