Are subterranian prefabs possible?

[geengaween]

One of the things I loved about the Bethesda Fallout series was the way you could be travelling through the world, find a manhole or a door in the wall, and find yourself in a dark warren of sewers or maintenance tunnels. Does the engine of 7DTD permit that kind of thing now? Or are PoI's strictly arranged on a 2D plain?

[Tehnomaag]

It is possible. 

In compopack there are fair few POI's that are entirely underground and only a small hatch leading down is above the ground. 

[geengaween]

Are they able to go below other PoI's and overlap?

[Tehnomaag]

21 minutes ago, geengaween said:

Are they able to go below other PoI's and overlap?

I am not aware of such functionality occuring on random. If they are "overlapping" it is a single POI that has parts of it under ground. I have seen few custom POI's in compopack that have significant underground elemeents attached to an above ground elements. 

[Liesel Weppen]

35 minutes ago, geengaween said:

Are they able to go below other PoI's and overlap?

No.

 

Also there is no way to create an "underground-only" POI. You can make a POI that has only underground stuff, but the surface itself will also be part of the POI. It's surface will not fit into the generated landscape (or will be blended in like known from  "normal" POIs).

 

Imho, you can see this with the vanilla "well-bunker" POI. There is only a well on the surface and next to it theres nothing and the surface is absolutely flat. Underground (going down the well) there is relatively large bunker, but sind POIs can not overlap, also not over oder under each other, everything next to it is as far away as the underground part is in size.

 

Afaik a POI has no height, it's always from bedrock to the sky. You can easily see this if you dig a tunnel far blow a poi. If the POI is reset by a trader quest, also the undergound structure respawns and you tunnel is closed again. And that's why you can't place POIs overlapping or even fully under or above each other.

[JCrook1028]

8 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

No.

 

Also there is no way to create an "underground-only" POI. You can make a POI that has only underground stuff, but the surface itself will also be part of the POI. It's surface will not fit into the generated landscape (or will be blended in like known from  "normal" POIs).

 

Imho, you can see this with the vanilla "well-bunker" POI. There is only a well on the surface and next to it theres nothing and the surface is absolutely flat. Underground (going down the well) there is relatively large bunker, but sind POIs can not overlap, also not over oder under each other, everything next to it is as far away as the underground part is in size.

 

Afaik a POI has no height, it's always from bedrock to the sky. You can easily see this if you dig a tunnel far blow a poi. If the POI is reset by a trader quest, also the undergound structure respawns and you tunnel is closed again. And that's why you can't place POIs overlapping or even fully under or above each other.

That POI is NOT only the well aboveground as part of the POI. The house standing there is also part of the POI aboveground portion.

[Danidas]

The way the game handles POIs is that each one is designed to fit into one of a few different plot sizes ranging from very small to large. In addition each plot has a series of meta data like tags denoting its tier and type such as residential, industry, commercial, etc. When the RNG or Nitrogen is generating the world it first generates the road ways and paths before branching out to place nodes for cities, towns, and random drive ways or paths. Next it uses a algorithm to place the POI plots around the nodes based on a series of rules such as all residential goes here and over there is the industry. Once the plots are in another algorithm goes through and tries to smooth things out to hide the POI boarders and yet another algorithm picks the actual POIs that will spawn in the plots.

 

As been said POIs go from bedrock to sky limit so it is impossible for two POIs to interact with each as the game also includes a buffer zone around each POI plot to avoid that.

 

 

[Kalen]

10 hours ago, geengaween said:

Are they able to go below other PoI's and overlap?

Due to structural integrity you can't really do that..... get the wrong combination and an underground POI could cause the above ground POI to collapse.

[Tin]

uhh, have you all checked out a mod called "Winter project" by Sphereii? 

You all might want to, if you think you can't spawn prefabs underground.

[Kalen]

19 minutes ago, Tin said:

uhh, have you all checked out a mod called "Winter project" by Sphereii? 

You all might want to, if you think you can't spawn prefabs underground.

I dont think anyone said you couldnt..... all that was said was that you couldn't spawn one POI underground beneath another POI.

[Tin]

1 minute ago, Kalen said:

I dont think anyone said you couldnt..... all that was said was that you couldn't spawn one POI underground beneath another POI.

Not a dig by any means, but you all 'might' be wrong about that as well  Things have come a long ways on the modding front. 

[DaChibii]

The SI issue isn't a engine issue, but a POI level design one. All you need to do is make sure the ceiling blocks of the sub-POI can be structural and support the weight (of anything) because remember SI is only checked horizontally. But I don't know if TFP wants to put the extra time into making sure of that.

And then it's just changing the x/y planar zoning into a 3D chunk one if the subterranean POIs span multiple chunks (although that from what I understand is not an easy or simple task and is an engine if I recall correctly).

[Kalen]

6 hours ago, DaChibii said:

The SI issue isn't a engine issue, but a POI level design one. All you need to do is make sure the ceiling blocks of the sub-POI can be structural and support the weight (of anything) because remember SI is only checked horizontally. But I don't know if TFP wants to put the extra time into making sure of that.

