Building roads

[Ocram]

Yeah I saw the post about dynamically created roads, but I keep my feet on the ground here.

The idea is to have the possibility to build roads like in other games (Banished, Forest Village and others games of sort) that are the preferred way for characters to walk around when they try to pathfind to a destination. Even with no speed bonuses, like other games do, this will ensure that the path they take is free and never(?) get stuck on something. Could use the same building system as walls and maybe add intersections shapes (T, +, whatever) and maybe some ramp to connect to unwalkable terrain.

[swillo]

If you were to do this it could be a very low wide type of wall that doesn't respect your ownership. It should require at least 5 build material per length. Building roads is a long and difficult process. But if in the end you could make a trail to and from your ore camp it would be nice.

[Ocram]

I meant solely the way you build walls in building mode, just the attaching and trailing, if more can be used of wall editing good for devs. It shouldn't really take much materials to "pave" something, walls are cheap and are more useful than roads (this statement is only true if characters don't stop at every little rock, for now is a paradox), also there could be different grades of roads, i.e. simple and cheap: just a bunch of sheet rocks on the ground; researched and decorative: a nice and beautiful road for late outpost decoration. At the end I don't really care even if it is invisible, I'm not for eyecandy, the key should be to have a way to let characters walk the way you want and not let them decide where to get stuck.

[Vandala]

There is a slight possibility that roads will just cause more problems. At least if we're talking about roads as structures that need to be placed on or above the ground where characters can walk on. Currently characters can and will completely ignore colision with placed structures if the structure has not completed loading yet, this sometimes causes the character to be stuck underneath a structure.

I also doubt the usefulness of being able to create a roadmap for your characters to follow in town. Won't that just lead to more problems with characters trying to stick to your roadmap which may not be wide enough for the amount of traffic it might get and cause trafic jams that way? What about if you get attacked, will characters have to keep obeying the roadmap? What about enemies, will they obey the roadmap? What about wild animals?

And this is more of a lore question, do roads or pavement make sense in this world? The planet feels like quite the dustball in a lot of places, would it make sense to create roads in those places where it might get burried in a week, or in the swamp where it might sink, or in the desert where there might be nothing to build on?

[Ocram]

There is a slight possibility that roads will just cause more problems. At least if we're talking about roads as structures that need to be placed on or above the ground where characters can walk on. Currently characters can and will completely ignore colision with placed structures if the structure has not completed loading yet, this sometimes causes the character to be stuck underneath a structure.

I also doubt the usefulness of being able to create a roadmap for your characters to follow in town. Won't that just lead to more problems with characters trying to stick to your roadmap which may not be wide enough for the amount of traffic it might get and cause trafic jams that way? What about if you get attacked, will characters have to keep obeying the roadmap? What about enemies, will they obey the roadmap? What about wild animals?

And this is more of a lore question, do roads or pavement make sense in this world? The planet feels like quite the dustball in a lot of places, would it make sense to create roads in those places where it might get burried in a week, or in the swamp where it might sink, or in the desert where there might be nothing to build on?

There is a building flag that let you walk just fine on buildings. Look at the many catwalk around.

Wideness for 2 chars should be plenty. Make it 3 and you have a decently large road with no real "too wide, can't fit" issues. Maybe with large characters like beasts, should be another reason to build that animal feeder.
Also, it should be the preferred path from point A to point B, no forcing them to stick to it involved. There's already a flag to make characters chose wether to follow roads or not, that could be expanded to something like "while doing job, follow my roads" this could be a flag only recruited chars can have. But I don't really see the problem if wandering npcs that walk close to my road decide to follow it to reach their destination.
Combat task could ignore that flag and let characters decide where to go.
These roads we are talkin about are not global magnets for every npc, you build then where you need them, so most of the times they should just get ignored.

Do building research benches, farms, needlessly large buildings, crafting benches, hashish stuff, anything really, make sense if we are gonna die? I don't get the point of that question.

The need for roads here is mainly logistics, I don't care having them or not as long as my characters don't get stuck on: rubbles, stairs, buildings, machinery, terrain. It's a way to solve many small pathfinding issues.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Dont think it will solve pathing issues. It could infact cause more then its worth. And the rendering costs required for new road system. And a way would be required to make it semi flush and above the land base. Which the game is not currently capable of doing.

