Take On Mars discussion (continued from off-topic)

[dram 14]

Hi!

I just learned about this game yesterday, and I must say that I cannot wait till I get my hands on it. It was an instant pre-order. Just now after reading most of this thread and all of the other threads, I had this idea, not sure if this should be posted in suggestions, or if it's already planned.

I propose a 3D camera for the rovers. I'm not sure what scientific purpose it would serve, but the coolness factor would be great. The reason I'm asking is, that I'd like to see Oculus Rift support for this game. As in with Vireio support. Exploring Mars in it self is pretty cool, but if it were in 3D, wouldn't it be even cooler?

I guess you could have 3d in external views too, but for hard mode, if the external views are disabled there, an 3d camera would be cool. It could be an advanced form of photo camera, or even an advanced navigational camera, with colour.

It would be like running 2 cameras and then some in terms of power drain..

Well actually there's no need to add specific cameras, the 3D technology is already supported. That is, 3D glasses support was added to the engine before. That being said, Oculus is something we want to look into, so hopefully adding support for that will not be an issue.

And I'd also like to state how pleased I am with your responses to the public, I think you're handling it all really well, thumbs up from me :D

Thank you for your appreciation :) We have always been aimed at making games for our community to enjoy, and modding support has thus been very important to us, as it allows players to unleash their creativity, try new ideas.

How possible would it be to mod in small drones that could fly either like a plane or like a helicopter?

Actually quite easy. We do not have seriously detailed atmospheric simulation (we are not a flight sim after all), but using vehicle scripting you could write a vehicle that works like a helicopter, simulating each individual blade, which according to orientation gives more lift or drag. Obviously it won't be as perfect as DCS Black Shark, unless you wrote a very long script doing the same things.

As for a plane, that would also be possible, working on similar principles as the helicopter, so again, with the vehicle scripts you can do many things, but of course the limitation is one's knowledge of C++ or scripting in general. We will be releasing several examples post release and will try to help with scripts as much as possible.

---------- Post added at 15:06 ---------- Previous post was at 13:12 ----------

That is an interesting article. Depending on how hard it will be to make models on par with the models already in the game, I will be making a drone mod. On the subject on modding, will there be a modding section for this game? It would be useful if the modding scene gets big enough.

Yes, as soon as the game is released to early access on the 1st of august, we will also open the modding sub-forum.

I will have to learn the new scripting language, but it shouldn't be too hard as I'm already programming simple stuff in C# :)

If you're familiar with C# then you should have no trouble.

I figure the hardest part will be to have the visuals of a mod to live up to the game it self. With 60-100 parts in a rover from what I heard, it will be interesting to say the least.

Remember it is the vehicle cut up into pieces, so the process is to make the full model of the vehicle, then cut it up into individual pieces, then defining a config for the vehicle (including joints, weight of each part etc). To give an example, the Large Rover setup is as so:

Rover - 20 pieces

Sky Crane - 33 pieces

Robotic Arm on Rover - 6 pieces

Mast with Laser Spectrometer - 6 pieces

Slots for additional instruments (cameras, drill, apxs etc) - up to 38 on the main body, 5 on the arm, 3 on the mast

So at full capacity, a rover setup along with its landing system makes up approximately 111 parts. That is obviously a staggering amount, but remember that this is the largest rover, the most advanced. Plus usually you won't fill every single slot available, so it should be less.

[nikssims 12]

Will we be able to control landing craft? In those videos i cant get clear answer.

By the way, release date is 1st August, right? :)

[dram 14]

Will we be able to control landing craft? In those videos i cant get clear answer.

It's in the plan, not implemented yet though.

By the way, release date is 1st August, right? :)

Yes, 1st of August is the release date for Early Access on Steam.

[Dohman 10]

Hello again! I have been stalking this forum ever since i heard about this game. I have been checking the forum almost hourly, I'm just that excited :D

I'd like to know if there is a possibility of adding phone wallpapers to the website.. I'd love to have a picture of one of the rovers or the lander on my iPhones background ;)

[zalifer 10]

I'd like to know if there is a possibility of adding phone wallpapers to the website.. I'd love to have a picture of one of the rovers or the lander on my iPhones background ;)

Just in case they don't have time, I threw this together. It is not native resolution, but that is because the images I had were not high enough for retina screens. Its shaped for the iphone 5, but should scale for earlier iphones just fine.

http://i.imgur.com/1jZfckd.png (235 kB)

[Dohman 10]

Just in case they don't have time, I threw this together. It is not native resolution, but that is because the images I had were not high enough for retina screens. Its shaped for the iphone 5, but should scale for earlier iphones just fine.

http://i.imgur.com/1jZfckd.png (235 kB)

That is awesome :D Thank you!

[dram 14]

Hello again! I have been stalking this forum ever since i heard about this game. I have been checking the forum almost hourly, I'm just that excited :D

I'd like to know if there is a possibility of adding phone wallpapers to the website.. I'd love to have a picture of one of the rovers or the lander on my iPhones background ;)

Hi, I'm glad to hear the excitement. We'll look into the wallpapers on monday and see if it is possible. Our schedules are very full at the moment as I'm sure you can imagine, however it may be possible to fit this in. I'll post again on monday.

