When I was doing a lot of graphic design, I loved the fact that you could make a very nice curve using from 1 to 3 points. Wouldn't it be great if this could be done in soldat? For those of you who know about bezier curves, it would be these and other types of dynamic curves using a couple points. This would involve redoing the .pms format, but would make the game look that much nicer. To solve the issue of coloring when you have a giant curve, special points could be placed anywhere on the polies. These would be color points, and would be set to a color, like verticies are now. This would make shading much easier because you wouldn't be limited to the way you set up your polies, and could make for some maps with much better shading.

I know it would be tons of work for Michal, but wouldn't this add so much to the game?

THis could be better in the long run, considering you wouldn't have to use as many polygons to sexy up a ceetain wall, etc. Nice idea!

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Now I'm not saying I don't support this idea, but it seems to be virtually impossible to achieve, and it's really not that hard to make smooth edges for a boulder using just a few more polygons. Still, if it can be done, go for it!

Even quadrilateral polies would be a drastic improvement, since you'd be able to build a wall composed of 4 vertices instead of 6.

Bezier curves would be too good to be true... And unfortunately it may very well be so, depending on how collision detection is done; it could turn out that determining where that bullet's gonna ricochet to would be quite different on a rounded surface than the simple flat surfaces of the current triangular polygons.

Cross yer fingers :P

quote:Originally posted by Keron Cyst"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Now I'm not saying I don't support this idea, but it seems to be virtually impossible to achieve, and it's really not that hard to make smooth edges for a boulder using just a few more polygons. Still, if it can be done, go for it!


Im with Keron. I dont see much problem with how it is, but, if Michal can redo the whole format and implement this totally new getup, then im all for it. This would indeed be a drastic improvement for Soldat.

It's not the same thing you want, but with Sava you can convert bezier curves saved as SVG to PMS/polygons:
http://archive.forums.soldat.pl/topic.php?topic_id=25389

I was gonna make a comment about how that program has the whole concave angle issue, but when I checked out the topic (exactly for in case this were so), I realized I actually had an old version from when it was called SVGtoPMS or whatever.

As such, I quite belatedly bow before you.

quote:Originally posted by Keron Cyst"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."



this isn't a forum where we fix problems (there's an entirely other section devoted to just that)
we here try to think of ideas to further enhance soldat in virtually all aspects.

i'm for this idea as this will create much smoother looking maps not infested with straight lined polygons, etc. Although you can make smooth-looking curves, an actual feature that automatically renders curves would be far more efficient!

Its not needed however If you were to do this with polyworks or any other current mapmaking program (making tiny poly so whereever u clicked u would shade then it would create bouncy polygons.