This might work if the land could be edited. But for now. I dont see this solving any issues except possibly creating more.

[Ocram]

Dont think it will solve pathing issues. It could infact cause more then its worth. And the rendering costs required for new road system. And a way would be required to make it semi flush and above the land base. Which the game is not currently capable of doing.

This might work if the land could be edited. But for now. I dont see this solving any issues except possibly creating more.

Like walls (and other buildings) do, there could be a minimun height at whitch roads stick to the ground, making sure you can walk on them without having ground clipped within them. Still might not be feasible, I'm trying to give more details, but your point is clear, that's why I suggested ramps for unwalkable terrain, maybe a road can not be built there where the terrain is too impervious and a ramp can.

Not sure what you mean with rendering, but I think the major load would be on cpu for AI, but then it would be just as small as a normal squad pathfing around towns, they could be just nodes (I think that's what they are called) a character can decide to follow if he's close enough (or any other condition that makes sense and can be implemented).

I don't actually know if would be easier to solve every little edge or whatever a character can get stuck on or build a path to avoid obstacles, I guessed the second, that's why I posted, but I could be wrong, I'm just trying to help here.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Rendering as in render the physical road you want. If super long. Then thats a ton of building to render.
The larger a build is. The more your computer needs to load. Hence why super large cities can actually lag the game.

And a road system as you mentioned would be a massive build. Plus it would need the pathing ontop that.

Now it would be better if the Dev's made a visible road system via the texture map.
Least then it wouldn't be a massive rendering cost as your road system would be.

[Ocram]

Oh, I got it right then, I'm not talkin about "sampietrini" (similar method tho), just as lower level of detail as a slab road, some sheet here and there (could use stone to build it), I don't know how to describe it to give you the idea, but the result should not be that heavy on graphics.
I think the goal of building a road should be strictly the need of it, from machine to storage, maybe connect it to houses and that's it. Surely someone might find it a decoration and overload the map with roads, could do the same with walls, but why? xd

[Hatsune_Neko]

On the old map someone did infact build s wall across the entire landmass.
It caused havoc with pathing.

But on a whole. Think it would be easier and less resource consuming if the Dev's just continued to tweak the pathing engine instead of adding a new problem.

Im not for or against your idea. I just think its in the Dev's best interest to just continue working on the pathing issue instead.

[Ocram]

I'm not for or against either xd
Keeping on theme, can the iron debris, usually around iron resources, be walkable? They really are a pain for pathfinding. Beasts find it funny to do slalom between them when traveling too, splitting from the rest of the group.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Not that i know of.
But i do know some of the larger piece's can be mined for iron ore. But those are very few to my knowledge .

[Sol Lignum]

I've been messing with the current road-laying tools in the ingame editor once, and was left with a feeling that it's already implemented quite nicely, so why not to just polish it a little more and give players a legit access to it? Why bother with funky ground-level walls, when mechanics are already there, just not fully accessible yet?

[Vandala]

I've been messing with the current road-laying tools in the ingame editor once, and was left with a feeling that it's already implemented quite nicely, so why not to just polish it a little more and give players a legit access to it? Why bother with funky ground-level walls, when mechanics are already there, just not fully accessible yet?

How useful are these roads. Can you lay them in your town so characters don't get stuck on objects?

[Sol Lignum]

How useful are these roads. Can you lay them in your town so characters don't get stuck on objects?

It's just regular roads, like any other on the map. And of course, since it's ingame editor feature, you can lay them anywhere you want, including your town. If i remember correctly, over time AI gets it and start to follow them.

[Ocram]

I've been messing with the current road-laying tools in the ingame editor once, and was left with a feeling that it's already implemented quite nicely, so why not to just polish it a little more and give players a legit access to it? Why bother with funky ground-level walls, when mechanics are already there, just not fully accessible yet?

That's what I ment, that kind of road, but you need to know where the road is, easiest way is to build it and be able to destroy it as will.

[Sol Lignum]

That's what I ment, that kind of road, but you need to know where the road is, easiest way is to build it and be able to destroy it as will.

Of course, it takes some random texture, but is very visible, and completely destructable. All in all, the current tool for roads seems like a beta version, a bit wonky, a bit tricky, great overall, so i hope it'll be polished and released someday.