[nikssims 12]

Can we edit the rover? Like adding parts, or instruments?

[zalifer 10]

Can we edit the rover? Like adding parts, or instruments?

I believe that it is a "slot" style system. You choose a rover frame, which has slots, or attachment point, on which, you might place an arm, camera, drill, or some other item. I do not believe you can build the rovers/landers from scratch, such as placing wheels, batteries, etc.

[onlinegamesz 10]

Yes, 1st of August is the release date for Early Access on Steam.

This game is so awesome, I can not wait to play it, thanks for making this.

but one question, you said on 1st August it will be released on steam as Early Access? so like Arma 3, from Alpha to Beta and then Full version?

[avion09 10]

First, thank you for this wonderful game

will it be possible to send a rover and a lander at the same time?

(Mars Pathfinder)

and a second question, Weather? with wind, temperature day / night, and dust storms that will require rovers solar panel has to stop?

winter / summer, with temperature difference (and pressure) ?

thank you for this great game and sorry for my english

Edited July 21, 2013 by avion09

[nikssims 12]

Will the trails of rover dissapear? There is a wind on mars, so it should, but how long will it stay? It will be wierd if the trails start to dissapear after 5m.

[purepassion 22]

Will the trails of rover dissapear? There is a wind on mars, so it should, but how long will it stay? It will be wierd if the trails start to dissapear after 5m.

From one of the E3 interviews, I can remember that the trails will stay for a fairly long time

[Dohman 10]

This talk of trails makes me think about how the game handles trails on the rocky texture that lies under the sand. If the rocks heightmap is 'higher' at a certain place, the sand will not display there. But it would look bad if you drove over said rock, only to find that the wheels still make dust trails.. How does the game handle this situation? If it's something you have already thought about, and possibly come up with a solution, I'd love to hear what the 'fix' is, and a technical answer would be really cool with me ;)

---------- Post added at 19:55 ---------- Previous post was at 19:51 ----------

And while I'm here, is there any possibility of giving us the details about attachment point dimensions before august 1st? I'd love to be able to fiddle around with some models for the game.. What dimensions are the different base rovers/lander? And how should blender be set up to work with this game?

[dram 14]

I believe that it is a "slot" style system. You choose a rover frame, which has slots, or attachment point, on which, you might place an arm, camera, drill, or some other item. I do not believe you can build the rovers/landers from scratch, such as placing wheels, batteries, etc.

Yes, this is exactly how it works. It would be possible to do with rovers as well (have attachment points for wheels etc) but there is not much point. In a mod you could easily make a super-customizable rover if you pleased, due to every part being able to be snapped off, this would not be an issue.

This game is so awesome, I can not wait to play it, thanks for making this.

but one question, you said on 1st August it will be released on steam as Early Access? so like Arma 3, from Alpha to Beta and then Full version?

Yes it will be released as early access on steam on the 1st of august, this is so we can get feedback from you guys and adjust the game accordingly. So most things that players will be unhappy about can be changed, or things that players love can be improved further etc.

First, thank you for this wonderful game

will it be possible to send a rover and a lander at the same time? (Mars Pathfinder)

Each rover/lander has its own "landing system". For landers this is simply a heat shield essentially, but for rovers this is the correct landing system that they used in reality. This means that for the large rover you have essentially the sky crane setup, for the medium rover you have the airbag landing system like Spirit and Opportunity had, and for the small rover you have the airbag landing system with base station (just like Pathfinder/Sojourner). So with the small rover you will be able to watch it from the base station but drive it at the same time.

and a second question, Weather? with wind, temperature day / night, and dust storms that will require rovers solar panel has to stop?

Solar panels are simulated according to distance from the sun, direct line of sight to the sun, brightness of the sun (morning/noon/afternoon etc), and the weather value also affects the panels, however weather is not fully implemented at this point, but will be added.

winter / summer, with temperature difference (and pressure) ?

Yes, this is all implemented.

Will the trails of rover dissapear? There is a wind on mars, so it should, but how long will it stay? It will be weird if the trails start to disappear after 5m.

Currently we have them stay for quite a long time (over an hour from memory) but the length is limited to 120m at this point. This will change in the future, ideally saving the trails and fading them through time. However this is not a top priority at this point.

This talk of trails makes me think about how the game handles trails on the rocky texture that lies under the sand. If the rocks heightmap is 'higher' at a certain place, the sand will not display there. But it would look bad if you drove over said rock, only to find that the wheels still make dust trails.. How does the game handle this situation? If it's something you have already thought about, and possibly come up with a solution, I'd love to hear what the 'fix' is, and a technical answer would be really cool with me ;)

Ok, so technical answer it is. Quite simple actually. Detail textures are painted onto the terrain by hand, which give it the appearance of rock/sand etc. These then generate a "material map" of sorts, which is then used to determine which material is impacted with at each point on the map. This affects physics as well as the tracks. Tracks are only generated on sand materials, but the resolution of the material map is, from memory approximately 4096x4096, which means that the precision is 1m. Though this applies to the textures anyway so it should not pose a problem.

