Trees, Plants, and Vegetation Wildlife

[Kuiper7986]

I hope in the game there\'d be trees, plants, and Vegetation Wildlife. It\'s the little things that make a game great...

I was just wondering was it planned that all trees, plants, and vegetation wildlife can be used in some way or can only a certain type be used? In better terms, I can\'t just go up and pick up some grass and use it, I assume that wouldn\'t be logical, plus what the hell can you do with so much grass?

Is each area going to contain different vegetation. Like desert will have cactus type plants, forests will have more coniferous life, and underwater will have more aquatic vegetation. And would Sea Sponges be considered a plant or a fungus?

How would you collect the plants, can you pick the smaller plans with your hand, and use a bigger weapon to cut down big trees? Will any plants be edible raw for quick HP recovery? Will some plants be poisonous? Will herbs be only used for medicinal uses or will they also be used for cooking food. With the wood from trees most likely it would be used for building, furniture making, carpentry, and fletching right? When trees are cut down must they grow again or do they respawn quickly enough not to be noticed unless being watched.

Can wild vegetation be domesticated? Can wild vegetation be cultivated? Will there be fruits like, apples, bananas, oranges, etc...? Would there be roots like potatos, taro, carrots, radishes and peanuts? Would these fruits and roots need to be watered everyday? Would being a farmer to able to create steady income by supply and demand? Can you extract the color of certain plants and use them as dye? More questions later......

[Fish]

Let\'s come up with some entirely new ideas.

I always like a banana peel.  It would be interesting to have something like a watermelon that peels like a banana.  You could make the thing grow like a cactus with spines and if you don\'t peel it right you take hit points.

Since we have a lot of different races some of them pretty peculiar you half to ask questions like what does a rock based life form eat.  It can\'t be just rock because there\'s no energy in it.  However their dietary needs would have to be quite different than ours.  I doubt they could eat the same food.  Maybe they eat a lot of root based food and don\'t wash it on purpose is to keep up the mineral content.  Actually cooking the food maybe an absurd idea for them.  It\'s possible that they also eat rock for the same reason we eat salt however it probably have to be the right kind of rock.  They might not eat granite for the same reason we don\'t eat would.

We have one race that\'s totally carnivorous.  They also might be opposed to cooking food.  For them succulent means fresh.

There\'s also the category of fungus.  After all that is what a mushroom is.  There could be a wide range of edible fungus.

It would be cool to have trees that don\'t look anything like what were accustomed to.  An underground environment could produce some pretty strange things.

[hook]

something i wanted to post quite a few times already, but was to lazy/busy to make a new thread myself: trees should be bigger (maybe not all, but still), and there should be some woods outside

[Fish]

That would make a lot of sense.  Since there\'s probably a lack of high winds underground the trees could get extremely large and not fall over.  And if you subscribe to Darwin evolution taller trees would have an advantage.  Some trees could be so incredibly large they could have a hollow dungeon inside of them.  With a above ground Sunnyside and the below ground route side part.  But they also could be an interesting place to live.

I like it.

[Skain]

y not start a trend and have real grass, like, well this is a bad example but

[Fish]

I\'m not sure but wouldn\'t grass in that kind of detail pushed the polygon count to an unacceptably high level.

[Skain]

ah you\'d think right? but ive been considering this, ill need to draw a diagram to explain it though, ill have to do it thursday because i have no exams then, but i have an idea that really should work but im not too sure howd impressive looking it would be.


Long grass patches like the one in the screeny should be relatively easy to do though and shouldnt be any kind of strain on comps running the game if im right, they are just strategically placed single dimensions of mostly transparent texture.

[boonet]

Basically the old method of flat transparent polygons with grass textures is now obsolete. We plan to have grass, but it\'g gonna be realized using pixel shaders once the new CS renderer is complete. Pixel shaders offer several benefits, like in example the ability of dynamic grass (perturbed by players walking in it, or wind moving it).

[Skain]

Originally posted by boonet
Basically the old method of flat transparent polygons with grass textures is now obsolete. We plan to have grass, but it\'g gonna be realized using pixel shaders once the new CS renderer is complete. Pixel shaders offer several benefits, like in example the ability of dynamic grass (perturbed by players walking in it, or wind moving it).

shway i shud get with the times

[hook]

boonet:
neat

we should also take into account that not everywhere grows the same grass/trees/undergrowth/bushes/etc. here\'s a few examples:

plane: tall grass, bushes, lonely tall trees

forests: in forests the undergrowth usually gets shorter (and softer), the thicker the forest is and the bigger the trees are, directly under the trees there\'s usually less undergrowth and usually more moss.

pine-forests: pine forests tend to have very little (rough grass leaves), but usually no undergrowth

also what i haven\'t seen in a (MMO)RPG yet is that the forest would also have dead trees, chopped or otherwise fallen

another factor would have to be the geographical position of the place ...for example: on a very high mountain you cannot imagine having a more then a few extra-rough bushes, pines and grass/flowers (think alps) ...although we could change that one, since we\'re not on the surface

well, IMO, it would be best to ask a biologist to say something more about it

[Niber]

Originally posted by boonet
Basically the old method of flat transparent polygons with grass textures is now obsolete. We plan to have grass, but it\'g gonna be realized using pixel shaders once the new CS renderer is complete. Pixel shaders offer several benefits, like in example the ability of dynamic grass (perturbed by players walking in it, or wind moving it).

Wuh Boonet! that is really cool... 2bad I have forgotten what a Pixel Shader was .. But I\'ve never really enjoyed those flattes even in grafical masterpeices such as Asherons Call 2.

Dynamic is really good. The atmosfear is the most important for me in games and grass fields that moves in sync to trees with the right ambient track would be way cool.

[Faramir]

man pixel shaders ??,, wowo you can handle this ?? ............................


you know for example in 3d mark 2001 the water scene with the man who was fishing...well it is a pixel shader water, so imagine !!!!!!!! and if you run the code creature bench the grass is also pixel shader just like described !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kuiper7986]

sorry to burst the bubble, but this isn\'t really on topic, I didn\'t mean it to be about 3d grass and pixel shaders, it\'s more about herbs, plants, and vegetation in the gameplay.

[Fish]

Yes back to trees and things.

Since in other threads they\'ve talked about having other areas that connect to the main area that we now play in we have an opportunity to change the plant life to be totally different in different areas.  You can have areas that have only mushrooms in them.  You can have an area where all the plants are colored blue.  Every different area can be like its own little world.

A new concept for an area may be a tree that is so large that it\'s connected to the ceiling.  You can enter an entrance in the base of it that can take you to a new area or passage on the top.  Or you can go through a dungeon labyrinth in its root system.  The tree itself is another labyrinth.  Each branch acting like a room with encounters on the top of it.

This is one of the true beauty\'s of the concept of plain shift.  The idea that you\'re not hemmed in with one concept working.  Trees don\'t have to look like trees plants don\'t have to look like plants you can let your imagination run wild and it all works.  The cool thing is to come up with ecosystems and plants that are totally weird and end up being a played elements in the game.

[hook]

i like the huge-tree idea ...i\'d looooooveeee to see that implemented ...an area that\'s completely made from one tree