physics related question..

[x84D80Yx]

that ridid body stuff is friggin sweet bro...damn makes hl2 seem even better.

btw the rigid body stuff was off this..
http://cgi3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~tkano/

 

[Apos]

Uh, in regards to "dawn," the game looks like it has Quake1 level polygon counts. It wouldn't be too hard to do water physics if you are satisfied with water looking like a blocky polygons and sprites. I'd have to see more of their water effects to say for sure, but color me very skeptical of their claims.

 

[Logic]

Originally posted by Apos
Uh, in regards to "dawn," the game looks like it has Quake1 level polygon counts. It wouldn't be too hard to do water physics if you are satisfied with water looking like a blocky polygons and sprites. I'd have to see more of their water effects to say for sure, but color me very skeptical of their claims.

I tend to agree, though the info and screenshots shown there were released one or two years ago, at least (if memory serves). I am certainly skeptical about the development of Dawn, but I still believe that water physics of that nature could be done on today's hardware.

Edit: I can't spell.

 

[Apos]

but I still believe that water physics of that nature could be done on today's hardware.

Nothing they said really implied realistic water. It implied ripple effects, splash effects (both of which HL2 has, in DX9 high-res glory), as well as waves: but all these can be done with simple tricks. Flowing water is, again, nearly impossible to simulate realistically without serious horsepower, but easy to hack up a really crappy version of, if you are satisfied with blocky polygons of water moving around.

 

[Logic]

I read quite a bit about the system back when the game was still under development (I think it went on hold or something), and the water system was designed specifically to allow for water flowing dynamically through user-dug trenches\moats etc. That implies a fairly high level of water physics, as opposed to simply tricks used for ripples and splashes. Obviously there's very little to back up these claims (and most of the information that used to be on the site is now gone), so I'm not really standing up for 'Dawn', but I do maintain that a system to approximately simulate the movement of water could be devised. It could perhaps be a combination of a very rough particle system (ie large particles), and the type of surface calculation found in that first water demo I mentioned. Obviously problems would arise if water spilled over edges etc, but that would all be taken into consideration when the system is designed. If I had time, and the help of some more programmers, I'd probably attempt to create a demo of a system like this. Sadly, I don't.

 

[OCybrManO]

I've thought up a bunch of different ways to solve different aspects of liquid physics... but combining them into one realistic system that doesn't require lots of CPU time is where it startts to become tricky.

I'll think about it some more... but I'm not promising anything.

 

[Logic]

Even if you don't end up working on anything, perhaps we (or you, if you don't want my help, or me if you don't want to help ) should throw a few ideas around and come up with a rough design for a system. Next year I'll be doing some HL2 modding (getting a team together hopefully), so if the system seems promising, and is able to be integrated into the source engine, perhaps it could be attempted then.

 

[Lifthz]

i'm betting it will be scripted to look similar to real life, it won't act totally dynamic like water in real life though, that's just stupid to think as of right now.

 

[Fuzzy]

Is water really that needed, its not crucial, and where you have to have it cant you just script it

 

[Logic]

Ah, but if you had a working water simulation system, you could create unique gameplay scenarios that rely on it, that would be different, and more spectacular than anything you could possibly do with scripted water sequences. It's not crucial, but you could say the same about havoc physics. Is it crucial? You could just script it instead. Obviously, though, having the havoc physics system opens up unlimited gameplay possibilities that weren't possible before.

It's good for developers to be ambitious and attempt to create systems that haven't successfully been achieved before. If no developers did this, games simply wouldn't be improving at the rate that they are.