And then it's just changing the x/y planar zoning into a 3D chunk one if the subterranean POIs span multiple chunks (although that from what I understand is not an easy or simple task and is an engine if I recall correctly).

Not if we're talking about placing one POI under another.   The POI on the top could become structurally unsound if there are gaps below it.   As I'm sure you know, to be a support, a block needs to be have blocks below it all the way to bedrock.

[DaChibii]

On 10/7/2020 at 8:02 AM, Kalen said:

Not if we're talking about placing one POI under another.   The POI on the top could become structurally unsound if there are gaps below it.   As I'm sure you know, to be a support, a block needs to be have blocks below it all the way to bedrock.

... How do you think the Skyscrapers are built in the game?

Or any of the existing prefab POIs that exist underground. I mean you could put a whole skyscraper above a bunker POI, because the roof/ground is already structually sound. As I said... the only issue would be if the engine only allows for one POI per chunk because it only exists as a 2D plane, and not a 3D aggregate space. Other than it's only a Level Design POI issue.

And to be fair, I bet the current Level Designers at TFPs can do this but either don't have the time, or the programmers haven't figured out how to do it efficiently (I bet they broadly know how to do it, but making it not run like garbage is a whole other issue).

[Kalen]

3 hours ago, DaChibii said:

... How do you think the Skyscrapers are built in the game?

Or any of the existing prefab POIs that exist underground. I mean you could put a whole skyscraper above a bunker POI, because the roof/ground is already structually sound. As I said... the only issue would be if the engine only allows for one POI per chunk because it only exists as a 2D plane, and not a 3D aggregate space. Other than it's only a Level Design POI issue.

And to be fair, I bet the current Level Designers at TFPs can do this but either don't have the time, or the programmers haven't figured out how to do it efficiently (I bet they broadly know how to do it, but making it not run like garbage is a whole other issue).

Those are 1 prefab built with an underground component.  What is being asked here is having the ability to have 2 distinct prefabs built on top of each other.

[Pille]

I am fairly sure that it is possible. POI stacking requires manual placement though and you have to take into account the stability...

[doughphunghus]

something I haven't seen mentioned specifically, but may be part of the answer:

In the vanilla prefab editor, you can choose the specific "ground height level" to set your POI at.  You only get 1 choice per POI, and you have to set it (meaning you can't choose a list of possible heights and have it randomly pick one, or set some "ok to spawn in caves" setting that I'm aware of) . So for a single POI, you could sink it into the ground if you wanted to and make "ground height" be the top of the POI (like add some dirt/rock/etc on top)

 

But: The POI editor doesn't seem to allow for anything like "do something if another POI occupies this space", like move a POI lower or higher.  Its been said above, but the game seems to only allow 1 POI per "placement of a structure on a horixzontal plane" as part of the automated world generation. So: You it looks like can't have an autogenerated map automatically put POI's on top of each other. In addition, I don't believe the game will allow them to even overlap a little (on the same ground level) when they are added to the map (meaning you can't build a really tall and wide "Umbrella" or dome shaped POI and have other POI's spawned below/inside it.

 

But: it appears you can manually spawn them in on top of each other, per

1 hour ago, Pille said:

I am fairly sure that it is possible. POI stacking requires manual placement though and you have to take into account the stability...

 

So: A question: I was under the impression that anything "above" a POI was turned air blocks when it spawned in...meaning natural things cannot "overlap" on top of a POI ( like a POI under a cliff cannot naturally spawn in a newly generated map (or it clips the cliff off above it *when it spawns in*, destroying the cliff?) and similarly a POI will never be found under like, another bridge POI.  I know some of the Navezgane map has a "built into the wall" structure in the canyon, but I'm assuming that's not a POI, or it was just carefully/manually placed?

 

[Pille]

16 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

So: A question: I was under the impression that anything "above" a POI was turned air blocks when it spawned in...meaning natural things cannot "overlap" on top of a POI ( like a POI under a cliff cannot naturally spawn in a newly generated map (or it clips the cliff off above it *when it spawns in*, destroying the cliff?) and similarly a POI will never be found under like, another bridge POI.  I know some of the Navezgane map has a "built into the wall" structure in the canyon, but I'm assuming that's not a POI, or it was just carefully/manually placed?

 

There is no such restriction. Prefabs won't alter blocks outside their boundary. So you can put POIs under a cliff and this won't remove it (of course unless you've added some air layers as part of your prefab and the 'copy air blocks' property is enabled). The structures in the canyon are regular prefabs but the Pimps have placed them manually. You can even place two or more POIs in the same spot and configure them in a way that they get exchanged when activating a quest (e.g. from a damaged version to a repaired version). 

[DaChibii]

As an aside to the above. You can always set in ground blocks as part of the POI to act as a ceiling supports.