And while I'm here, is there any possibility of giving us the details about attachment point dimensions before august 1st? I'd love to be able to fiddle around with some models for the game.. What dimensions are the different base rovers/lander? And how should blender be set up to work with this game?

The largest rover is 4 meters long, meters wide, and 3.2 meters tall, roughly. The smallest rover, on the other hand, is 1.6 meters long, 1.1 meters wide and 0.6 meters tall. Attachment points are defined as points in the config file, where you define offset and rotation. Blender was used for some models in Carrier Command Gaea Mission, however throughout the development of Take On Mars we have not been using blender at all. I will look into this later on, but I am pretty sure the process requires the model to be exported to 3DS Max prior to being exported to the engine as a .txo file.

[avion09 10]

thank you for you reply,

I have another question

can there be a fault that the landing would lose the rover?

[dram 14]

thank you for you reply,

I have another question

can there be a fault that the landing would lose the rover?

Yes, during the landing sequence parts can fail, thus dropping the entire vehicle to the ground, failing the mission. You can affect the probability of these for each part by adjusting "quality" values for each. High quality means very very low probability of failure, but quite expensive, low quality is cheap but has a higher chance of failure. There are 3 levels of quality.

[nikssims 12]

Currently we have them stay for quite a long time (over an hour from memory) but the length is limited to 120m at this point. This will change in the future, ideally saving the trails and fading them through time. However this is not a top priority at this point.

Oh ok, i hope in future it will be made to stay longer, but thats not the most importang thing anyway.

May i ask what is left to do until 1st of august?

[dram 14]

May i ask what is left to do until 1st of august?

Unfortunately I cannot give an exact list of what is left to do, however I can say that in general it involves finishing the planned scenarios, tweaking campaign values, tweaking vehicles and instruments, and so on. There is also one major feature being worked on as well.

[jeza 5416]

Dram interms of terrain modding which a decent amount of us are into and assuming it is okay to use oxygen but pre that getting sat masks ect, maybe post release for those of us wanting to create realistic terrains you could put up a resource for sat maps for mars to work with/from like google mars as I use google earth pro to for arma maps, just a thought.

[dram 14]

Dram interms of terrain modding which a decent amount of us are into and assuming it is okay to use oxygen but pre that getting sat masks ect, maybe post release for those of us wanting to create realistic terrains you could put up a resource for sat maps for mars to work with/from like google mars as I use google earth pro to for arma maps, just a thought.

Editing terrain in Take On Mars is a little different to ArmA, as it uses an upgraded version of the CC:GM engine, enforce. To edit terrain you use Workbench, a tool for editing terrain, particles, materials, viewing objects, etc. You can"paint" objects onto the terrain using the tool there, so all terrain related editing is done completely in this tool. I would compare it to Unity in terms of the process.

As for resources for satellite maps, you can get ridiculously high-resolution images from Mars at the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) here:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/

This is the source that we used to get the base images, which had to be quite adjusted (remove shadows and so on). The license there is public domain, so you may use the images as long as there is credit to NASA/JPL. To give an example, with victoria crater, we took the color section (the 1.5km strip in the center) and for the rest of the 4km we took the grayscale image (which covers a wider area) and colored it according to the color strip, along with lower-res imagery, keeping as close to reality as possible.

[jeza 5416]

I see, actually creating a 'map' for TOM should be rather a lot of fun and thanks for the links. Is there an engine limit to the size btw like nothing above 500km² or something? Thanks.

[DJankovic 401]

Unfortunately I cannot give an exact list of what is left to do, however I can say that in general it involves finishing the planned scenarios, tweaking campaign values, tweaking vehicles and instruments, and so on. There is also one major feature being worked on as well.

I love how misterius are you :) and that is one more reason i cant wait..but this game is awesome...and can u tell me what are the rules of getting the game before it is released???

[dram 14]

I see, actually creating a 'map' for TOM should be rather a lot of fun and thanks for the links. Is there an engine limit to the size btw like nothing above 500km² or something? Thanks.

Currently the limit to terrain size is dependent on terrain detail, so you can have massive terrain but with less fine detail. We have a heightmap resolution of 0.5m for the 4x4km terrains. We played around with 8x8km, where we had half the resolution. Additionally the limit is also in supertexture resolution, which we have 16kx16k. On the 8x8km terrain we had the same resolution, so half the detail, but it still looked fine. We do have very detailed locations, and chose 4x4km more because of a limit of manpower rather than tech limits.

I love how misterius are you :) and that is one more reason i cant wait..but this game is awesome...and can u tell me what are the rules of getting the game before it is released???

I'm glad so many people are looking forward to it. Though I'm not sure what you mean by rules? The game will be released on steam as an early access title on the 1st of august, so you will be able to play it, make mods for it, make videos of it etc.

[jeza 5416]

Thanks for the reply, post release as it is an early access title how many frequent updates can we expect, is it akin to arma 3? I only ask as any one modding may have to update their work for the latest versions every so often?

Cheers.