[Visuals] Spiky Creeper

[Ranakastrasz]

I think we need a smooth effect on the creeper. The sharp spikes still feel pretty wrong. It doesn't look quite as much like a liquid as it ought to, even if this is just a 3d varient of roughly what it looked like in 2d. Most notably though, the tallest cell in 2D appeared as flat surfaces, not singular spikes.

There were a few ideas I came up with, but most have problems. The most important being that any solution must only modify the graphics, and not modify the actual height. (Otherwise visually short waves or spikes might roll over walls taller than them. Which while admittedly possible, probably would also look weird)

Apply a smooth effect to the mesh, possiby by having more vertexes(I think thats the word) and make it more curved. Spikes would have more rounded tops at the least.

Scale to neighbors, so it would be taller or shorter based on adjacent cells. Spikes would be shorter, and the surroundings taller.
May be preferable to only scale upwards, because of the cliff issue again.

Past that, The Singularity orbital spell causes a massive spike. I think it should also apply a graphical effect, ideally from more normal rules, such that it appears massively shorter, The mechanic is great in 2d since you can't see it acting like a Cylindrical field, but it looks weird in 3d. Having it end up in a short bulge with very shallow creeper around it which, on the field ending explodes in all directions INCLUDING (Visually) upwards, would be far more satisfying.

[Hilol1000]

I disagree with your suggestion because i kinda like the spikiness of the creeper. However i understand why people may like it to be smoother. I think if virgil was going to make it smooth i think in the graphical options there should be a switch that allows you to switch between spiky creeper and smooth creeper. :)

[GoodMorning]

CW3 Creeper is, in a way, smoother, because it doesn't include waves.

If this visualisation was used for CW3 Creeper, then great spikes would appear over Emitters, which would then fall/flatten.

[J]

Remember that V added an option for creepified particles at the very end of the development of Particle Fleet? Can't tell for sure, but there's a chance something similar will happen to CW4.

[Ranakastrasz]

@J

Wait what? when did that happen? I have to try that.

@Hilol1000

Yea. I suppose making it an option would be better.

@GoodMorning

Actually, looking at CW3, Tall creeper has a flat top, and doesn't come to a point. But again, thats a 2d vs 3d graphics thing.

The waves don't really enter into it. In both games the emitters produce a large amount of creeper in a single tile, which admittedly in 2D doesn't look very tall (because you can't really see the height from a top-down perspective, just the depth from the blue/otherwise tint. That and the differing levels are displayed as a border with creeper on either side.

Waves, admittedly, make it more common, but even if you turned off wave mechanic entirely, you would still have spikes on every emitter.

[Grabz]

Waves, admittedly, make it more common, but even if you turned off wave mechanic entirely, you would still have spikes on every emitter.

Emitters actually emit in a 3x3 radius now in order to combat the very tall spike that would appear.

The "spiky creeper" issue is actually something that has been known for a while now and many attempts were made to alleviate it, some of them really quite successful, having watched the recent videos. You might notice that since the very first videos, creeper dampening has been increased a fair bit (resulting in waves that drop off quicker) and player weaponry no longer creates splash, like Mortars used to. These were some of the more noticeable things that happened that I could see in the videos.

While all this effort is great and the game is looking better than ever, these have all been behavior changes for the simulation. You can spawn a checkerboard of creeper and still observe the spiky effect. And as the game is going to have a scripting language, players are going to create some crazy stuff involving the new creeper, which is probably going to produce tons of disturbances and tons of spiky creeper. Actually, perhaps the easiest example would be creating a custom emitter - that's the sort of thing people who are new to the scripting might be inclined to make for a learning project, and they might not think to emit in a 3x3 radius.

With this in mind, it could be beneficial to apply some sort of smoothing effect for the renderer, but on the other hand, it could be seen as lying to the player about the current state of creeper.

[Ranakastrasz]

Huh. Interesting. At least I know this is known and there is effort to fix it.

I will point out that if the rules are consistent, it isn't really lying about the state of the creeper. It wouldn't be much different than the height cap mentioned in an earlier video.

[Karsten75]

You might like the new visuals that are most likely going to also be the "real" creeper. :)