I think if the programmers/engineers can figure out to make Pregen engine think in layers instead of a true 3D space, they could setup seamless modular POIs (similar to random gen Rogue-likes) granted then it would still be up to the level designers to make sure the seams are structurally sound and feel less AI created when placed next to each other. So instead of making a whole apartment building a single POI it can be several stacked on each other and the order be randomized for a little variety. Granted it won't flow as well as manually placed ones, but it can help add a little variation without having to create whole new POIs each time.

 

[Kalen]

5 minutes ago, DaChibii said:

You can always set in ground blocks as part of the POI to act as a ceiling supports.

Not sure what you mean.... blocks are only supports if they have contiguous blocks underneath all the way to bedrock

[DaChibii]

1 hour ago, Kalen said:

Not sure what you mean.... blocks are only supports if they have contiguous blocks underneath all the way to bedrock

...
 

So what you're asking for is underground POIs that already break SI rules? Or stackable POIs that break SI rules? Because a POI isn't defined by its boundary but by it's shape. I mean you could break up any of the skyscrapers into smaller POIs and it would work.

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, DaChibii said:

...
 

So what you're asking for is underground POIs that already break SI rules? Or stackable POIs that break SI rules? Because a POI isn't defined by its boundary but by it's shape. I mean you could break up any of the skyscrapers into smaller POIs and it would work.

heh, I'm not asking for anything.... I was stating that the problem with stacking POIs was that, more likely than not, the top POI will end up being structurally unsound because it is likely that any supports in the upper POI will be compromised by empty spaces in the POI below it.

 

Now if a POI designer specifically builds two POIs to make sure this doesn't happen, sure that would work.   But at that point, they might as well just make 1 POI with an underground component.

[DaChibii]

13 minutes ago, Kalen said:

heh, I'm not asking for anything.... I was stating that the problem with stacking POIs was that, more likely than not, the top POI will end up being structurally unsound because it is likely that any supports in the upper POI will be compromised by empty spaces in the POI below it.

 

Now if a POI designer specifically builds two POIs to make sure this doesn't happen, sure that would work.   But at that point, they might as well just make 1 POI with an underground component.

It's only unsafe if the POIs are designed that way. And the whole point of POIs opposed to static builds are it allows the Level Designers and RWG great variety and ease in developing play areas for the players. So... as I stated before, it's a level design issue if the engine allows it, and programming issue if it doesn't.

Basically so far your arguments and discussion have been to paraphrase... 'You can't do that because it would collapse.' But that's not an issue. It's like saying you can't stack houses on top of each other, and architects and engineers go... 'Yes. Yes you can if you design it that way'.

The core reason behind any underground POIs would be a way to increase the play area of a world without increases the world boundaries or crowding the 2D surface space. Additionally, you could use it to develop additional paths for the player to navigate around the world (cave tunnels, road/rail tunnels, storm sewers, etc.). The idea behind modular and tileable POIs to make it easier for the RWG and make feel more varied and sort of normal. In the end these concepts are more for the developer and less about the player, since static authored content will always be superior to procedurallty generated stuff but purely authored content is just not scalable. So developers often make tools that help with the authored content that later get turned into procedural generated mass content tools or just released to the public and let the community make authored content.

[Kalen]

2 hours ago, DaChibii said:

Basically so far your arguments and discussion have been to paraphrase... 'You can't do that because it would collapse.' But that's not an issue. It's like saying you can't stack houses on top of each other, and architects and engineers go... 'Yes. Yes you can if you design it that way'.

Yes, I keep finding new ways to say the same thing because you just don't seem to get it.

 

Unless every POI is designed with supports in the same place, you can't randomly place one POI beneath another without risk of making the upper POI structurally unsound.   I'm not really sure how else to explain it.

2 hours ago, DaChibii said:

The core reason behind any underground POIs would be a way to increase the play area of a world without increases the world boundaries or crowding the 2D surface space. Additionally, you could use it to develop additional paths for the player to navigate around the world (cave tunnels, road/rail tunnels, storm sewers, etc.).

I fully understand why it would be a good thing if you could do this.... unfortunately,  as things stand right now you can't.

 

2 hours ago, DaChibii said:

The idea behind modular and tileable POIs to make it easier for the RWG and make feel more varied and sort of normal. In the end these concepts are more for the developer and less about the player, since static authored content will always be superior to procedurallty generated stuff but purely authored content is just not scalable. So developers often make tools that help with the authored content that later get turned into procedural generated mass content tools or just released to the public and let the community make authored content.

 

Yes, as I said, if every POI was redesigned to have their supports in the same place then they would be modular and you could do what you are saying.   I doubt anyone is going to redesign the 500 current POIs to do this though.

 

So, theoretically, yes, you are correct.  

[DaChibii]

... Why are you under the impression that all POIs need to be stackable? Or that they can't have contextual placement. Any underground POIs would have to be designed to be stackable and thus be new POIs (since existing underground POIs have an above or surface component). Seriously.... You are the one that isn't getting it. The question wasn't asking about whether you can take existing POIs and throw them underground. It was if underground POIs were possible, which they are.

By the way the game already does contextual checks when doing POI placement, so just add in a check to see if the POI can be used as a support POI underneath during RWG.