Sasha wrote:The problem I see with dividing space into a grid is that it defeats the purpose of having zones around points of interest.
If space is going to be divided into a grid, all of space must be divided into a grid. Otherwise you just have isolated cubes around points of interest instead of spheres. (Spheres are easier to implement)
The grid-structure of space extends everywhere in a system, but it's only
visible (in the appropriate visualisation mode) around places where ownership has been established - the grid tapers off into transparency a little beyond territorial borders. In addition, the coordinate space of grids is set relative to the position of the point of interest.
Sasha wrote:I also think dividing space into a 3D grid would look a bit messy. Too many lines (personal opinion)
I also think that if space was divided into a 3D grid, in a heavily contested system you'd see a whole bunch of differently coloured semi transparent cubes stacked around each other. IMO, Isolated spheres would look better
Possibly. There's something quite similar to this that Josh has already implemented and used in other areas of Limit Theory (the command interface) . You see this at 10:19 onwards in
Development Update Video 8, and to me the grid-like structure looks really pretty. Granted, however, that he's showing a 2D grid and not a 3D one. However, I don't think that that my implementation would look very much different from the other implementations with pure spheres and metaballs; it'd really only just look more voxelly.
As regards two territories meeting, the following two things would naturally follow from a grid-based implementation:
- Metaball-like merging - if two territories owned by the same entity meet, then all the sectors inside the union of those two territories would be under your ownership, and this would look very much like a voxel-like merging of two metaballs.
- Contested space - if two territories owned by different entities meet, then a boundary of contested space would naturally form between them.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:i assume zones spherical and continous because of joshs notion that they are intended for AI usage.
The AI does not need "cube 132.548.32 with 436 points of czerka corporation ownership"
The coordinates are for the benefit of the player as well as the AI. Bear in mind that the AI should be treated in the same way to the player, so that whatever precision of data is available to the player should also be for the AI. If with the metaball scheme the player is only told "There is unlawful activity occurring near to station 5", that is all the AI is told as well. With the grid-based scheme, the system could tell you "There is unlawful activity occurring in sector 56.42.10 around station 5", and the same information would be given to NPCs.