Outerra forum

Anteworld - Outerra Game => Terrain & terrain data issues => Topic started by: grahamwell on June 20, 2016, 03:38:25 pm

Title: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: grahamwell on June 20, 2016, 03:38:25 pm
It seemed like a great way to build smooth roads, delete all the intermediate markers, leaving just one in eight or one in ten.  The resulting road is lovely and smooth and easy to work with but ....

.. it seems to corrupt.  Not just that but the terrain supporting it behaves strangely too, not loading promptly or accurately, remaining stubbornly low res.  Turning around 360 sometimes helps.  Is this a bug?
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: cameni on June 20, 2016, 05:04:01 pm
There are some constraints on the length of the road segments, which aren't properly enforced yet when nodes are deleted or moved, and it can lead to some artifacts. The segments should not be longer than around 300m.

Terrain refinement problems usually mean there's a large elevation step somewhere, probably a result of these artifacts.
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: grahamwell on June 20, 2016, 05:11:17 pm
Well that explains it.  Thanks.  Hopefully you can see why I'd want to do it, I was making the Little St. Bernard pass and cutting down the segments helped a lot.   Except it broke everything  :-[

Here's a thought.  Would it be OK to make the road, delete lots of markers (beyond the limit), re-make the road nice and straight, then use insert to put markers back in (and remake again)?   Would save a lot of time.
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: cameni on June 21, 2016, 02:21:48 am
I guess correctly it would work by auto-adding markers when the resulting segment is too long, putting the marker on the precise interpolated position.
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: Acetone on June 21, 2016, 05:16:02 am

Here's a thought.  Would it be OK to make the road, delete lots of markers (beyond the limit), re-make the road nice and straight, then use insert to put markers back in (and remake again)?   Would save a lot of time.

It's something I do sometimes:
- Create a long road.
- Remove x number of nodes ("suppr") but don't reload the road ("make")
- You now have a completely straight segment, but it's too long and may break the terrain.
- Simply select the first node at one end and use "inser" key to add multiple new nodes between these two. Since they are still parallel to the two main nodes, the road will be completely straight. I often use this when I have to create a non-asphalt airfield :)
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: grahamwell on June 21, 2016, 06:14:02 pm
OK.  It seems my method above didn't work and the terrain is corrupted again.   Is it the remaking of the road with segments that are too long the problem?   Even if you subsequently fix it?   I can work with the idea that you delete them then reinsert before making, thanks for the tip Acetone.

If you do end up with the terrain problem - caused by the 'elevation step' is there any way you can fix it?  I don't want to delete this beautiful road.  It's the St. Bernard Pass and it's awesome, or would be if it worked :-)
Title: Re: Deleting road markers - not a good idea?
Post by: cameni on June 22, 2016, 03:44:42 am
Can you zip the cache and email to support at outerra.com so we can have a look what happened there?