Display of thin lines?

#1

Thinking about think lines, I am wondering if and how they will be visible and displayed in Stonehearth. Let’s take a bow. In the following wallpaper the bowstring is missing:

http://www.stonehearth.de/weblog/wp-content/gallery/wallpapers/archer1-kopie.png

While this might work for a bow, how about e.g. fishing? Would a fishing pole without a fishing line work? At the moment I would have a tendency to implement them as a long line of voxels which are sized down to be smaller than the standard voxel used for the item where such a line is attached to.

What do you think?

Ropes, Ropes, Ropes what will you use them for?
#2

im actually ok with the “assumed string” design… its sort of inline with the missing arms from the models…

as for fishing, i suppose the unit would be holding the rod, and it would have a corresponding piece of [square] bait in the water (bobbing every so slightly)… or perhaps, they use nets to collect the fish? :smile:

#3

Nets would be an idea… but also require thinner lines than one voxel of the picture above. For sure a bait in the water would indicate that the fishing line is thrown… but not sure if it would look nice. It would also take away a bit from the animation to throw the line… if your settler just swings a stick around, no?

Just trying to think about other occasions where thinner lines would come handy.

#4

i dunno… it just takes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief i suppose… i mean, we’re OK with no arm and leg segments… :smiley:

we’ll likely see the archer pull back and release the arrow, similar to how the fisherman will simply motion the rod back and forth to cast the bait into water…

simple… then again, i’m easy to please… (thats a freebie for @Geoffers747 to respond with)

#5

It could be added post model design, or during the animation phase. Though I’m not sure what use seeing a string on a bow would be since we’ll be look down on the at a 65% angle 300 feet in the air :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

@Pandemic Maybe you are right and the distance makes it needless… I will simply try it out and see :wink:.

#7

Let me know how it turns out, I can’t exactly have a series with bows without strings :stuck_out_tongue:

#8

I agree. Assumed string is definitely the way forward imo, especially for bows.

If its immersion ruining for you then you’d have to add bow flex to stop the string looking like an elastic band.

Fishing lines aren’t so bad to implement. I added one to my original sandpit.

#9

For sure if “thin lines” do find their way into the game they need a proper animation… that is somehow a core assumption behind my considerations. A bowstring needs to behave like one… and a fishing line needs to “fly around” while the fisher is swinging the rod. Now the question is if this is all worth it…

[enter link description here][1]

@Pandemic Not a bow… but I guess from that distance it is quite ok and looks not thaaat bad, if you are using a bait as @SteveAdamo suggested. I guess with a bow, the arrow would make the difference.
[1]: http://www.stonehearth.de/storage/fishing_feasibility.png

#10

wow, thanks for providing a qubicle representation! :smile:

and yes, from a distance i think this looks perfectly fine… its quite obvious what that unit is doing, etc. well done!

#11

Indeed, but somehow, that lack of line makes it feel as if my GPU isn’t powerful enough to handle even that small of a render distance… It makes me feel as if my PC is incompetent, even.

That is what I would be saying for other games. For Stonehearth, it looks perfectly fine!

#12

From a distance it might really work…

A bit bumpy, but I think you get the idea, especially with the bait swimming in the water.

And as I was already in Blender, I have tried this time to animate without Armatures (as the devs are). Here a try to animate an idle movement:

Looks more like he is snoring than idling… but that might be the reason I was not funded via Kickstarter :stuck_out_tongue:.

#13

W[quote=“voxel_pirate, post:12, topic:2327”]
not funded via Kickstarter
[/quote]

Well, you know, the Kickstarter kind of made it their job to do that… so they can work on it all day with little to nothing (besides lunch, of course) coming between them and making an incredible animation… And you threw this together in about, what, 15 minutes? Maybe 20?

#14

i think it works perfectly, and is exactly how i imagined it… now picture that from an even further zoomed perspective, and you will hardly notice the missing fishing line…

nice work!

#15

I swear they’re using them, or at least using an approximation of them. Maybe they just use them for things like the fingers and I’m remembering the rest wrong.

#16

It can be “invisible” because for most objects it’s fine. If you want to make a net or something you can just bulid (make) it like normal. Once it’s been rendered it will look less blocky and a bit smoother.