I didn't see anything about this in the forums so I'm asking here:

will there ever be terrain runtime deformation ? as in making tire track imprints into the terrain, footstep imprints or digging or mining

or is there a way to do this already ?

Thanks

no way to do this in GameGuru at the moment. Would need some kind of realtime CSG cutting I would have thought.

[edit-having a rethink now that you can't die in water, you could just shift + left mouse button to dig into the terrain and then embed tunnel/cave entities/segments/pipes. turn off the water system if you want. There was also a twitch broadcast (miss those), showing how to create your own caves, back in the days when water did kill you.]

ya that is just in the editor when you use shift + left mouse click to edit terrain. I want to be able to do that ingame like real digging.

but what if I imported a huge mesh making it an entity like a normal object but huge instead and then used script to alter it ?

ya why not

Bit unrelated/related if anyone wants to know how to enable water instant death again, its a simple setup.ini setting and i also provided a script, if say you want some levels to have instant deaths in water and not others.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219905#msg2603617



For footsteps and fire treads, you can have entities generate a number of decals to be placed on the terrain (and appropriator slanted). I was going to do a test with this in a snow setting. Of course after about 6 or so footsteps the decals then update to the new locations.



You'd have to script in a way to boolean the "limbs" parts of the mesh. Or use animations. Its actually very easy to work with entity clusters. and when you hit the nearest cluster it disappears, revealing the other clusters behind it.

if you had access to the mesh memblock you could do it directly - for actual grooves etc (basically editing a model in runtime).

a decal could work for flat tyre tracks but it would be very difficult to get them looking nice on terrain that isn't flat as if the terrain isn't flat you would need many decals to follow the bumps etc otherwise they will be sticking up all over the place... not a simple task to automate.

A spline system of some sorts would be needed me thinks. Not sure it is possible in lua though and defo as said not an easy one.

any ideas on how or where to start to make this huge mesh with pieces ?

@smallg what is mesh memlock ?
ya i tried decal footprints in other game engines and they floated everywhere near the terrain surfaces lol

I never could even use the blood decals. They pop/blink and disappear and reappear all over the place. And like smallg say's, you can't shape them to the terrain. Foot prints and tire tracks would add a lot to a game. Your muddy roads would look awesome. Even snow covered roads.